Perry World House Programming on the World Stage

For the third year in a row, Perry World House hosted a series of policy discussions on the margins of the UN General Assembly High Level Session and New York Climate Week. In addition to climate change, this year’s offerings also addressed the future of healthcare in Africa and humanitarian priorities for the next UN Secretary-General. Perry World House also took a moment to mark its tenth anniversary, with a celebratory reception that welcomed new and established members of the Penn community.

Over a decade, Perry World House has cultivated a diverse and impactful network of faculty and distinguished fellows who featured in an array of critical policy discussions throughout the week. Speaking at a number of venues, they addressed topics such as, financing sustainable development in cities, geoengineering in the Polar regions, energy innovation leadership, security in Latin America, and African citizen perspectives on a shifting global order, and so many others. Learn more about PWH and our network contribute to the global policy discussions around UNGA below.

To kick off its own programming, Perry World House hosted a ministerial-level convening on health security and sovereignty in Africa, focused on how countries can bring the production of frontier HIV/AIDS and other medicines to the continent. The closed-door gathering was cohosted by UNAIDS, the African Medicines Agency, AUDA-NEPAD, and the Global Council on AIDS, Inequality, and Pandemics. Building on continental initiatives such as the AU’s New Public Health Order and the Accra Reset, the meeting convened the Vice President of Côte d’Ivoire, Ministers of Health for Benin, Ghana, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, and Côte d’Ivoire, and representatives from the Health Ministries of Brazil, South Africa, and Kenya, as well as key academic and industry leaders. The discussion was co-chaired by Winnie Byanyima, a former Thakore visiting fellow at Perry World House, with current Class of 2001 Ambassadorial Fellow Ibrahim Gambari serving as a key discussant. Together, participants recalled the inequities Africans have faced in accessing medicines, to fight infectious diseases like COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. As a way forward, they outlined the conditions necessary for advancing the production of therapeutics in Africa, namely sustained political will, a pooled continental market, harmonized regulation, and manufacturing capacity. Ministers also highlighted the opportunity to draw on the continent’s growing integration and capacity to advance health security by Africans, for Africans.

Next on the schedule, Perry World House organized a discussion on trade and domestic revenue impacts of the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels (TAFF). Convened under Chatham House Rule, this closed-door roundtable—chaired by Stephen Hammer, joint fellow of Perry World House, Institute for Urban Research, and Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania—brought together ministers, development finance practitioners, and private finance leaders to confront the economic and fiscal realities of phasing out fossil fuels. Building on the April 2026 Santa Marta TAFF Conference, discussants rejected a one-size-fits-all blueprint in favor of tailored approaches grounded in each country’s export profile. Participants identified policy durability as the central barrier to progress, outweighing climate ambition itself. The group reached broad agreement on the need for transition finance standards and credits for hard-to-abate assets, while differing views emerged on institutional ownership and on the capacity of private capital to support all exporting nations. Key macro-fiscal challenges, including sovereign debt and national oil company exposure, were identified as priorities for further exploration in upcoming TAFF working papers and at an expanded convening at Penn.

Coming directly on the heels of the TAFF conversation, Perry World House convened a second climate-focused discussion that built on a September conference on ‘Climate Leadership and Health.’ PWH Deputy Director Michael Weisberg chaired the high-level roundtable that brought together researchers, international practitioners, and former ministers to confront the structural gap between multilateral climate diplomacy and cascading public health crises. Participants shared frontline perspectives from Small Island Developing States and informal urban settlements, highlighting challenges such as salinized aquifers, rising vector-borne disease, and dangerous conditions driven by extreme heat. Penn faculty discussed the application of their research, for instance, around the One Health framework for disease surveillance and building design to promote cooling- to move toward anticipatory action and locally led adaptation. Outcomes from this discussion will be advanced at the UN Climate Conference forthcoming in November.

To close its programmatic offerings, the next morning, Perry World House co-hosted a live-audience recording of Refugees International’s Forced From Home podcast, examining humanitarian priorities for the next UN Secretary-General. The conversation featured Perry World House Thakore Visiting Fellows Tirana Hassan of Doctors Without Borders – USA and Jeremy Konyndyk of Refugees International; Rita French of Article 109; and Perry World House’s Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. Against the backdrop of sweeping cuts to humanitarian assistance, the panelists discussed the disintegration of the humanitarian ecosystem, the failure of multilateral institutions to serve those in the direst situations, and the critical role the next UN Secretary-General must play in defending international humanitarian law, protecting aid workers, and restoring faith in global cooperation. The episode will be available Thursday, October 1.