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WHO Pandemic Treaty: Key Provisions, Significance, Challenges Explained

WHO Pandemic Treaty which is a legally binding global agreement designed to strengthen preparedness, ensure equity, promote cooperation, address health emergencies by filling gaps revealed during COVID-19 while respecting national sovereignty.

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What is the WHO Pandemic Treaty? Introduction

The WHO Pandemic Treaty is a legally binding international instrument designed to address health emergencies through enhanced cooperation, preparedness, and equity.
Developed by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), the treaty aims to fill the institutional gaps exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and fortify the role of WHO as a central body in global health governance.

Key Features

Legally Binding: The treaty is a commitment that requires countries to comply with its provisions after ratification.
National Sovereignty: It maintains WHO’s respect for national sovereignty, ensuring that it cannot impose mandates like lockdowns or vaccines on member states.
Global Health Governance: Strengthens WHO’s role in global health emergencies, emphasizing collaboration, equity, and preparedness.

Key Provisions of the Draft WHO Pandemic Treaty

One Health Approach: The treaty emphasizes the interconnection between human health, animal health, and the environment, recognizing that zoonotic diseases (those jumping from animals to humans) pose a significant global risk.
Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS): This system promotes equitable access to vaccines and diagnostics for countries sharing pathogen data and genetic sequencing. It draws inspiration from the Nagoya Protocol on genetic resource sharing.
Global Health Equity: The treaty stresses health equity, prioritizing low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in terms of access to pandemic-related health products.
Technology Transfer and Capacity Building: A crucial provision mandates the transfer of knowledge, skills, and expertise for local vaccine and diagnostic production, resolving Intellectual Property (IP) barriers in the public interest.
Multidisciplinary Health Emergency Workforce: Calls for a trained, skilled workforce, both nationally and globally, to respond to future health crises.
Global Logistics and Supply Chain Network: Establishes a coordinated global logistics framework to ensure efficient distribution of medical supplies during pandemics.
Financial Mechanism: Proposes a financial framework to support pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPR), ensuring adequate funding for swift action.
Sovereignty Clause: The treaty explicitly maintains that WHO cannot override national health laws, thereby respecting the sovereignty of member states.

Significance of the WHO Pandemic Treaty

Health Security and Global Governance: This treaty represents the first legally binding international agreement focused on pandemic preparedness and response. It strengthens WHO’s role in global health governance, particularly in the post-COVID-19 world, reinforcing multilateral collaboration.
Equity and Justice: By addressing issues such as vaccine inequity, the treaty aims to correct the vaccine apartheid witnessed during the pandemic, ensuring that LMICs are prioritized in global health crises.
Scientific Collaboration: The treaty institutionalizes data sharing, a key element in the rapid detection and global response to pandemics. By improving pathogen sharing protocols, it ensures more timely global collaboration in addressing future health threats.
Legal Diplomacy & Multilateralism: Amid rising geopolitical fragmentation, the treaty marks a significant milestone in global health diplomacy, showing that international cooperation is still possible, even in times of political discord.
Future Pandemic Preparedness: Shifting focus from reactive measures to preventive strategies, the treaty aims to reduce the economic losses associated with future pandemics, which caused a 3.4% global GDP contraction in 2020 (IMF) and exposed $11 trillion in economic losses (World Bank).
Economic Security: By preparing for future pandemics, the treaty aims to prevent disruptions to global economies, which would otherwise wipe out a significant portion of global GDP, as seen with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Challenges and Criticisms of the WHO Pandemic Treaty

Absence of the USA: The U.S. withdrawal from WHO in January 2025 meant that it did not participate in the final negotiations. This absence weakens the treaty’s global enforceability and undermines its universality.
Lack of Enforcement Mechanism: The treaty lacks a binding enforcement mechanism, which poses a challenge for ensuring compliance by member states. This weakness was also seen in the non-binding International Health Regulations (2005) during the COVID-19 crisis.
North-South Divide: Developed countries push for immediate scientific data sharing, while LMICs demand reciprocal guarantees for access to diagnostics and vaccines, which created friction during negotiations.
Sovereignty Concerns: Some nations have expressed concerns about WHO overreach, fearing its influence over national health policies.
Intellectual Property and Pharmaceutical Lobbying: Pharmaceutical giants have resisted mandatory knowledge and technology transfer, especially in areas like mRNA vaccine technology. Moderna’s reluctance to share its mRNA tech with African manufacturers is one example of such resistance.
Geopolitical Tensions: Growing distrust in global bodies like WHO, due to political reasons (e.g., accusations of bias towards China in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak), may affect data sharing and transparency.

Way Forward

Legal Strengthening with Incentives: Introduce binding dispute settlement mechanisms akin to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. Provide incentives (e.g., R&D grants) to encourage cooperation rather than only imposing obligations.
Strengthen WHO’s Role: Reform WHO’s funding model to ensure greater independence and authority, reducing reliance on voluntary contributions.
National Pandemic Laws: Countries, including India, must update or introduce comprehensive national pandemic legislation that aligns with the treaty’s obligations.
Equity-Centric Intellectual Property Framework: Implement mRNA technology hubs in collaboration with WHO, expand the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), and fast-track TRIPS+ flexibilities.
Multistakeholder Involvement: Involve civil society, academia, the private sector, and marginalized communities in the implementation process to ensure inclusivity and equitable outcomes.
Enhance Early Warning Systems: Expand WHO’s Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) and integrate AI-driven bio-surveillance systems for quicker disease detection and response.