Push by Bangladesh PM’s daughter for WHO role raises transparency concerns

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Bangladesh has put forward its prime minister’s daughter to become the next head of the World Health Organization’s south-east Asia region, sparking concerns about the way candidates are chosen for senior roles at the UN health body.

Saima Wazed, a mental health advocate, is one of two candidates to be WHO director of south-east Asia, overseeing an annual budget of almost $500mn over two years for 2bn people in 11 countries. A vote is expected at the WHO regional committee’s next meeting at the end of October.

She is standing against Shambhu Acharya, a senior WHO official from Nepal, who has been at the UN body for almost 30 years and holds a PhD in public health.

Current and former officials and health experts in the region have raised concerns in interviews with the Financial Times about the WHO’s election process and questioned Wazed’s suitability for the role. Candidates are put forward by their respective governments and elected by a secret ballot of the region’s 11 member countries.

“If she were not the daughter of the PM, I don’t think she would be a serious candidate,” said Kul Chandra Gautam, a former assistant UN secretary-general, who called Wazed’s résumé “very thin”.

“It does not give a good image of the UN system or of WHO,” added Gautam, who is also Nepali. “This is clearly nepotism.”

Wazed, who holds advisory positions to Bangladesh’s government on mental health and whose mother is Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told the FT that accusations of nepotism were “offensive”, and cited her advocacy experience as part of her relevant skillset.

“I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a Muslim woman or my mother is a politician,” she said. “I don’t know why my qualifications come so much into question but I’m used to that kind of criticism.”

“I can’t help that I am who I am,” she added.

Acharya declined to comment on the election.

The WHO’s regional directors are hugely influential in the health body’s hierarchy, working closely with the headquarters in Geneva to set and execute policy goals. Member states typically fight hard to have their preferred candidates chosen, though there are usually more than two contesting a post.

In a letter to the Lancet medical journal in May, three public health experts called for greater transparency in WHO elections, including public debates rather than closed sessions with regional member states.

A senior health policy worker in the country said Wazed’s nomination showed the politicisation of Bangladesh’s health sector. “She came from a political family and her mother is prime minister,” the person said, noting “every single work that she does is highlighted” by the government.

AK Abdul Momen, Bangladesh’s foreign minister, dismissed accusations that Wazed was nominated because of her relation to the prime minister. “She’s a good candidate to help improve the health sector in the whole of the region,” he told the FT.

Wazed, who according to election filings is trained as a school psychologist, oversees a charity and policy research group in Bangladesh. Much of her work has focused on autism, but the filings do not outline any experience managing transnational organisations with significant budgets.

The filings also show that Wazed is a PhD candidate in “education and leadership”.

Ahead of the election, she has embarked on a high-profile diplomatic tour, attending the UN General Assembly in New York and the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi this month alongside her mother.

She has publicised an array of meetings with global leaders, often with her mother, including WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and New York City mayor Eric Adams ahead of the UNGA, and with US president Joe Biden and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi at the G20.

She also attended the Asean summit in Jakarta this month and the Brics summit in Johannesburg in August, where she met China’s president Xi Jinping.

Hasina, who has served as prime minister since 2009 and from 1996 to 2001, has increasingly suppressed political dissent and civil society in Bangladesh. She is expected to seek re-election in elections due to be held by early next year and which are already being criticised after her government launched a crackdown on the opposition.

Mushtaque Raza Chowdhury, founder of civil society group Bangladesh Health Watch, said Wazed’s selection would be “valuable for Bangladesh” and “help the country’s image”.

The WHO declined to comment. The office of Bangladesh’s prime minister did not respond immediately to a request for comment.