The Health Diplomacy House is an informal, practical space where organizations convene sessions, hold discussions, and work on concrete health policy issues. Located in the historic Rothschild buildings, formerly the Ancien Hôpital Ophtalmologique (1874–1978), it offers a simple and functional setting for focused exchange.
As part of the Predictable Uncertainty series, it brings together policymakers, diplomats, academia, youth, civil society, philanthropic actors, the private sector, and patient groups.
The programme includes multiple sessions and dialogues covering One Health, antimicrobial resistance, women’s leadership, health economics, pandemic preparedness, climate and health, health financing, and global health governance and reform.
The day will conclude with a reception, offering space for continued informal exchange among participants.
Each session requires individual registration. You must register separately for every session you wish to attend, as places are limited and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
We look forward to welcoming you in The House.
MORNING SESSIONS
OPENING
8 :00 AM- 9:00 AM CET
Global Health Architecture and Governance: Reflection in an Era of Predictable Uncertainty
Light breakfast at 7:20 AM
The opening session of the Health Diplomacy House brings participants into a focused, informal conversation on how global health is changing across governance, financing, and institutional processes. It sets the tone for subsequent partner organization sessions within the Health Diplomacy Alliance, including our strategic priorities—AMR, climate change and health, health governance, and sustainable financing—and how these connect to wider reform processes. The session is designed as a space that goes beyond standard exchanges, supporting reflection on how current shifts connect across agendas and shape future cooperation and coordination in global health.
Special Guests:
Facilitators:
9:00 AM- 10:00 AM CET
Traditional Medicine at the Nexus of Climate, Biodiversity, and Land Restoration (Rio Conventions)
This side event explores the role of traditional medicine at the intersection of climate action, biodiversity conservation, and land restoration aligned with the Rio Conventions (UNFCCC, Convention on Biological Diversity, and UNCCD). Rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems, traditional medicine depends on healthy ecosystems and diverse plant species, many of which serve as vital resources for both human and ecological health. Medicinal plants act as “natural pharmacies” within forests, supporting wildlife and maintaining ecosystem balance. The session will highlight how safeguarding biodiversity strengthens traditional healing systems, while restoration efforts benefit from medicinal plant diversity. Bringing together youth, Indigenous voices, and global stakeholders, the event aims to position traditional medicine as a bridge connecting health, nature, and sustainable development.
Panelists
Virtual Speaker:
Moderator:
9:30 AM- 11:00 AM CET
What’s at Stake and What Comes Next for Global Health Reform
This interactive session explores the future of global health reform at a critical moment for international cooperation. As numerous reform initiatives emerge, it has become increasingly challenging for stakeholders to track developments and engage meaningfully.
The session will provide clear and accessible insights into the structural drivers behind global health reform, highlighting four key paradigm shifts shaping the future. It will also examine major milestones—from the Gavi Leap and Accra Reset to ongoing WHO-led processes—while addressing both opportunities and risks for meaningful change.
Participants will be invited to engage, reflect, and contribute to shaping the next era of global health.
Special Guests:
Facilitator:
10:00 AM- 11:00 AM CET
Climate Change and Respiratory Health (Fireside Chat)
This session will explore how climate change is affecting respiratory health worldwide. It will highlight the impact of rising temperatures, air pollution, and environmental changes on conditions like asthma and COPD, particularly among vulnerable populations. The session will bring together experts and policymakers to discuss prevention strategies, strengthen public health responses, and bridge the gap between research and policy.
Panelists:
Speakers and facilitators to be announced.
11:15 AM- 12:35 PM CET
Financing Health Through Diplomacy: Unlocking Debt-for-Health Swaps
Financing Health Through Diplomacy: Unlocking Debt-for-Health Swaps” is a workshop session organized by JLI Center for Global Health Diplomacy. The session addresses growing financial pressures on health systems in low- and middle-income countries, driven by rising debt, declining aid, and constrained public resources. It aims to strengthen understanding of innovative and blended financing mechanisms, with a focus on debt-for-health swaps as a practical tool to unlock fiscal space for health investments.
