Notable progress has been made since May 2023 by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (the INB). The Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly in May 2023 played an important role in maintaining the momentum towards our objective to deliver a pandemic accord to the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2024. Shortly after, on 12-16 June 2023, the INB Bureau continued its work during the resumed session of the fifth meeting of the INB (INB5 resumed session). The INB considered the Bureau’s text and agreed on innovative ways of working, empowering interested Member States to facilitate informal discussions. We are grateful for the leadership of the WHO Member States that have volunteered to help to bridge the gaps on key issues. Their hard work during the intersessional period will pay off. Once again, our diversity will make us stronger.
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In the politically charged discussions that current global health negotiations have become, diplomats have to walk a tightrope between delivering on political goals and bringing in concrete reforms to beef up preparedness, prevention and respond to health emergencies. The relative low profile of the discussions surrounding the amendments to the IHR (2005) is in contrast to the optics generated by the negotiations for a Pandemic Accord. This could be partly by design, and partly by the very nature of these discussions that are technical but undoubtedly also political. During the sidelines of the WG-IHR4, Geneva Health Files, spoke with Abdullah Asiri and Ashley Bloomfield, Co-Chairs of the WG-IHR talk about how they see these negotiations progressing. Countries have often described this track fo global helathnegotiations as being efficient and streamlined.
WHO member states came together in recent days in the first substantive joint session that brought together the bureaux of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body and the Working Group of amendments to the International Health Regulations.
With a mere ten months away from the May 2024 deadline, where both these processes are expected to conclude and culminate in the adoption of new amendments to the IHR and a potentially new pandemic instrument, countries this week grappled with the basics such as what would legally constitute a pandemic, how it would be declared, what kind of actions would it trigger and most importantly, how would these elements sit across the two different, overlapping legal mechanisms. There was also consideration of a few key topics that have featured in both these tracks of negotiations.
In today’s edition we bring you an interview with Roland Driece and Precious Matsoso - the Co-Chairs of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body. The INB bureau, that this duo lead, is the cynosure of crucial global health negotiations that bring together 194 member states of WHO in an attempt to agree on a unified set of rules to govern future health emergencies. In a free-flowing conversation, they articulate their concerns and perspectives on these discussions.
The worst outcome of the two World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic negotiations currently underway would be the adoption of contradictory definitions and processes, warned Dr Mike Ryan, the head of health emergencies at the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday. “At the very minimum, the two instruments will need to be very aligned on the […]
With the fate and nature of the pandemic accord currently being negotiated by World Health Organization (WHO) member states still uncertain, global health experts are calling for “realistic” backup plans to protect the world against the next pandemic.
“We need an ambitious but implementable pandemic accord – that is the Holy Grail,” Javier Guzman, Director of Global Health at the Center for Development (CDG) told a CDG panel on Thursday convened to discuss the lessons of the pandemic, particularly in relation to the global COVID-19 vaccine access platform, COVAX.
“Now, will it materialize? Will it be enforceable? Would it be ambitious enough? Will it be ratified? I’m not very optimistic, based on what I’ve seen,” said Guzman. “So if that doesn’t happen – or if that happens, but it’s not enforceable, or it’s not what we all need as the globe – then we need to move to the second best option, which is realistic options.”
With the sixth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) meeting to develop a pandemic accord currently underway in Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief minced no words when he slammed “groups with vested interests” for trying to sabotage the negotiations. “Twenty years ago, the tobacco industry tried to undermine negotiations on the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The same thing is happening now,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing at the WHO headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday. “Groups with vested interests are claiming falsely that the accord is a power grab by WHO, and that it will stymie innovation and research. Both claims are completely false,” said Tedros.
The 6th meeting of the World Health Organization's Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB6) on the pandemic instrument continues to discuss the Bureau’s text, without any clarity on the development of the negotiating text.
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However, it must be noted that no textual changes can be made as a result of the informal meetings, because the understanding of INB5 is such that the informal meetings are better aimed at understanding each other’s positions, technicalities and trust building. Small states and those states that do not maintain large delegations in Geneva cannot fully participate in such meetings. This continuing practice of informal discussions without incorporating text proposals from Member States into the Bureau’s text is not generating a result. It has become increasingly clear that negotiations cannot start without textual insertion of Member States’ proposals.
This Policy Brief discusses the state of play of the negotiations of the pandemic instrument at the World Health Organization. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) is increasing its meetings as the target deadline for completion in the first half of 2024 draws closer. To advance, the political will needs to be scaled up in the next months. The expectations should not be lowered to focus on the lowest common denominator. Real progress needs to be made in priority areas of concern for developing countries to keep momentum.
Roland Driece, co-chair of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), told the body’s sixth formal meeting that while he understood member states’ eagerness for a first draft on which to start text-based negotiations, discussions on Chapter Two of the compilation text (referred to as WHO CA+), focusing on equity, should be completed first. “I would rather have a first draft that has substance which we all feel is strong enough to have real line-to-line discussions on, than having something in between which is not good enough yet,” said Driece. “So I would rather have a good first draft than a quick first draft, but we will come back with a proposal on how to get there.”