On 18 March, to strengthen global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, the Member States of WHO came together for the 9th meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB). Co-chair Roland Driece explains why the decisions and compromises made in the next few weeks will be crucial to making all of us safer from future pandemics.
Why does the world need a pandemic accord?
The world has been through the biggest global health-care challenge that we have seen for a long time, the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also pretty clear that we, as countries and collectively, were not ready. We had hardly any infrastructure to cooperate in an effective way and that led, in part, to the situation where some countries had a lot of access to medical countermeasures, while others had nothing. Also many countries did not have policies in place to prevent pandemics, so there were no systems with which to collaborate in that sense. That’s what we are trying to improve on.
Who is participating in the negotiations?
All the countries of the WHO, that is, every single country in the world working together through these negotiations. That’s the strength of them.
The Pandemic Accord is still being negotiated, so it doesn’t exist in a final state yet, but what, potentially, could it achieve?
It depends on the outcome, of course. There are a lot of elements on the table, and we have to see in what way all the members of the WHO (basically all the countries in the world) can agree upon them. The level of ambition is still to be established. However, if we look on the bright side, if we accept the text as it stands today, we could make a commitment to strengthen our efforts to prevent pandemics even from happening. That’s what you want, of course, because if you make sure that the chance of pandemics occurring is as small as possible, then you don’t have to prepare or respond to them either.
Can you give some examples of how to prevent pandemics?
Strengthening policies on spill-overs of diseases from animals to humans, for example. Making sure that you have all the laboratory capacities, your search capacities in place, but also that you make sure that there is as much unhindered exchange and access to pathogenic information on diseases as possible. That is important because then you know what’s happening in the world and how to prepare countermeasures.
What we are trying to do in the treaty is to establish a system that provides as good as possible access to pathogenic information, but also more equitable access to products deriving from it – vaccines, for example. We are also trying to coordinate much better all the financial instruments available for doing this important work.
What could a Pandemic Accord do for the ordinary individual?
In a perfect world, if we make the treaty as strong as we can, you would be less exposed to the chance of pandemics re-happening. That chance will never be zero, but if we do it right, the chances that pandemics occur in the same way and spread around the world are smaller. So then, as an individual, you won’t notice anything, and that’s a good thing. But, if prevention is not perfect, and a pandemic does occur, then your country will be much better prepared to deal with it and there will be systems in place between countries to help each other. There will be a better likelihood of access to medical countermeasures.
Another example of what we are trying to do is to strengthen production capacity in countries where it’s currently limited. We are trying to strengthen research capacities towards products that can be used in pandemic times.
What is your role as co-chair of these Member State led negotiations?
There are 2 chairs to this meeting, me and a colleague from South Africa, Precious Matsoso. We have a man from the North and a woman from the South, just to acknowledge the fact that this is about all of us. What we try to do is facilitate, steer and manage the process of negotiations. We are not in charge of the outcomes of it. We do not determine what the treaty text will be – that’s the membership; that’s the Member States of the WHO. What we try to do is help them in their endeavours, in their negotiations, as chairs of this meeting.
What are the highs and lows of being co-chair of the negotiations of the Pandemic Accord?
It’s stimulating to do something that you believe is good for the world. It’s also nice that people entrust you with such a role. The lows are sometimes that you have to sit for a very, very long time in a room listening to a lot of people repeating themselves many times. You have to make sure that when you get back to your hotel, you go to the gym and do some exercise.
Is WHO controlling these negotiations?
It depends a little bit on how you define WHO, because WHO is an organization with a seat in Geneva, but it’s also a group of 194 countries coming together to talk about global health. So, if you say WHO is those 194 Member States, it’s correct. But when people say it’s the WHO Secretariat that is driving this, with its Director General at the top, who wants to control a lot of processes he should not control, that is far from the reality. It’s the Member States that do the negotiation, that decides what’s in there. The Secretariat helps us as chairs and as a bureau to manage the process.
There is a huge amount of misinformation circulating about the Pandemic Accord. Can you respond to the following myths?
Myth number 1: if countries sign this Pandemic Accord or treaty, they would be giving up their sovereign power.
Sometimes people approach me directly and I say, “Have you gone to the website of WHO?” All the texts that we have are there for the public to see. Is there anything you can read in that text that says anything about handing over sovereignty? No, nothing. Nothing at all. It is not about that. It’s about cooperation between Member States.
Myth number 2: if there was a pandemic, WHO would be able to force people to comply with things like lockdowns or mandatory vaccination.
Do you really think that the government of the United States or the government of the Russian Federation, the government of the Netherlands or whoever would ever sign up to something like that? That’s of course never going to happen and rightly so.
Myth number 3: the Pandemic Accord does not respect human rights.
One of the principles we have in the text is that we live up to all agreed principles on human rights.
How long have these negotiations been going on so far?
For just over 2 years now. The interesting, but worrying part is that when we agreed that we would start this, it was in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and that was still very fresh in our minds. But what you see happening is that the urgency is slipping, for very understandable reasons. COVID-19 is, for most people, more like a memory from a couple of years back and not one that they have very pleasant thoughts of, so sometimes they would rather forget about it. And there are also many other priorities that require our attention: we have wars in different places of the world; we have climate problems around the world; we have many things that require our attention and money and efforts. Finding money, for example, for doing a lot of the things that we deem necessary is not so easy. Compromising is not so easy when people do not feel the urgency as much as they did 3 years ago.
What’s at stake if countries are unable to come to an agreement?
We risk making the same mistakes again, next time. It’s all very understandable, but it’s also a shame that we as human beings are not so good in solving problems which are not there anymore, or are not here yet. People find it easier to put 50 billion on the table when the problem is there than 1 billion when the problem is not yet there. And that’s worrisome, but we have to see how we can deal with that.
What’s the next phase of the negotiations?
The talks recommence on 18 March 2024. The difficult thing is that we do not have much time left. We just have a few more days of negotiations ahead of us, the next 2 weeks, and maybe a bit longer, but then it has to be done. We have to see how prepared countries are to compromise.