Pathogens and Equity in the Pandemic Treaty - Key Takeaways for Negotiators
By Stephanie Switzer - Posted on 28 July 2023
This blog post relates to a recent event funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Pathogens are essential ingredients to monitor the spread of disease, and for developing and producing the vaccines we use to fight infectious disease. Under international law, pathogens are not a resource freely available to be used for the greater good. Instead, countries have sovereign rights over the pathogens isolated within their territories, and access can only be provided by that country of origin, subject to mutually agreed terms. Under this international system, access to pathogens should be accompanied by Benefit Sharing such as through access to medical countermeasures. Such a system has been presented as a tool to counter such global inequality in a pandemic.
In response to the widespread inequity witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Member States of the World Health Organisation (WHO) are currently negotiating a new international legal instrument, intended to prevent pandemics and mitigate associated inequalities - the Pandemic Treaty. Negotiations on this Treaty launched in March 2022 and are set to conclude in 2024; a remarkably short time frame in international law terms.
The new instrument is intended to be grounded in equity, with equity positioned as both an objective and as an operational output. One option currently being explored in the negotiations for a Pandemic Treaty is the establishment of a complex system for access and benefit-sharing of pathogens of pandemic potential under the auspices of the WHO.
On 19 July 2023, and with the assistance of funding received from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Dr Stephanie Switzer (Strathclyde Law School) and Dr Mark Eccleston-Turner (King’s College London) hosted an event at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law on the call for equity under the Pandemic Treaty, with a particular focus on how the role of pathogen sharing and equity under the proposed Pandemic Treaty.
This event was convened by Anthony Wenton, Research Fellow in Public International Law, British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), moderated by Dr Stephanie Switzer of the University of Strathclyde, with contributions from a panel of leading international experts, including Professor Gian Luca Burci of the Graduate Institute Geneva and former Legal Counsel to the WHO, Prof Elisa Morgera, One Ocean Hub, University of Strathclyde, Dr Mark Eccleston-Turner, King’s College London, Dr Michelle Rourke, Griffith University, Australia and Professor John Harrington, University of Cardiff. Harry Upton of King’s College London acted as rapporteur for the event.
The event discussed ways to ensure that equity is embedded into the new treaty, particularly in the form of legally binding obligations.
Key questions discussed included the following:
1. What does equity mean in international law terms?
2. Why was equity so lacking during the COVID-19 public health emergency? What went wrong?
3. How is equity defined and operationalised in the latest draft of the pandemic treaty?
4. How just and fit for purpose is the current proposal to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines via an 'access and benefit-sharing' mechanism, whereby developing countries exchange access to their pathogen samples for benefits such as essential vaccines?
5. How else could/should equity be embedded into the treaty? What lessons can we learn from other areas of international law
A video recording of the event can be found BIICL's YouTube channel. A policy brief containing key takeaways/a toolkit for negotiators can be found at the University of Strathclyde's academic repository.