Through presentations and discussion, participants will explore the working debt swap model through case studies, highlighting lessons learned, enabling factors, and implementation challenges. The session also emphasizes the role of health diplomacy in bringing together governments and partners to negotiate sustainable solutions. Designed as an interactive workshop, it encourages peer exchange and aims to generate actionable insights and better knowledge on the ways innovative financing in coordination with health diplomacy can be used to advance national health strategies.
Panelists:
Moderator:
More Speakers and facilitators to be announced.
LUNCH SESSION
12:30 PM- 1:20 PM CET
Plastics & Health: What we’re not talking about
The session will explore the often-overlooked health impacts of plastics across their full lifecycle, from production to disposal, highlighting growing scientific evidence on risks linked to plastic pollution, chemicals, microplastics and nanoplastics. It will also examine how health considerations can be more effectively integrated into ongoing global negotiations for a legally binding plastics treaty. Through short lightning talks by experts from diplomacy, science, and policy, the discussion will focus on why health must sit at the centre of global plastics action and how scientific knowledge can be better communicated and translated into policy.
Panelists:
AFTERNOON SESSIONS
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM CET
Closing the Gap: Governance and Financing for an Effective Global Response to Antibiotic Resistance
ReAct’s roundtable, scheduled for May 21, 2026, on the sidelines of the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, will convene a small group of policymakers and experts to discuss the role of global governance and financing in addressing critical implementation gaps in the response to antibiotic resistance.
The relevance of this discussion is underscored by a deteriorating global health financing landscape, marked by significant aid cuts and growing geopolitical instability that is straining multilateral cooperation. The roundtable will 1) reflect on strengths and limitations of the existing governance system and 2) explore options to expand and optimize both domestic and international financing.
As a longstanding civil society convener at the intersection of governance and financing, ReAct seeks – through this focused dialogue – to support the alignment of strengthened governance and resource mobilization with national needs.
Panelists:
By Invitation Only
1:30 PM – 2:20 PM CET
Women at the Heart of Health Diplomacy. Heal, Lead, Seal.
Women are at the core of health diplomacy, yet they are excluded from, or marginalized within, high-stakes health decisions, at every level from community to global. This session will convene women at different stages of leadership and from different sectors and regions, to create space for inter-generational dialogue amongst women leaders in global health. Throughout the session, participants will interrogate questions like: Where does real power sit in health negotiations, and how do women learn to navigate it? and, What would a genuinely gender-responsive health diplomacy process look like, and who has to change for it to happen? The discussion will center the real experiences of how women are excluded from, or marginalized within, high-stakes health decisions, at every level from community to global, and the specific challenges facing young women entering health diplomacy. Through honest and open conversation with one another, participants will build connections, solidarity, and mentorship across generations and sectors.
Speakers:
More Speakers and facilitators to be announced.
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM CET
The International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Climate Change: Implications for Global Health Governance
The International Court of Justice has recently issued an advisory opinion on the obligations of states in respect of climate change. This opinion has prompted considerable discussion within international law and global health circles regarding its potential relevance to the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its member states. In the context of the World Health Assembly’s ongoing engagement with climate change and health, including through the 2025 Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health, there is growing interest in understanding how the advisory opinion may inform future global health law and governance.
Panelists:
Speakers and facilitators to be announced.
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM CET
The Role of Journalism in Global Health Diplomacy
This session will explore the role of journalism in Global Health Diplomacy. Specifically, we will discuss the journalistic practices of Geneva Health Files in reporting global health negotiations in Geneva at the World Trade Organization, and the World Health Organization, during the pandemic and post-pandemic years. We will tell the story of how we came to report on closed-door negotiations to provide a service to negotiators, diplomats and other stakeholders during the negotiations on the WTO TRIPS Waiver, the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and the Pandemic Agreement. We will also discuss the impact we have had, and the traction we received in response to our journalism. The session will explore the tool of independent journalism to further transparency and accountability in global health policy–making. It will also underscore the importance of having access to rigorous journalism, for all delegations for timely, impartial and accurate coverage of opaque decision-making.
