American newspaper: The Assad regime won a seat in the World Health Organization despite the war crimes it committed

The National Interest magazine called on the US administration to pressure the World Health Organization to suspend Damascus’s membership in the organization, similar to what happened in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which suspended the Assad regime’s membership and stripped it of its voting rights and other privileges.

In a report, the American magazine said that both Russia and the Assad regime won a seat on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization, despite the war crimes committed by the Assad regime and its sponsors in Moscow and Tehran with regular bombings against Syrian hospitals, the latest of which was the bombing of Al-Shifa hospital in Afrin
north of Aleppo and out of service.

It pointed out that granting the Assad regime a leadership role in global health policy showed “unparalleled contempt” for the World Health Organization’s commitment to health care “as a fundamental right of every human being.”

It explained that Western governments usually respond by resigning when UN agencies choose the worst human rights abusers to serve in leadership positions, but “the UN system insists on equal treatment of all sovereign governments, regardless of how they treat their populations.”

And it cautioned that the WHO constitution provides a mechanism for accountability of member states, in accordance with Article 7, which says: “If a member fails to fulfill its financial obligations to the organization or in other exceptional circumstances, the Health Assembly may, on the terms it deems appropriate, suspend voting privileges and services
which the member is entitled to.

It emphasized that “leading a second major initiative at the World Health Organization may lead to a taxation of the administration’s diplomatic resources,” and “the White House should first push to suspend the Assad regime, because many governments would be willing to vote against a pariah.”

Pushing to suspend Syria and Russia from the World Health Organization will require “significant efforts,” but “the administration should not consider this a burden, but rather an integral part of a campaign necessary to shape the multilateral playing field by targeting the real opponents of reform,” according to “The National Interest.”