Zurich - Avowed multilateralists Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf and Helen Clark will lead a World Health
Organization (WHO) panel scrutinising the global response to the
Covid-19 pandemic just as international institutions are under
fire.
The work by Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia's former president and
Clark, New Zealand's ex-prime minister, will come into the harsh
spotlight trained on the WHO by US President Donald Trump, who
has accused the agency of being in China's pocket while letting
the pandemic spiral out of control.
Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Africa's
first democratically elected female president, and Clark, who
sought the top United Nations job in 2016, acknowledged that the
study of how the world tackled this crisis, to prepare for the
next one, will not be easy.
"Our world is challenged by what is happening, challenged in
ways that none of us could have forecast," Clark, 70, said on
Thursday.
Johnson Sirleaf, 81, a Liberian-born, US-educated
economist, served 12 years as her West African country's leader,
a period that included the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak that killed
thousands.
She won the Nobel Prize in 2011 for promoting the peaceful
struggle for women's rights as she oversaw Liberia's emergence
from civil war. She has deep WHO ties, having been named a
goodwill ambassador last year.
In a March BBC editorial, Johnson Sirleaf called for
solidarity against Covid-19 while criticising early lapses by
states.
"Time was wasted. Information was hidden, minimised, and
manipulated. Trust was broken," she wrote.
Clark, New Zealand's leader from 1999 to 2008, lost out four
years ago to Antonio Guterres to lead the UN. She previously led
the UN Development Programme and serves on a WHO panel on
childhood obesity.
In May, in an online forum, she criticised global leadership
for failing to muster the "unity of purpose" that overcame
challenges like eradicating smallpox.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called them
"strong-minded, independent leaders", aiming to underscore their
freedom in assessing his agency's and governments' Covid-19
responses.