The UN agency relied on funding and the cooperation of members to function, giving wealthy member states like China considerable influence. This means that the WHO is only as informed as its member states want it to be. Beijing’s exclusion of the island from international organizations does not usually have global ramifications. Speaking to reporters last month, a spokesman used the bizarre construction of “China, Taiwan;” while a February 4 report flipped it and listed “Taiwan, China,” but got the number of cases wrong, relying on data from Beijing not Taipei. And this is the fundamental problem with the WHO: it cannot treat member states equally because they are not equal.

Source: Ethiopian News February 15, 2020 02:27 UTC