The World Health Organization (WHO) is uniquely positioned to lead global efforts to prevent and respond to gun violence because of its public-health mandate, norm-setting authority, and operational reach across nearly every country. No other UN agency combines the ability to shape international norms, strengthen national health systems, and address the full continuum of care—from prevention and early intervention to emergency response, trauma recovery, and mental-health support.
The WHO is the only global body with the mandate, infrastructure, and authority to frame gun violence as a public-health crisis across this continuum of care. Within the UN system, its universal membership, 150-country presence, and power to set global health norms through the World Health Assembly give it unmatched influence.
At regional and country levels, WHO helps ministries of health strengthen trauma and acute-care systems, develop hospital-based violence-intervention programmes, and integrate mental-health and rehabilitation services for victims, providers, and affected communities. Through initiatives such as the Acute Care Action Network (ACAN) and partnerships with the Hospital Alliance for Violence Intervention (HAVI), WHO provides the technical standards, surveillance systems, and workforce training that can readily be extended to firearm trauma and prevention.
Its leadership in mental-health promotion, suicide prevention, and rehabilitation of trauma survivors directly aligns with firearm-injury reduction. As custodian of global health data and evidence translation, WHO is also uniquely placed to support the development of monitoring systems to capture and respond to gun-violence trends and to generate data to inform and strengthen other international instruments—including the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons (PoA), and Human Rights Council resolutions on civilian firearm acquisition and use. These contributions can ensure that existing disarmament and human rights mechanisms are guided by robust, health-focused evidence on firearm morbidity, mortality, and social impact.
Over the past three decades, WHO has built the world’s most comprehensive violence-prevention architecture. Its flagship frameworks—INSPIRE: Seven Strategies for Ending Violence Against Children, RESPECT Women: Preventing Violence Against Women, LIVE LIFE: An Implementation Guide for Suicide Prevention in Countries, and ALIVE: Accelerating Action for Men and Boys for Gender Equality and Health—provide a unified, evidence-based approach to preventing interpersonal and self-directed violence across the life course.
These initiatives already address the domains most affected by firearms—male homicide, adolescent and youth gun violence, male suicide, child homicide, and intimate-partner femicide—yet guns, the principal instrument of lethal violence in many countries, remain under-integrated. Men and adolescent boys account for the overwhelming majority of both firearm homicide victims and perpetrators, particularly in regions such as Latin America, the Caribbean, and southern Africa. Embedding firearm injury and prevention within these frameworks would strengthen their relevance to these most affected groups while extending their reach to one of the world’s most preventable causes of death and disability.
WHO’s record of global health governance—spanning the 1946 Constitution, WHA 49.25 declaring violence a public-health priority, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and the Framework for Engagement with Non-State Actors (FENSA)—demonstrates its power to regulate health-harming industries and set international standards. The forthcoming World Report on the Commercial Determinants of Health will extend this work by examining how corporate products and marketing, including those of the arms industry, shape health outcomes. This provides a ready platform for recognising gun violence as a commercial determinant of ill-health and violence, analogous to tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods.
WHO has repeatedly transformed issues once thought beyond the scope of public health. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control curbed a politically powerful industry. Its partnerships during the HIV/AIDS crisis secured global treatment access and funding mechanisms. Its campaigns on malaria, road safety, and maternal and child health show how evidence-based guidance, standard-setting, and diplomacy can save millions of lives. These precedents illustrate how WHO can combine science, coalition-building, and political strategy to make firearm violence a mainstream global-health priority.
Gun violence undermines nearly every WHO mandate—from gender equality and child protection to mental health, poverty reduction, and education. Integrating firearm violence into WHO’s four major prevention packages (INSPIRE, RESPECT, LIVE LIFE, ALIVE) and its work on social and commercial determinants of health would mobilise governments, civil society, and researchers around an evidence-based, multisectoral response that fully recognises the disproportionate toll borne by men and boys while addressing the gendered harms that guns inflict on women and children.
In short, the WHO’s reach, legitimacy, and scientific authority make it indispensable to global firearm-violence prevention. By embedding gun violence across its proven violence-prevention frameworks and regulatory agenda, WHO can catalyse a coordinated global effort to save lives, reduce inequities, and strengthen health systems worldwide.