NORTH KOREA Pyongyang in the WHO executive despite the shadows on the Covid

In a secret ballot, 123 member countries of the World Health Organization voted in favor of North Korea’s candidacy, despite the country’s less than transparent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which could continue in course in the territory. One more sign of the influence of ally Beijing within the health arm of the UN.

Geneva () – North Korea has been granted a seat on the executive council of the World Health Organization (WHO), despite its non-transparent management of the Covid-19 pandemic, which may not yet have ended in the country. “This means that one of the most horrific regimes in the world is now part of a group that sets and enforces norms and standards for the management of global health care,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, an independent group for defense of human rights based in Geneva.

Normally, the composition of the executive committee is done by consensus, but due to Russia’s challenge to Ukraine’s candidacy, WHO member states went to secret ballot: 123 states voted to elect North Korea, which won the position along with Australia, Barbados, Cameroon, Comoros Islands, Lesotho, Qatar, Switzerland, Togo and Ukraine.

A few weeks ago, the same WHO had requested an exemption from international sanctions against the Pyongyang regime to send 500 oxygen treatment units, suggesting that even today Covid-19 cases may continue to rise in North Korea. However, there are no more foreign personnel left in Pyongyang. In its exemption request, the WHO said it would work with local authorities to ensure the machines are used for their intended purpose, but these are staff handpicked by the regime.

According to government data from a year ago, 3.3 million people (out of a population of about 26 million) contracted a fever due to a “respiratory illness”, but only 69 died. This would mean a mortality rate of 0.002%, according to experts, the lowest ever recorded worldwide. At the moment it is impossible to calculate the true extent of the pandemic, but given the lack of vaccines, malnutrition rates estimated at 40% (even the FAO received a sanction waiver last month to increase local soybean production due to lack of food in urban and rural areas) and the absence of adequate sanitation facilities, the actual figures are in all probability much more worrying.

Despite the total closure of its borders starting in January 2020 and the consequent economic collapse, North Korea denied for two years that a coronavirus outbreak was taking place on its territory. It was not until May 12, 2022 when leader Kim Jong-un admitted the existence of a focus and a few weeks later declared that the new disease had been eradicated. For analysts, this may have been a way to bolster power over an already deeply depleted population.

The World Health Organization received repeated criticism for its management of the health crisis and many pointed to the influence of Beijing, an ally of Pyongyang, in the international organization. The WHO uncritically accepted the information that came from the Chinese authorities at the end of 2019, and it took some time before decreeing that the spread of Covid was a global health emergency. In those initial weeks, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, had traveled to China and praised the Chinese leadership for “setting a new standard in response to epidemics.” Later, Beijing long adopted the “zero Covid” policy to prevent the spread of the virus.

According to some commentators, the organization’s problem lies in the fact that it does not have the capacity to contradict the information communicated by the different States, especially authoritarian ones such as Russia, China and North Korea, all of them countries where information does not circulate freely. However, in 2003, during the SARS epidemic, the WHO had criticized Beijing for its non-transparent management of the crisis. Later, while the financial contributions of the United States decreased during the Trump administration, those of China grew, which allowed Beijing to increase the importance within international organizations. Due to Chinese influence, for example, Taiwan continues to be excluded from the WHO Assembly (because the communist regime considers that it is already part of Chinese territory) despite being one of the countries that best managed the Covid-19 pandemic.