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.