UNOFFICIAL
Dear Shareholders Council colleagues
As Vice chair of the Gavi Board, I am looking forward to joining you and being the interim chair of the Shareholders Council meeting later today.
As noted in the message sent by the Secretariat on 16th March, a special session has been arranged immediately after the Council meeting, so that self financing participants can convene and take stock of the
process to identify and agree co-chairs for the Shareholders Council.
In order to help prepare this session, I would like to provide some background information, which I hope will be useful to help us get the most from our discussions.
1)
Firstly, let me remind you of
the process so far. As you will recall, the Shareholders Council meeting on 2 November 2020, discussed and agreed the draft Terms of Reference for the Shareholders Council, and agreed that it should have two co-chairs, one drawn from an upper middle-income
economy or organization, and one drawn from a high-income economy or organization. It was further agreed that, as a self-organising body, the process for identifying co-chairs would be led by the self-financing participants themselves, with the aim of finding
candidates that would draw consensus from each group of economies. And that these names would then be put to the Council for final confirmation.
After this meeting, Canada and Colombia kindly volunteered to act as envoys to help facilitate this process. A survey was sent to all self-financing participants, and on the basis of this,
nominations were identified for the Market Sensitive Decisions Committee (MSDC), for the proposed Executive Committee; and for the positions of co-chair.
At the second meeting of the Shareholders Council, held on 28 January 2021 and chaired by Jose Manuel Barroso, chair of the Gavi Board, we were briefed by the envoys on the progress that had
been made. We were able to confirm the appointment of three Shareholders Council representatives to attend COVAX-related meetings of the MSDC. We learned of extensive interest in the Executive Committee, but also agreed to delay a decision on this body until
such time as we are able to meet in person again. And we noted that while the high-income countries had been able to settle on one consensus candidate for co-chair, we also learned that discussions among the upper middle-income countries were still ongoing,
and that a little more time would be needed to settle on a final choice. The Council agreed that the envoy-led process was a consultative and inclusive process, and that, once a candidate was identified by the upper middle-income countries, both nominations
would be put to the Council for final confirmation through a no-objection process.
Following that meeting, the upper middle-income countries settled on the Colombian Minister of Health and Social Protection – Dr Fernando Ruiz. However, at this time, the candidate chosen by
the high-income countries informed the envoys of his decision to withdraw from consideration for the co-chair position. This meant that the process for identifying a consensus candidate for the high-income countries had to restart in February. This has resulted
in three new candidates for this nomination, listed below.
·
Dr Chrysoula Zacharopoulou (proposed by EC/EU)
·
David Nabarro (proposed by UK)
·
Ambassador Arne Sannes Bjørnstad (nominated by Norway)
The task now is to identify a consensus candidate from these three proposed co-chairs. You will find CVs attached to this e-mail and online here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nabarro
2)
Secondly, and mindful of the need to ensure that outstanding governance issues do not distract attention from the formal meeting and the purpose of COVAX, I hope that the session convened at the end of the Council
meeting today will enable us to align on a process to finalise the co-chair appointments, within a clearly defined timeframe. We are very fortunate to have such strong interest from such eminent candidates. I would be grateful that, if colleagues
have suggestions for this process, they could bring them to the conversation, so we can have some options to consider.
3)
And finally, let me add that, as we already have a nomination from the upper middle-income countries, this session is primarily intended to support a discussion among high-income countries. However, in the
interests of transparency and inclusion, all self-financing participants are welcome to attend. If you wish to take part, we ask that you simply remain on the zoom call after the Council meeting has ended.
I do hope that this information provides additional clarity on the process for co-chair selection and the purpose of the special session at the end of the Council meeting. With many thanks in advance for your commitment
and support to help us advance this important agenda.
Best Regards
Sarah
Sarah Goulding
Assistant Secretary
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
T| +612 6178 4532
M| +61 403 263 287
