From the League of Nations Health Organization to WHO 1943-1946: the succession and development of international functional cooperation

Abstract

  This article analyzes the process through which WHO was established on the basis of the experience of the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO). The article particularly focuses on the LNHO technocrats. Through their prewar experiences, technocrats realized that international health governance could promote international cooperation, while it could be utilized by various national representatives as one of their diplomatic strategies. Technocrats tried to alleviate this vulnerability by balancing big powers with smaller powers, national representatives with specialists, and centralization with decentralization. Their efforts and the development of international security in which economic and social cooperation were evaluated as a means towards international security resulted in the international health governance's autonomous establishment under the UN system, which can be termed as the origin of “human security.” The development of social cooperation in the postwar period can be considered to be an extension of their efforts in the League of Nations.