The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) announced on Wednesday that its negotiators had completed a final draft of a proposed international legal document to govern pandemic response, to be voted on at the World Health Assembly in May.
Negotiations on drafting the pandemic agreement took years of often heated debate as W.H.O. negotiators pressured countries to agree to provisions to share medical technology with poor countries at discounted prices and accept international authority on public health policies. The drafters have not yet apparently agreed on what kind of international legal document the agreement will be — a covenant, treaty, or other format — at press time.
W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus began campaigning for the adopting of an international law on pandemics following his agency’s catastrophic failure to properly address the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic when it began spreading out of the Chinese city in 2020, blaming much of the failure on countries not properly sharing scientific data and technological advancements.
Critics in the United States have for years warned that signing onto such an agreement could erode free speech protections at home and potentially force America to fund abortions internationally since W.H.O. considers abortions health care. Tedros has vocally dismissed all criticism of the pandemic agreement as “misinformation” and claimed that the commitments countries make in the agreement “affirm national sovereignty” rather than eroding it. The agency published a propaganda video this week to combat concerns about the document as well.
The director-general celebrated the completion of a pandemic agreement draft as “history” in a statement on Thursday.
“In reaching consensus on the Pandemic Agreement, not only did they put in place a generational accord to make the world safer, they have also demonstrated that multilateralism is alive and well,” Tedros proclaimed, “and that in our divided world, nations can still work together to find common ground and a shared response to shared threats.”
“I thank W.H.O.’s Member States, and their negotiating teams, for their foresight, commitment, and tireless work. We look forward to the World Health Assembly’s consideration of the agreement and — we hope — its adoption,” he added.
Precious Matsoso, a co-chair of the international negotiating body that wrote the agreement, described herself as “overjoyed” at the completion of the draft.
“The negotiations, at times, have been difficult and protracted. But this monumental effort has been sustained by the shared understanding that viruses do not respect borders,” Matsoso said, “that no one is safe from pandemics until everyone is safe, and that collective health security is an aspiration we deeply believe in and want to strengthen.”
Tedros had announced after this weekend that only one article of the agreement was left to complete after a “marathon session” that lasted over 24 hours from Friday into Saturday. Multiple reports indicate that the largest point of contention in the draft was an article mandating that wealthy countries pressure their pharmaceutical and technology companies into forgoing profits on technology and medicine that could help facilitate the end of a pandemic. The Agence France-Presse (AFP) identified Article 11, about such sharing, as the most challenging to write.
The W.H.O. did not publish the draft with its announcement on Wednesday, allowing countries a chance to discuss and amend the document at the World Health Assembly in May. An unconfirmed draft circulating online that resembles prior confirmed drafts included provisions requiring countries to “promote and otherwise facilitate or incentivize, transfer of technology as mutually agreed… in particular for the benefit of developing countries.”
The unconfirmed draft also required signatories to “encourage holders of relevant patents or licenses for the production of pandemic-related health products to forgo or otherwise charge reasonable royalties” during a pandemic.
While not offering the exact draft, the W.H.O. described the final product as including provisions: “establishing a pathogen access and benefit sharing system; taking concrete measures on pandemic prevention;” and “facilitating the transfer of technology and related knowledge, skills and expertise for the production of pandemic-related health products.”
The U.N. agency insisted that “the proposal affirms the sovereignty of countries to address public health matters within their borders, and provides that nothing in the draft agreement shall be interpreted as providing W.H.O. any authority to direct, order, alter, or prescribe national laws or policies.”
The United States was notably not a party to drafting the agreement and is no longer a member state of the W.H.O. President Donald Trump withdrew America from the W.H.O. as one of his first acts in office in January just as he had done in 2020, this time citing its poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Former President Joe Biden rejoined the organization during his tenure and participated in the pandemic agreement talks.
“The United States is committed to the Pandemic Accord, to form a major component of the global health architecture for generations to come,” Pamela Hamamoto, who represented America at the negotiations, asserted in 2023. “Shared commitment, shared aspirations, and shared responsibilities will vastly improve our system for preventing, preparing for, and responding to future pandemic emergencies.”
