WHO Director-General's remarks at the WHA side event for the Lost Screen Memorial – 17 May 2026

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,

Dear colleagues and friends,

I am honoured to join Archewell Philanthropies in bringing The Lost Screen Memorial to Geneva for the 79^th World Health Assembly.

Today, we gather in remembrance.

The names behind us are not statistics. They're children.

Alexander. Coco. Riley. Archie. Selena.

As the May of Geneva said, each name represents a life full of promise. A son. A daughter. A classmate. A friend. A child deeply loved.

And each family represented here has experienced an unimaginable loss.

On behalf of the World Health Organization, I thank you for your courage.

These stories demonstrate the urgent need to make both the online world and the offline world safe places where young people can flourish.

We are facing public health crisis in youth mental health, created by multiple factors, including a lack of digital safety.

This memorial asks a difficult but necessary question: what responsibility do we share for the environments in which our children grow up?

Today, billions of people spend a large part of their lives online.

For many children and adolescents, digital spaces are not separate from real life.

They are part of daily life: A place for learning, connection, entertainment, and self-expression.

But we must also be honest about the risks.

We are seeing growing evidence that some online environments and platforms can contribute to harm, especially for young people.

Technology design, inadequate guardrails and governance choices expose children and vulnerable populations to serious and preventable risks like sexual exploitation, addiction and bullying.

We have tackled similar challenges before, for car seats, cribs, medicine bottles and playground equipment.

We did not ask parents to out-engineer the manufacturers.

We asked the manufacturers to ensure their products do not hurt children.

We asked governments to legislate and enforce consumer protections.

The question remains: Will the world ignore powerful companies designing products that are harmful or will the world finally say: not our kids, not anymore?

There are solutions.

We can prevent harm, through protections and design standards with rigorously enforced accountability.

We can mitigate harm, through crisis response, family support, and affordable and timely access to care.

We can coordinate globally. Harms resulting from dangerous design in one country travel everywhere in seconds. Protections and standards must too.

This memorial can be more than a moment of reflection. It must be a call for collective action to ensure that digital spaces support health rather than undermine it.

We owe that to every name on this wall, and their families.

I would like to thank Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, for her leadership and commitment. We are proud of you and it is my distinct honour to invite the Duchess to say a few words.

I thank you.