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In today’s edition we bring you the state of play in the discussions towards a new Pandemic Agreement, where countries are tackling the toughest issues in global health in the shortest possible time.

The process could take two paths, a shorter, easier one that might lead to the final deadline in May 2024, albeit without much change in status quo. A second, more challenging one, with a longer timeline, but one that might lead to few but potentially significant changes in the governance of health emergencies particularly for response measures. It is beginning to appear that political expediency could very likely push the first approach.

Proposals on various textual amendments to the international Health Regulations (IHR) from the Bureau of the working group mandated to undertake the amendments raise concerns on an early harvest approach at the cost of excluding proposals on equity, especially those on equitable access.

2/07/2023

From October 23 to 27, 2023, 76 states met at the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council to negotiate an international human rights treaty to regulate companies and their value chains (also known as the “UN Treaty”). Since the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 26/9 in 2014 and mandated an intergovernmental working group to draft such legally binding instrument, it has met nine times. After a slow start, the process has emerged surprisingly stronger from the ninth round of negotiations.

In 2005, developing countries, especially desperate South-East Asian countries hardest hit by the H5N1 outbreaks, failed to get access to vaccines developed using flu virus strains circulating in affected countries, shared through the network of laboratories known at that time as “Global Influenza Surveillance Network” (GISN).

Background

The failures of the international COVID-19 response highlighted key gaps in pandemic preparedness and response (PPR). The G20 and WHO have called for additional funding of $10.5 billion per year to adequately strengthen the global PPR architecture. In response to these calls, in 2022 the World Bank announced the launch of a new Financial Intermediary Fund (The Pandemic Fund) to catalyse this additional funding. However, there is considerable unclarity regarding the governance makeup and financial modalities of the Pandemic Fund, and divergence of opinion about whether the Fund has been successfully designed to respond to key challenges in global health financing.

The adoption of a Global Digital Compact (GDC) as one of the outcomes of the Summit of the Future opens up the opportunity to address in a systematic manner issues that are of critical importance for the digital global governance. It also poses a challenge to developing countries, as most of them lack the infrastructure and capabilities to fully participate in the digital transformation. Many inequalities, including a deep digital divide, do exist and would need to be addressed by the GDC for it to become a real instrument of change and improvement in the living conditions and the prospects of a better future for most of the world population. This paper examines the current fragmentation in the digital governance and some of the issues raised by the proposals made by the UN Secretary-General for adoption of the GDC.

An informal mini-ministerial meeting held on 27 November failed to provide any political guidance on injecting momentum into the agriculture negotiations in the run-up to the upcoming World Trade Organization’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13).

The withdrawal by the United States of its proposals on cross-border transfer of data, location of computing facilities, and source code appears to have resulted in the facilitators of the informal Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) negotiations on electronic commerce issuing a low-ambition text.

Given the paucity of time and the seemingly unbridgeable differences over several provisions in the chair’s draft text on fisheries subsidies, the chances of concluding an agreement on fisheries subsidies at the upcoming WTO’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13) seem to be rather bleak.

Judging by the Chairpersons’ Summary circulated at the end of the Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) on 24 October, attempts appear to be underway to transform the World Trade Organization (WTO), a multilateral trade body, into a plurilateral organization at the upcoming WTO’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13).