In December 2021, the World Health Assembly (WHA) established an INB with a mandate to negotiate and draft a pandemic agreement to be adopted at the 77th WHA in May 2024.
After nine meetings and over two years of negotiations consensus was not reached so, instead of the pandemic agreement being adopted at the 77th WHA as was hoped, the mandate for the INB was extended to give countries further time to negotiate the pandemic agreement. (In the opinion of UK Citizen, this was in breach of international law.)
Whilst the mandate has been extended through to the 78th WHA, which is due to take place in May 2025, the goal is to reach consensus prior to the end 2024. In order to do so and since a special session of the WHA is required, agreement must be reached by 12th November 2024.
The 11th meeting is being held in the usual hybrid fashion (in-person and virtually) with the opening and closing sessions (9th and 20th) publicly webcast. Substantive negotiating sessions are held in “closed” format i.e. not available to the general public.
9th September Opening Session
The WHO Member States and relevant stakeholders spent over five hours commenting on (1) the legal architecture (Article 19 or Article 21 of the WHO Constitution and which of protocols, annexes or amendments should be utilised) and (2) the complementarity between the IHR (2005) as amended and the draft pandemic agreement. There was no consensus on either topic.
The Secretariat prepared a briefing document on both topics, they can be read in full here and here.
The open session closed and moved into “closed” session.
Closed Sessions
Article 12 PABS (pathogen and benefit sharing) is central to the success of the negotiations. This Article along with Article 4 (Pandemic Prevention and Surveillance) and Article 5 (One Health Approach for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response), amongst others, are scheduled to be negotiated during the 11th meeting.
The full program of work can be read here.
Third World Network
As reported by Third World Network, the INB Bureau released a new text of the pandemic agreement aimed at resolving the issues pertaining to Article 12. A copy of the said text has not been made publically available. The Third World Network article can be read in full here.
Next steps
20th September: closing session of INB 11
4 – 12th November: 12th meeting of INB
12th November: Deadline for calling a special session of the Health Assembly
Last week of November: In the event of an agreement to call for the convening of a special session of the Health Assembly, a one day special session of the Executive Board.
Week of 16th December: possible convening a one-day special session of Health Assembly.
