Time is running out for member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) who are trying to complete a global agreement on the prevention and fight against pandemics on Friday, supposed to be the final deadline, after more than two years of work.
The negotiations have already been extended several times but, this time, the end of the debates seems in sight with the holding of May 27 to 1er June of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva.
Whether or not a global plan has been completed, the group in charge of negotiations (Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, INB) will have to report its work to the Assembly, the supreme body of the WHO of which 194 countries are members. She will decide on an agreement, if there is an agreement.
“Discussions are continuing,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters on Friday. “The mandate of the INB is to present the result, or a result, for submission to the AMS, and any review to the AMS will then become advice or action for next steps.”
“At this time, it is impossible to prejudge the outcome of the INB or what action the AMS will decide,” he added.
The prevention and fight against pandemics have become even more major challenges since the human and economic catastrophe that was COVID-19, due to lack of preparation, coordination and solidarity.
A group of countries have been working on a general response framework for more than two years, but despite progress in recent weeks, several obstacles seem difficult to overcome before Friday evening.
The main stumbling block is the creation of a “multilateral access and benefit-sharing system for pathogens with pandemic potential” (PABS) led by the WHO. Developing countries are reluctant to share their pathogens without a guarantee of vaccines and other health products in return.
Financing such a plan, particularly for poor countries, is another sensitive point, as is the equitable distribution of screening tests, treatments and vaccines but also the means to produce them.
“The fact that we are still making progress shows that people want to go further. And we have the feeling that even if we do not manage to go to the end, we will arrive at the World Health Assembly with something concise,” however, declared to AFP an ambassador taking part in the negotiations, which take place behind closed doors in Geneva.
“They are negotiating, they are fighting with enthusiasm for a rapid conclusion, but it will not happen,” KM Gopakumar, researcher at the NGO Third World Network and observer from civil society, told AFP. .
“Go as far as possible”
“If they don’t finish on Friday – and I don’t think they will – I think it will be very tight,” Jaume Vidal, senior policy adviser at Health Action International, told AFP. “I think they will present to the Assembly the skeleton of the treaty: there is agreement on the principles and the structure.”
Negotiators have the option of presenting the AMS with an agreement in principle, with the hope of convincing it to give more time to the process. In a preliminary version dated Thursday that AFP was able to consult, large portions of the text were already approved.
The document contains 34 articles, 12 of which are fully highlighted in green, meaning that they have been approved by all countries, while 18 others are partially approved. The remaining four articles are almost entirely yellow, indicating that their wording was validated in small working groups.
Negotiators “highlighted some non-contentious passages in green” this week, however, for “all the issues that are contentious, there is no consensus,” says KM Gopakumar.
Ellen’t Hoen, lawyer for the NGO Medicines Law&Policy, deplores the fact that the real debates on the choice of terms only began towards the end of the discussions.
Completing this treaty in two years, “which can still become the fastest negotiated treaty,” “was perhaps too ambitious,” she said.
“The closer we get to the Assembly, the more complex it becomes,” admitted Precious Matsoso, who co-chairs the debates.
“The objective is to go as far as possible,” underlined Roland Drice, also co-president, adding that “without compromise, it will not work”.
This week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on negotiators to “make one last effort to get across the finish line,” urging undecided countries not to block possible consensus.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday judged it “very unlikely that the negotiations could be successfully concluded in the coming days”.
Nevertheless, he assured that Washington was working so that “we are better prepared” for the next pandemic.