Reports Search

Transparency

The negotiations on a WHO pandemic agreement should be more transparent. The negotiating texts with attributed country positions should be public and the meetings should be webcast. These are reasonable expectations. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) operates in this way; it even allows stakeholders to listen to informal negotiations on texts and has demonstrated an ability to adopt treaties on topics of considerable controversy and with commercial consequences.

There is considerable paranoia and misinformation about the WHO in social media, and the unnecessary secrecy of this negotiation is not helpful. While the texts are often leaked, both industry and several well-informed civil society groups have access, and some can afford to attend the negotiations, the general public is locked out. The lack of transparency erodes confidence in the WHO in general and the pandemic agreement in particular.

The capriciousness of memory!!! It was only four years ago, yet it is difficult to recall the Covid 19 days. They seem so unreal. Did we really go through them? Such extreme isolation. The excessive loss of friends and family members. The fear for one’s life and fear for the lives of loved ones. Fear of the unknown and great uncertainty about everything. It seemed as though our lives had come to a standstill, and we wondered whether we would ever get back to the normal routine. But, looking back at it now, it appears as if we had only hit the pause button, and life is back on its usual track. However, leaving behind an exacerbation of several negative and social trends: more inequality, more poverty, more unemployment, and yes, poorer health status.

The WHO declared the spread of Covid 19 to be a pandemic on 11 March 2020.  India declared a nation-wide lockdown beginning from 23 March 2024. Both deserve to be called anniversaries. And being a death anniversary for an event that led to an estimated 7 million deaths (at least), it is time for a sober reflection.

The idea of an international pandemic treaty is to avoid repeating the failures that occurred during the COVID-19 crisis. Many things did not work, but the most glaring failure was the unequal distribution of, and access to, vaccines, diagnostics and treatments. An international treaty based on the principles of equity, inclusiveness and transparency is needed to ensure universal and equitable access.

Two final – and likely sleepless – weeks of negotiation on the pandemic agreement begin on Monday, and negotiators have been urged to bring in their principals to ensure speed up decision-making.

The negotiations may well be extended but, for now, this ninth meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) is set to end on the eve of the Easter weekend on 28 March and includes a weekend session.

“Since we have now a few weeks left, I think the engagement of the highest level of leaders will be important to give you more space for compromise because it’s through compromise and collaboration that we can get to the finish line,” WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told negotiators at the last INB meeting.

One of the most important Intellectual Property (IP) problems which the Pandemic Accord negotiators need to solve is now in danger of being completely ignored. This is the problem of guaranteeing access to ‘undisclosed information’, also known as ‘know-how’. Such undisclosed information is typically held in secret by pharmaceutical companies but can often be necessary to enable the large-scale production of pandemic countermeasures such as medicines, vaccines and diagnostics. If access to such undisclosed information is not guaranteed then, even if all the patent-related barriers are overcome during a future pandemic by compulsory licensing or otherwise, there will still be no certainty that the large-scale production of particular pandemic countermeasures will be able to take place. This would surely represent a critical failure of the Pandemic Accord process. 

In the apparent absence of any other attempts to solve this problem, we therefore propose the following provision for insertion as a separate sub-section in Article 11 of the draft Pandemic Accord:

Article 11: Transfer of Technology

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), which is tasked under WHO with drawing up an international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, will sit for the 9th and final time from March 18–29. In the 2 years since it first met, hundreds of hours and unknown costs have been spent, but the political impetus has died. The convention is now at a critical juncture: the final text for countries to ratify is due to be presented at the World Health Assembly in May. With only limited days of negotiation left and a long way to go to secure a meaningful agreement, it is now or never for a treaty that can make the world a safer place.

Fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization Ministerial (WTO) Ministerial Conference are continuing to propose subsidy bans that are failing to hold the big distant water fishing fleets accountable. As negotiations continue past their deadline, the latest circulated draft text shows major concessions being made to the large fishing fleets, in particular the distant water fleets who are appearing to have no hard prohibitions on their subsidies. This text asks member to refrain, to the greatest extent possible to provide subsidies for distant water fishing. While there is a requirement to show that the fishing is sustainable, because there is no hard subsidy ban in place and little to hold them to account. “The current proposals are a last-minute carve out for the biggest fleets, this represents a significant failure for the negotiations despite the hard work and resolve by many developing countries and small-island developing states to hold them to account.

Civil society organisations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in the United Arab Emirates this week have criticized restrictions on their participation, including alleging that some of their members had been briefly detained at the talks.

Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS), a network of civil society groups, said on Wednesday it had complained to WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala over several incidents of "detainment, confiscation of materials, and heavy-handed restrictions on lobbying by civil society" groups.

The WTO, in a statement, said the director-general had met with civil society representatives on Tuesday to discuss their concerns and had since spoken with the host chair of the talks to identify solutions.

This month the World Trade Organization threw in the towel on COVID-19. Medicines like Paxlovid have been plentiful in the U.S. and Europe, but because of insufficient supplies and high prices, hardly anyone in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has had access. After more than three years of debate, the WTO declared on Feb. 13 that it was unable to reach agreement on waiving global patent rules for COVID-19 treatment to ease the way for expanded production.

-- A deal to renew the World Trade Organization’s moratorium on electronic commerce duties likely will include language on an e-commerce work program requiring that members define the parameters of the temporary ban -- a move industry stakeholders fear could make future renewals even more difficult.

Negotiations on e-commerce will begin in earnest here at the 13th ministerial conference on Thursday -- the last scheduled day of a ministerial many expect will be extended one more day. New Zealand Trade Minister and MC13 Vice Minister Todd McClay told Inside U.S. Trade he believes the most likely outcome on e-commerce is that the moratorium is renewed in parallel with a work program that calls on members to clarify the moratorium’s definition by the next ministerial.

But many stakeholders here believe the moratorium’s renewal is only a 50-50 prospect, with some believing it might not be even that high.