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EXPERT COMMENT

Unresolved questions on pathogen sharing and vaccine access have effectively placed the agreement in limbo. And ratification looks far off.

After three years of negotiations, the Pandemic Agreement has been adopted by the World Health Assembly – a step on the road to ratification by World Health Organization (WHO) member states. This should be cause for celebration, and credit must be given to the host of diplomats and public health officials that have worked tirelessly to get to this consensus text. Indeed, the director of the WHO said it was a ‘victory for public health, science and multilateral action’.

Yet the final text steers away from binding commitments on all the most critical and contested issues: equitable access to medical countermeasures like vaccines, diagnostic equipment and protective gear; sustainable financing for pandemic preparedness and response; and enforceable accountability mechanisms. 

Instead, the agreement is an outcome that colleagues and I feared: the agreement fails to confront or correct the underlying inequalities and inefficiencies that defined the global response to COVID-19. The text offers few concrete obligations that would meaningfully shift the structural dynamics of global health inequity, relying instead on political rhetoric and aspirational language. 

Governments’ national security priorities have outweighed the clear need for improved global health cooperation, leaving an agreement that gestures towards equity, solidarity and cooperation, but stops short of demanding it. 

Click here to continue reading the full version of this Expert Comment on the Chatham House website.