Panelists:
Speakers and facilitators to be announced.
2:30 PM – 3:20 PM CET
From Co‑Benefits to Core Value: Health in Climate Policy
As climate action accelerates, health is increasingly cited as a co‑benefit, but too often health impacts remain undervalued, inconsistently measured, or sidelined in real investment and policy decisions. This small, interactive session at Health Diplomacy House will explore how economic evidence and value assessment can make health impacts visible, credible, and decision‑relevant in climate policy.
The discussion will examine how better alignment of climate and health evidence can strengthen cross‑government decisions, inform financing priorities, and support more effective climate action with meaningful health gains.
With contributions from OHE, LSHTM, and climate leaders, and limited to around 40 participants, the session is designed to enable focused exchange, practical insight, and candid discussion among senior policymakers, diplomats, and partners working at the climate–health–finance nexus.
Panelists:
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM CET
Roundtable on the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion
The International Court of Justice has recently issued an advisory opinion on the obligations of states in respect of climate change. This opinion has prompted considerable discussion within international law and global health circles regarding its potential relevance to the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its member states. In the context of the World Health Assembly’s ongoing engagement with climate change and health, including through the 2025 Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health, there is growing interest in understanding how the advisory opinion may inform future global health law and governance.
Panelists:
By Invitation Only
3:30 PM – 4:50 PM CET
Changing Paradigms of Global Health Governance and Health Security Architecture: Reflections from South and Southeast Asia
Contemporary global health governance (GHG) is increasingly characterised by fragmentation, geopolitical competition, power asymmetries, and a gradual retreat of traditional donors. At the same time, countries of the Global South are calling for a more equitable and representative order, prompting a rethinking of global health governance structures and financing mechanisms. South and Southeast Asia—given their demographic weight, epidemiological transitions, and growing economic and political influence—are central to shaping these shifts. The region faces a dual challenge: advancing universal health coverage (UHC) while addressing cross-border threats such as climate-related health risks and pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPPR). This side event situates these challenges within ongoing World Health Assembly discussions and explores how strengthened regional cooperation can complement global multilateral processes. It focuses on three key pathways: (1) cross-border knowledge sharing, norm-setting, and technical exchanges; (2) the amplification of Global South voices and pooled expertise; (3) the value of issue-based coalitions and regional agendas on PPPR, which address the rapidly shifting health security architecture in South and Southeast Asia. The session builds on two research studies examining global and regional health governance dynamics and the implications of the Pandemic Agreement for regional cooperation in Asia.
Panelists:
Registration:
3:40 PM – 5:00 PM CET
Advancing a Common Care Framework for Ethical Health Worker Mobility
This session will explore how to make international health worker mobility fairer, more sustainable and more credible for all parties involved. It will introduce the Common Care Framework, a practical policy model for governing health worker mobility not simply as a matter of recruitment, but as a broader relationship that must also address integration, professional recognition, worker protection, retention, and mutual benefit between countries of origin and destination. Structured around the principles of respect, recognition and utility, the Framework aims to define what responsible and workable mobility should look like in practice for governments, employers, health workers and communities. The discussion will connect this approach to current global debates on the WHO Global Code of Practice, the WHO Support and Safeguards List, and the ILO fair recruitment framework, with a view to identifying more concrete and accountable ways of governing health worker mobility
Panelists:
By Invitation Only
CLOSING SESSION
CLOSING
5:00PM – 6:30 PM CET
CHECK THE BOX – AMR
The closing session of the Health Diplomacy House will focus on tracking political commitments on antimicrobial resistance, assessing the distance between declaration and implementation, and identifying the diplomatic and policy levers needed to accelerate action.
Facilitators:
RECEPTION
Châteaubriand & Gautier
Butini
Gare Cornavin & Geneva-Sécheron
2 min walk — scenic option
