Policy Without Process: The Problem of the WFME 2025 Declaration

Medical education policy is increasingly tasked with addressing complex ethical, social, and institutional demands. The 2025 Declaration by the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) calls on institutions to support the well-being of medical students, postgraduate trainees and practising physicians. While positioned as a progressive move toward systemic accountability, this paper argues that the Declaration raises significant concerns of legitimacy, authority, and coherence. Drawing on critical policy analysis, we interrogate the Declaration's authorship, scope, language and evidentiary base to examine how it constructs and performs authority. Our analysis reveals four key tensions: (1) the absence of transparent authorship and consultation, undermining representational legitimacy; (2) ambiguous definitions producing jurisdictional and operational uncertainty; (3) inconsistent normative language that performs obligation without enforcement; and (4) reliance on epistemically narrow frameworks without contextual adaptation. These ambiguities risk overstating WFME's remit and diminishing the Declaration's practical utility. We argue that for policy texts to advance global medical education meaningfully, they must be grounded in transparent authorship, plural epistemologies, contextual relevance and actionable mechanisms. Without these, declarations may reproduce symbolic authority rather than foster substantive institutional change.