On Wednesday, 17 April 2024 at 15:25 CEST, the WHO secretariat circulated an advance, unedited English version of the proposed draft WHO Pandemic Agreement; the WHO secretariat also circulated the accompanying draft resolution, WHA77.1 WHO Pandemic Agreement. For KEI’s analysis of the 16 April 2024 Pandemic Agreement draft, please see: KEIcomment16April2024draftWHOpandemictreaty.
The eight page draft resolution presents a two-track approach for the path forward in the implementation of the proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement. Operative paragraph 13 of WHA77.1 states:
PART 7: Mandate to D-G/Secretariat
13. REQUESTS the Director-General, with regard to Article 6.5 (Preparedness, readiness and resilience), Article 7.3 (Health and care workforce), Article 10.6 (Sustainable and geographically diversified production, and technology transfer and know-how), Article 13.1 (Supply chain and logistics), Article 13.6 (vaccine and therapeutic related compensation and liability during pandemics), Article 14 (Regulatory strengthening), and Article 20.3 (Coordinating Financial Mechanism) of the Agreement, to implement with immediate effect the activities under those aforementioned Articles attributed to the WHO Secretariat, and report thereon to the Seventy-eight World Health Assembly, as well as, following the entry into force of the Agreement, all sessions of the Conference of the Parties and of Committee E of the World Health Assembly;
On 19 April 2024, the WHO secretariat convened an informal WHA77 pre-meeting for Member States, non-State actors in official relations, and the WHO Secretariat. At this informal, Knowledge Ecology International posed a question to the WHO Secretariat regarding the reference in operative paragraph 13 of WHA77.1 to Article 10.6 (Sustainable and geographically diversified production, and technology transfer and know-how.
In the 16 April 2024 draft of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, Article 10.6 does not exist.
The WHO secretariat clarified my question about the reference in operative paragraph 13 of WHA77.1 to Article 10.6 (Sustainable and geographically diversified production, and technology transfer and know-how; the Secretariat acknowledged the reference to Article 10.6 was a drafting error and would be fixed.
Operative paragraph 13 of WHA77.1 refers to the immediate effect articles: “to implement with immediate effect the activities under those aforementioned Articles attributed to the WHO Secretariat, and report thereon to the Seventy-eight World Health Assembly”. The “immediate effect” articles of the WHO Pandemic agreement (16 April 2024 version) include: Article 6.5 (Preparedness, readiness and resilience), Article 7.3 (Health and care workforce), Article 13.1 (Supply chain and logistics), Article 13.6 (vaccine and therapeutic related compensation and liability during pandemics), and Article 14 (Regulatory strengthening), and Article 20.3 (Coordinating Financial Mechanism) of the Agreement. Based on the secretariat’s clarification, it is likely that the corrected version of WHA77.1 will also list Articles 10. Sustainable and geographically diversified production, and 11. Transfer of technology and know-how as “immediate effect” articles.
While the provisions referred to in paragraph 13 of the Pandemic agreement resolution direct the WHO Director-General to implement them with immediate effect, the draft resolution envisions 3 intergovernmental working group (IGWG) negotiations for the following topics: 1) Conference of the Parties (COP IGWG), 2) WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS IGWG), and 3) One Health approach (OH IGWG) to be dealt with in a slow stream. For One Health and PABS, the resolution proposes that the PABS system and the One Health instrument/s be operational no later than 31 May 2026. With respect to the Conference of Parties, the resolution proposes that the COP IGWG “shall be held no later than 1 December 2025.” At the 19 April 2024 informal, WHO acknowledged that some Member States had indicated that they would prefer the establishment of just one IGWG process to handle the COP, One Health, and PABS workstreams.