WHO Linking Guidelines

Linking

Links to the WHO website

In line with established Internet usage, any external website may provide a hyperlink to the WHO website or to any of its pages without requesting permission. However this use must not infringe WHO's intellectual property rights, in particular relating to its name, emblem, copyright or authors' rights. The WHO emblem may not be used in providing a link.

WHO's regulations, accepted by all WHO Member States, expressly prohibit the Organization from endorsing specific organizations, products or services. Therefore a link to the WHO website must be used for information only, and not for the promotion of any organization, product or service. A link to the WHO website does not, and should not, imply any association between WHO and the owner of the linking site.

Hyperlinks to the WHO website should be to the WHO home page or to complete pages that can be reached via navigation from the WHO home page. Links should not be made to an individual constituent of a page, for example text, picture or graphic. Our preference is that links should not be made direct to files that are available for download, for example PDF files, but to the web page from where you are able to download the files.

Links from the WHO website

Because a link from the WHO website may be interpreted as an endorsement by WHO of everything on the site to which the link leads, WHO does not normally provide such links unless there is a clear association with WHO's activities. The WHO website may from time to time have some exceptions to this rule for specific purposes, but links from WHO are normally reserved for the websites of institutions or organizations with which WHO works closely.

The provision of a link from the WHO website to other sites does not indicate endorsement of those sites by WHO, and WHO accepts no responsibility for the validity or accuracy of their content.