YAY! The WHO's Pandemic Treaty: No agreement, no special WHA session next month, negotiations continue until next May

And if there is no agreement by end May it dies. Or we get a meaningless treaty. Or we leave WHO.

According to Health Policy Watch, a decision had to be made by tomorrow on whether a December WHA meeting would be called. That is why today’s press conference of 30 minutes was held: to notify everyone it is off the table. The author says the Africa Group and the US (Obama’s classmate Pamela Hamamoto) were pushing for the meeting next month. Africa may have seen it as their last opportunity to get a good deal.

One International Negotiating Body co-chair was replaced after the May 2024 meeting with Swiss Ambassador Anne-Claire Ambrou, and the other with Dr. Precious Matsoso, who has been a co-chair for the IHR amendments. Bringing in the women didn’t break the logjam. “Stakeholders” (we know what that means) were invited into the negotiations this past week, every day from Tuesday through Friday and then again today, to try and speed things along. That did not work either. They are running out of tricks.

How about a watered down agreement?

At a stakeholder briefing last week, the INB Bureau stressed that they are aiming for a document that can grow in the future – in other words, what commentators have described as a pandemic agreement “lite” that can provide the framework for more detailed plans about contentious issues such as the proposed pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) system.

Precious Matsoso got us prepped for failure, explaining that the 2 years and 9 months so far spent on the Pandemic Treaty is really a very short time, as treaties go.

While Steve Solomon, Amb. Amprou and Dr. Matsoso all came in with big smiles, they quickly reverted to frowns when the first journalist, from Agence France Presse asked how the US election had affected the negotiations. Naturally, the journalist got a non-answer.

Here is what Spark Street Advisers, a PR cheerleader and stakeholder for the Treaty, told negotiators last week, also a good sign:

Over the course of the negotiations, there have been numerous attempts to include strong accountability language on monitoring and compliance, and mechanisms within the agreement to ensure whatever is agreed to here is carried out. As we’ve gone along, nearly all of those have been removed.

Compliance, however, remains key to making sure the principles discussed here and agreed to by states over these past three years – are respected and implemented.

That is why we would encourage member states to consider and strengthen the Bureau text (2bis), establishing an independent monitoring committee for the implementation of the Pandemic Agreement, reporting to the Conference of Parties. Independent oversight is fundamental to a treaty’s effectiveness. The monitoring committee would regularly review state compliance with agreed-upon provisions of the Agreement. It would also consider information from non-state actors, including the UN and NGOs. Finally, the Committee reports would also be publicly available to promote transparency and accountability.

The nations don’t want to take this exercise seriously; they don’t want to be monitored and be forced to comply.

What we were told today, which we already knew, is that Articles 4, 11 and 12 are still problematic. Good. I think that by revealing what this foul agreement is really about, we helped put a stake in its heart. So much for those stakeholders! Time to celebrate!

We are hopefully at the beginning of the end of the pandemic preparedenss agenda. Next we end all research that can be put to offensive uses, everywhere.