Health: the World Health Organization in Geneva

2Founded in 1948

WHO’s constitution came into force on 7 April 1948, when the 26th of the 61 governments that had signed it ratified it. The first World Health Assembly opened in Geneva on 24 June 1948, with delegations from 53 of the 55 member states of the time.

3Why the WHO is in Geneva

The location was decided at the very beginning. The First World Health Assembly decided in 1948 to establish WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, the city where it had met and where other international organisations already worked.

4The World Health Assembly

The World Health Assembly is WHO’s decision-making body. Delegations from all member states attend. The Assembly sets the organisation’s policies, appoints the Director-General on the nomination of the Executive Board and approves its budget.

It meets every year in Geneva. For the dates and agenda of a given year, follow the link to WHO in the sources.

5The Executive Board

Between Assemblies, the work is carried forward by the Executive Board. It has 34 members, technically qualified in the field of health, elected for three-year terms. Its main task is to implement the decisions and policies of the Health Assembly, and to advise it and facilitate its work.

The Board meets every January, when among other things it settles the agenda of the coming Assembly and the resolutions to be put to it. A second, shorter meeting follows the Assembly.

6The International Health Regulations

The clearest example of a binding health rule adopted in Geneva is the International Health Regulations. Their present form, known as IHR (2005), was adopted by the Fifty-eighth World Health Assembly on 23 May 2005 and entered into force on 15 June 2007. Almost every state in the world is a State Party, including some that are not WHO members.

The Regulations require states to notify WHO of a wide range of events that may threaten public health, and they set a framework for coordinating the response to events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern.

They have since been amended. Amendments adopted by the Seventy-seventh Assembly in 2024 entered into force on 19 September 2025; among other things they add a higher alert level, the pandemic emergency. A State Party that rejected the amendments remains bound by the earlier text.

7Health rules that cross borders

Diseases do not stop at borders, which is why health is one of the fields where Geneva’s international rules matter most. Not everything the Assembly adopts binds states in the same way. WHO’s Constitution gives it three tools. A convention (Article 19) needs a two-thirds vote and binds a member only once that member accepts it under its own constitutional procedures. Regulations (Article 21), such as the International Health Regulations, enter into force for all members except those that reject them or make reservations within the set period (Article 22). Recommendations (Article 23) are not binding.

Most resolutions of the Assembly are not legally binding either: they guide policy rather than impose obligations. The texts are published by WHO; as elsewhere on this site, we explain them and link to them, rather than republishing them.