GMHAN at the World Health Assembly 2026
In 2025, mental health was a key focus at the World Health Assembly (WHA), coinciding with ongoing discussions regarding the UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health. A year later, we remain dedicated to ensuring that mental health is prioritised. Our community is advocating for policies, reforms, and structural changes that acknowledge the unique and cross-cutting nature of this issue, which deeply impacts so many of us. We are continuing to emphasise the importance of youth and lived experience leadership, community-based care, and the decentralisation of power.
Mental Health at WHA 2026: Four Key Agenda Items
The 2025 UN HLM4 political declaration created unprecedented commitments on mental health and NCDs. WHA79 is one of the first opportunities for Member States to demonstrate how they will operationalise those commitments.
Countries are expected to report on progress and gaps against the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (2013–2030). WHA79 will scrutinise whether momentum is accelerating fast enough to meet 2030 targets.
The Global Health Architecture (GHA) will be a major focus of discussions. Mental health is largely absent from these discussions, as they’ve focused more on reform.
Health Emergencies will be discussed, including the conflict in the Middle East. It is already having a huge mental health impact on those directly affected, and it could have wider international mental health impacts.
Download recommended talking points for each of these agenda items here.
Mental health events at WHA79
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Mental health events at WHA79 ✦
Priorities for GMHAN at WHA79
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Despite growing international recognition that mental health is a fundamental human rights issue, many countries continue to rely on institutional and coercive models of care that can undermine autonomy, legal capacity, dignity, and community inclusion. Challenges relating to involuntary treatment, long-term institutionalisation, restraint, stigma, and discrimination persist across settings and throughout the life course, particularly in the absence of legislation aligned with international human rights standards. There is an urgent need to deinstitutionalise mental health care by shifting towards rights-based, community-centred systems that prioritise autonomy, participation, and inclusion, while ensuring access to housing, employment, social support, and services shaped by people with lived experience.
✦ Join our WHA79 event: Care not Custody - A Human Rights Based Approach to Mental Health - Register now! -
The next UN High-level meeting (UN HLM) on universal health coverage (UHC) will take place in September 2027. Mental health is a core component of UHC and plays a critical role in building resilient health systems and advancing population well-being. In recent years, it has gained increased political visibility, leading to the development of national strategies, policy reforms, and its gradual inclusion in broader health and development agendas. By starting with mental health, we address the foundation upon which UHC can be built to transform systems and improve health outcomes overall.
✦ Join our WHA79 event: Driving Mental Health into UHC: From Political Leadership to System Implementation. Register now!
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The Global Health Architecture (GHA) refers to the roles or mandates of different health agencies, their governance structures and how they are financed. The GHA’s reform will set the precedent for which organisations coordinate international and/or regional policies and plans on mental health, where funding for mental health is coordinated and distributed, and what guidance and regulations are adhered to. Integrating mental health in the GHA discussions will ensure we can discuss how to best achieve integration and reduce morbidity and mortality. Mental health is a cross-cutting issue that will test the concept of the new global health architecture configuration.
✦ We’ll be speaking at the WHA79 event: Built Together, Fit for All: Pathways and Priorities for Global Health Architecture Reform - Register now! -
Decolonising governance for global health is essential to dismantle deeply embedded social, racial, economic, and political hierarchies that perpetuate inequity, and Euro-Western dominance in global health decision-making. Existing systems often concentrate power, funding, and agenda-setting within high-income countries and international institutions, whilst marginalising the voices, knowledge systems, and priorities of communities most affected by health inequities. Power and resources must be redistributed towards locally led institutions and communities, with greater accountability and participation in decision-making, and recognition of diverse forms of knowledge and lived experience.
✦ We’re co-organising a special event at WHA79 on Knowledge as Driver of Decolonising Governance for Global Health. Register now!
GMHAN Members at WHA79 Events
| Date | Time | Organiser | Session | Location | Registration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 May | 09:00-10:00 | Civil Society Engagement Mechanism (CSEM) | UHC Champions Meet & Greet | Auditorium de la Pastorale – 106 Route de Ferney, | No registration required |
| 18 May | 17:30-19:30 | Orygen, Headspace Denmark | Building the mental wealth of young people utilising low-intensity supports and an ecosystem approach. | Hotel Royal, Rue Du Lausanne 41, 1201 Genève | https://bit.ly/4wsmihd |
| 19 May | 09:00-17:00 | WFPHA, MSF, GMHAN & Global Health Governance as Public Service | Knowledge as a Driver of Decolonizing Governance for Global Health | Médecins Sans Frontières, Geneva Headquarters | https://bit.ly/4nwgXBI |
| 19 May | 12:30-15:00 | HEAR CSO | Built Together, Fit for All: Pathways and Priorities for Global Health Architecture Reform | InterContinental Hotel, Geneva | https://bit.ly/4eKvkQn |
| 19 May | 13:00-14:20 | NCD Alliance | Adequate and sustained financing for NCDs and Mental Health: approaches to closing the implementation gap | Palais | TBC |
| 19 May | 13:00-15:00 | ⋆ OHCHR, United for Global Mental Health & GMHAN | Care Not Custody - A Human Rights Based Approach to Mental Health | Palais | https://bit.ly/4d6hXsz |
| 20 May | 10:00-11:30 | ⋆ GMHAN & UNITE | Driving Mental Health into UHC: From Political Leadership to System Implementation | Auditorium de la Pastorale, 106 Route de Ferney | https://bit.ly/4fkgMHj |
| 20 May | 12:00-13:30 | International Association for Suicide Prevention & Orygen | Online Safety: Artificial Intelligence, Social Media and Suicide Prevention | Warwick Hotel, Rue de Lausanne 14, 1201 Genève | https://bit.ly/3RCzsrZ |
