Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, 19 May 2021
Thank you, Chairperson, and Member States of the PBAC,
I’d like to start first by saying to you how determined I and my senior team in the Regional Office and the WHO country offices in Africa are to promote the highest ethical standards and conduct, establish a culture and actions of all our staff where risks are defined and managed in line with the principles, policies and procedures of our Organization.
I’d like to reiterate, echoing and fully supporting the statements by Dr Tedros, Dr Boehme and other colleagues in the previous session, the absolute determination of myself and my senior team in the Region to address, prevent and ensure accountability for all acts of sexual exploitation and abuse as well as sexual harassment in our workplaces in the African Region.
This includes strongly driving action in the field in the often extremely challenging contexts that exist in our Region. We are fully part of all the actions described by our colleagues and took the initiative from the regional level to deploy focal points on sexual exploitation and abuse.
I’d like to highlight our recognition of the need to continue to strengthen the functioning of the whistle blower mechanism. In conversation with staff members, it is clear that some of those who quietly observe wrongdoing are often afraid of retaliation and have little confidence that they will be protected. This apparent weakness is receiving our urgent attention.
On risk management, my senior team and I are strongly committed as well and have started in systematically strengthening this as part of our Transformation Agenda in the Region since 2016. We have reactivated our Regional Compliance and Risk Management Committee which I chair, which we had established in 2016 also as part of our regional Transformation. I discuss risk management issues as a sitting item in our town hall meetings with our staff and have asked team leaders at the country and regional levels to do the same.
We are actively engaged in the processes led by our colleagues in headquarters as mentioned by the CRE Director on the risk appetite framework process. We recognize the need to build capacity in the Regional Office and in our country office management teams, as well as an understanding of the wider internal control framework.
Our compliance unit is working with headquarters in briefing our country offices and Regional Office departments targeting all of them to be briefed in 2020 to cascade this to all our staff members. We have had a detailed briefing session recently with all our heads of country offices including emphasizing the threat of fraud and corruption to the health outcomes and results we are aiming to help our countries to achieve.
I’d like to conclude by echoing the comments from our German delegate and other delegates about funding for WHO’s enabling functions including these very important areas. They urgently need to be resourced very differently for implementation at all levels particularly in all countries to be possible.
I’d like again to reiterate our absolute commitment in the African Region to working together with headquarters on all these aspects of our work and thank you very much.