Global citizenship is the broader idea of humanity which gets realized when one identifies herself beyond a geographical or political boundary, gives second place to her nationality in the global community and considers herself belonging to the earth. The idea of global citizenship paved the way for movements and gave prominence to educational disciplines such as multiculturalism, human rights, peace, sustainable development, environmental protection, and fighting climate change. The idea of global citizenship also paved the way for the formation of the United Nations in 1945 and the adoption of the Resolution 217A (III) also known as the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" in 1948. The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement in 2015 further solidifies the idea of global citizenship. Creation of institutions like WHO further propagates the idea of global citizenship and helps people around the world to set common goals and objectives and work for the social welfare, wellbeing for all, global peace, sustainable development and environmental protection. The success of global institutions like UN in stopping major wars, WHO in working for human health, and IMO in resolving maritime disputes have built trust of common people and helped them grow their feeling of global citizenship. But the working of global institutions like WHO in recent times have come under scanner and raised concerns over the credibility of these institutions. In last couple of months especially after COVID outbreak, there has been growing sentiment among common people and also in the headlines in global media that WHO is hiding information about coronavirus’ origin, spread and extent of disease. People have raised questions about the transparency of WHO. Raising questions over the credibility of the institutions like WHO weakens the idea of global citizenship and make people more nationalistic. The apex body was created in 1948 to deal globally with health-related issues and help governments around the world to come up with cross cutting programs and schemes to fight disease and health related issues. Now it is being blamed for its lackadaisical approach in responding to the crisis that has claimed millions of lives across the globe.

Another major criticism to WHO is that it has failed to maintain neutrality and has favored and helped China in hiding information related to COVID. This has weakened trust of people in global institutions. Former US president Donald Trump had also threatened to leave the organization. The main responsibility of WHO as a global institution is to stand up to the trust and expectations of global citizenry and act for the welfare of humanity in general without any personal or private interest and maintain neutrality to nationalities.

Lack of transparency should be overcome. It is being argued that WHO has ignored its professional commitments to fit in with China in return of quid-pro-quo, as China is the biggest contributor to WHO funding. Lack of transparency and promptness in acting to prevent the spread of virus and shielding China from criticism have led to the loss of trust of people. Now the time has come to rebuild the trust of people

This public perception is not something that is limited to ideas only. This has materialized into lack of credibility that nation-states repose in WHO. The US has warned of withdrawal of funds that it provides to WHO. The moral support on which WHO or any other global institution is founded upon is eroding. We are witnessing rise of national level strategies to deal with Covid-19. National level strategies cannot deal with global pandemic like COVID. A global strategy with all national level strategies can only cope up Global pandemic like Corona. This will be catastrophic as the interconnectedness of the world and nature of this disease doesn’t provide the opportunity to deal with it in silos.