Commons:World Health Organization

Shortcut: COM:WHO

This is the main Commons portal for collaboration of the World Health Organization with the Wikimedia community as part of an MOU with the Wikimedia Foundation. The collaboration seeks to meaningfully connect content from WHO with Wikimedia communities so that we can work together to ensure everyone has access to up-to-date knowledge about COVID-19 and address the larger misinformation “infodemic” identified by WHO during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you want to learn more, see the announcement post on the Wikimedia Foundation website.

In October 2020, we started by adding a small batch of images about myths and other related misinformation during the COVID pandemic, and will be uploading more material from the organization over the coming months. These uploads will be done by User:WHO-openaccess and tagged with the template {{World Health Organization permission}} for licensing, which contains the required OTRS verification information for verified accounts of User:WHO-openaccess. All content has been internally reviewed by WHO to make sure that it qualifies as part of their Open Access program and they can apply CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO license to the files.

Examples of files shared by WHO

Here are some examples of files shared so far, you can find them at Category:Files by World Health Organization.

• 
  A Chinese language infographic
• 
  An English language mythbuster infographic
• An English language informational video

We need your help identifying media

We have a question for you: What kinds of media from the World Health Organization do you need most to document the COVID-19 pandemic and its wider impacts on Wikimedia projects? Please share specific examples on the talk page.

Suggest media for WHO to upload

The World Health Organization is very large, and multiple parts of the organization are publishing different kinds of media about the COVID-19 pandemic. The Open Access team at WHO would like to make sure that Wikimedia gets the most useful content from across the organization, and we need your help identifying it.

Though we will share what we can under this cooperation, there are a variety of reasons why some of this content cannot be released: for example, some parts of WHO use third party-licensed content for communications projects such as video.

Here are some links for where you will be able to find content published by WHO:

• The COVID 19 portals
  • Data Portal https://covid19.who.int/
  • International Emergency Portal: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
• WHO has several general repositories of content:
  • WHO institutional repository: https://apps.who.int/iris/
  • Global data repository https://www.who.int/data/gho
  • WHO Newsroom https://www.who.int/news-room
  • Historical Collections at the WHO Library https://www.who.int/library/collections/historical/en/
• You will likely find media used on WHO social media handles that might be useful (for example: https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/3444608815584477) :
  • https://twitter.com/WHO
  • https://www.instagram.com/who/
  • https://www.facebook.com/WHO/
• Other specific examples of kinds of available content:
  • Reference Videos: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/videos
  • Posters for public health campaigns: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/multimedia/photographs/corporate/en/
  • General infographics: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/infographic/en/
  • Guidelines: https://www.who.int/publications/guidelines/en/
  • Fact sheets: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets

Once you have explored the resources above, please share examples of the kind of content that you think would be most valuable for Wikimedia on the talk page. Once the WHO team has the request, they will explore which ones can be shared on Commons.

Suggest media for WHO to upload

About the Permission Statement

Content will be uploaded under the following permission statement: {{World Health Organization permission}}

Why CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0?

The IGO CC license ports the CC-BY-SA 3.0 to include measures specific to Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs), such as UN agencies, allowing the license to work for organizations outside national legal systems. For most reuse cases, this does not operate differently than CC-BY-SA 3.0. For more specific information see the Creative Commons FAQ.

Why ask for reusers to “respect the spirit of this donation” ?

Generally, the WHO cannot promote specific goods or products in its work. Maintaining this separation is important for maintaining the general reputation of WHO, especially in public health situations like the COVID pandemic. The CC-BY-SA license allows commercial use and WHO acknowledges this; however, as a goodwill gesture, WHO asks for reusers not to use it “for advertising or to promote commercial products or services”.

When starting this collaboration, WHO asked for this statement to express their own goals and intentions in sharing their content, and it is not meant to restrict the terms of the license. If there is a way to make this statement clearer as a request for a goodwill gesture from reusers to support WHO’s public health mission, please let us know on the talk page.

What do we do with translations? What do I do with the WHO logo?

The WHO logo and emblem are protected by international treaty [1]. If you are translating or transforming an object, please remove the logo in the process. This kind of non-copyright restriction is allowed on Wikimedia Commons and must be respected under Section 4(c) of the Creative Commons License.

Additionally, if content is translated, the WHO has requested a disclaimer:

Translation by Wikimedia volunteers. The WHO is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this translation. The original English version shall be the binding and authentic version.

Other Questions?

Currently we are focused on uploading multimedia and PDF documents related to the pandemic to Wikimedia Commons, but we would be interested in learning more about other kinds of content that Wikimedia would benefit from, including datasets and other health content beyond the pandemic (i.e. guidelines and standards, expert communications, etc.).

We are still exploring the best opportunities for further collaboration between Wikimedia and the World Health Organization, please feel free to add questions or share your ideas on the talk page -- even if it's not a media or content request.