What is The WHO Pandemic Treaty? What’s in it for us?

In 2021 December, with COVID-19 pointing to the inefficient state of healthcare systems across the globe, the world health assembly undertook the task of creating a Pandemic Treaty or Pandemic agreement. It was the second time since the WHO was founded in 1948 that the Health Assembly met in a special session and adopted a decision titled: “The World Together”.

The outcomes of the session can be summarized as below:

1. To form an Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) for negotiating and drafting an Agreement or a Treaty focused on Pandemic prevention and preparedness.
2. The agreement must be made with emphasis on bolstering global cooperation and coordination in tackling future pandemics.
3. This is to be achieved by the INB through discussions and consensus building among member nations to create effective strategies for pandemic management.
4. The agreement or treaty drafted will be an instrument for adoption under Article 19 of the WHO constitution. Article 19. Article 19 of the WHO constitution authorizes the World Health Assembly to implement any convention or agreement on matters pertaining to the WHO.

A draft of this agreement or treaty was made publicly available in March 2024 and can be found here.

A meeting for member states to vote was held in May to finalize the agreement. However, due to the lack of a consensus, the next meeting has been scheduled for July 2024. Members needed more time and extended the mandate through May 2025.

While the initiative to mitigate Pandemics and implement an agreement reflect the commitment of the World Health Organization, there were some important setbacks as well.

Setbacks of the Pandemic agreement:

1. The first setback is that some member states feel that the implementation of a Pandemic Treaty threatens the healthcare system and the governance of their nation. The Pandemic Treaty allows for the WHO to decide if there should be a lockdown in any country and not its government. The United Kingdom vehemently opposed this stating that it is unacceptable and that it does not respect their national sovereignty.
2. A second setback is where the treaty forced developed nations to shoulder the burden of providing vaccines and other resources to the underdeveloped or dependent. This was also quoted as unacceptable by some developed member nations.
3. Another major concern raised was the lack of equity. Though the draft uses the word equity multiple times, it also states that equity will be ensured as per Article 12 of the WHO constitution. Article 12 stipulates that the WHO would only have access to 20% of resources/Pandemic related products for distribution and that the remaining 80% — whether vaccines, diagnostics, treatments would be available to the highest bidder. But 20% is all what high income countries have agreed to. This is unjust and even the Lancet seems to have found this to be unfair and shameful.
4. Lastly, there is an element of governance that has been undermined/overlooked. How do you ensure member nations are complying with the agreement?

Altogether, the Pandemic treaty does seem like a good initiative to begin with but will require many more negotiations and revisions before it is finalized to deliver a fair treatment to all nations.