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 U.S. 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.

Source: International New York Times July 09, 2020 17:26 UTC