| Why do people think the WHO is the world police, able to hold negligent countries to account? It isn't, and it can't. It's an international health agency that is entirely dependent on and beholden to UN member states, as it was designed from the start to be an avenue for voluntary co-operation and the setting of norms. It has no enforcement authority and no legal right to intervene in or investigate countries. It has no independent control over either its leadership or its budget, both of which are determined to an extremely granular level by UN member states. The US cutting the WHO's funding was petulant and performative, because it just hurt people on the receiving end of valuable WHO assistance programmes and reduced the US's influence in global health debates. As a tactic, that sort of thing only works if you can induce the organisation you're withholding funds from to reform itself, but all of these controversial aspects of the WHO are external to it and come from its nature as an agency run by the world's countries in all their dysfunction. So no, it's not the WHO's job to 'prove' that China isn't telling the truth, nor does it have any such powers. That sort of evidence would need to be obtained by other countries and used to build cases that allow them to use other mechanisms for a punitive response. As a contrast, look at the IAEA, which is given broad investigative power through the UN Security Council. The upside though is that the co-operative nature of the WHO means that overall when it does provide information, norms, or similar, they're usually reliable and have broad support. We'd be worse off without it. But we really need to improve civic education and people's understanding of what role international institutions can and can't play. |