MANDATE OF WHO

World Health Organization is the United Nations specialized agency for health and centre of leading international cooperation for more than 60 years. The work of WHO is governed by the World Health Assembly and Executive Board and is carried out by the Secretariat.

The constitution of the World Health Organization defines health as its first principle:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.

The objective of the World Health Organization is the attainment of all peoples of the highest possible level of health.

To understand the mandate better the following is the role of WHO in public health we need to understand its functions.

WHO's roles and mandates under its Constitution and guidance provided by its governing bodies WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system and is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters. In its work, WHO takes international law into consideration in its entirety. In addition to the international drug conventions, WHO ‘s work related to narcotics and psychoactive substances is guided by the WHO Constitution and by the Organization's governing bodies – chiefly through resolutions of the World Health Assembly and WHO's regional committees.

WHO fulfils its objectives through its core functions:
• providing leadership on matters critical to health and engaging in partnerships where joint action is needed;
• shaping the research agenda and stimulating the generation, translation and dissemination of valuable knowledge;
• setting norms and standards and promoting and monitoring their implementation;
• articulating ethical and evidence-based policy options;
• providing technical support, catalysing change, and building sustainable institutional capacity; and
• monitoring the health situation and assessing health trends

To understand the mandate properly of the World Health Organization one can refer to the link below to go through the WHO constitution once
http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf
http://www.wpro.who.int/laos/about/who_mandate/en/

UNDERSTANDING THE MANDATE

The World Health Organization is a specialized agency within the purview of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The work of World Health Organization is carried out by
a) The World Health Assembly
b) The Executive Board
c) The Secretariat

The World Health Assembly composes of delegates representing member states. As the members of the World Health Assembly, the delegates are required to determine the policies of the World Health Organization. To put it in simpler words, the delegates representing their countries are the part of the World Health Assembly which will take decisions regarding the functioning of World Health Organization (to understand the functions of the World Health Assembly, refer to Article 18 of the WHO constitution).

The delegates of the assembly will have the authority to adopt conventions or agreements or resolutions, in accordance to the discussion which will take place regarding the agenda. Each member of the assembly has one vote. Under the constitution of the World Health Organization, the World Health Assembly (delegates) has the authority to define the geographical area they deem desirable to establish a regional organization to meet the special needs of the area. The World Health Assembly also has the authority to supervise financial policies, and review and approve the proposed programme budget.

To put it simply the delegates in the committee are the World Health Assembly, which is a decision making body of World Health Organization. To know what kind of decisions are taken by the World Health Assembly in order to make the World Health Organization more effective please go through the decisions taken by the World Health Assembly, during the 69th World Health Assembly which happened recently from 23rd to 28th May, 2016 (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/2016/wha69/en/) .

The World Health Assembly decides in own rules of procedure and for the purpose of our committee we shall be following the UNA-USA rules of procedure.