The Pandemic Accord Is on the Brink with Only 5 Formal Negotiating Days Left
The 13th meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB13) was different from previous pandemic accord negotiations. While the US delegation was gone, pulled out by the Trump administration, the US government's presence was still felt as the Trump administration froze most of its funding of international organizations and for health programming.
Against this backdrop, what would success look like at INB13? In Spark Street Advisors’ official stakeholder submission, we argued that with the global multilateral system under siege, the pandemic treaty negotiations offered member states a concrete action that could be taken against this “great dismantling.” The time had come to find common ground and finish the job.
The response in Geneva was underwhelming. While some progress was made, there was no major breakthrough ahead of April’s final formal negotiating session—just more bureaucratic plodding. As a result, the penultimate session came and went with marginal progress and close to zero news coverage of the proceedings.
The Bureau proposed several text suggestions but underlying divisions remained, in particular on Prevention and Surveillance (Article 4) and the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system (Article 12). The divisions on the two respective articles are related. For Article 4, wealthy nations want strong prevention and surveillance commitments that developing nations are wary of being held to without support. On Article 12, developing nations want stronger benefit-sharing commitments from wealthy nations before agreeing to sharing data to produce countermeasures they didn’t get access to during COVID-19.
On Article 4, prevention and surveillance, the Global South pushed for more details on commitments and new text was drafted between sessions. This took some time for states to formally work through. There was preliminary agreement on smaller provisions, like the inclusion of commitments to multi-sectoral surveillance and community-level prevention and detection, but questions remain including on whether the text would be legally binding and how it would be implemented and operationalized. If these details cannot be worked out by the negotiating deadline, the bulk of the article will be moved to an annex and completed later.
On the PABS provisions in Article 12, the proposal is to move the PABS instrument to an annex. This means that “definitions of pathogens with pandemic potential and PABS Materials and Sequence Information, modalities, legal nature, terms and conditions, and operational dimensions” would be developed and agreed later on. The accord text outlines the types of provisions that the PABS instrument would cover, including implementation, and complementarity with other instruments and agreements, but with few specifics. Text on specific percentages set aside for WHO at cost and free of charge for developing countries has been contentious throughout and remains unresolved.
Regarding other thorny issues, some progress was made expanding the scope of technology transfer requirements (Article 11) to include “relevant knowledge, skills and technical expertise." Language that stipulated these transfers would be “voluntary,” essentially a donation from manufacturers, was removed from the text. However, the final details of Article 11 remain unfinished, namely the text of a footnote that states that tech transfers would occur on “mutually agreed terms,” as there are questions about whether that is just another way of making them “voluntary.”
The final terms of developing countries’ access to pandemic products in Article 13, which covers supply chain and logistics, are also not yet agreed, particularly terms like “rapid” and “unimpeded” access of health products and when that access would occur–such as during a PHEIC or pandemic.
Where does this leave the negotiations with just five formal negotiating days remaining? On the brink. Getting the agreement over the line will take some give from Global South nations on prevention details and compromise from Global North manufacturing nations on benefit- and tech-sharing language.
The intersessional period between now and mid-April will be crucial to bridge remaining gaps. Whether member states still want to forge any new multilateral agreements amidst rapidly shifting alliances remains to be seen.
We believe, at this point, that nearly any form of the current text is better than nothing.
“You're on the cusp of making history,” WHO DG Tedros Ghebreyesus reminded member states during Friday’s closing. “This agreement should not fail on a word; it should not fail on a comma.”
With this final call to action, let’s see where they land.
Please follow along on our Twitter, Bluesky, or LinkedIn for analysis and updates during the final scheduled talks of the INB from 7-11 April.
