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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.

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).

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.

Access and benefit-sharing (ABS) has been a mainstay of international law for more than 30 years, but it is hard to find concrete examples of it resulting in fair and equitable outcomes.

WHO member states struggled to understand and define the process of conducting negotiations during the first segment of the seventh meeting on the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body this week. This is even as they made slow and laborious progress in trying to improve a proposal for the negotiating text of a draft Pandemic Agreement, with their own proposals. This meeting will resume to conclude in early December and informal consultations will be conducted in the interim period.

Countries also decided to create subgroups on certain provisions in a bid to make quicker progress in attempting to narrow down vast divergences in positions on key issues including on technology transfer, intellectual property matters, financing and access and benefits-sharing among others.

While officially no country has as yet sought additional time for concluding the negotiations by the current deadline of May 2024, scores of delegations we spoke to, privately admitted that an extension would be inevitable in due course.

The job of global health negotiators working on a new Pandemic Agreement, and to amend the International Health Regulations, was already stacked against all odds. This has become even more difficult with Israel’s retaliation on Palestine following attacks by Hamas. The incessant attacks by Israel on health facilities in Palestinian Territories, directly speaks to the mandate of the WHO. It was no surprise that the crisis, bled into the discussions on the seventh inter-governmental meeting on the Pandemic Agreement this week in Geneva. Undoubtedly the stench of war pervaded the sterilized confines of the WHO headquarters where member states met this week.

It is on this fractured, splintered notion of international cooperation that diplomats have to now sew together new and complex rules on surveillance, information exchange and access to medical countermeasures. Commitments on accountability and transparency are also being sought. Tough that.