pandemic preparedness and response – a legally binding framework for how they will work together to counter the threat of a future pandemic. This historic, generational effort to work across borders and regions for a safer and more equitable world has faced hurdles. Just as the response to the pandemic itself was hampered by mis- and dis- information, so the agreement’s negotiators have had to operate amid a frenzy of falsehoods, principally that the agreement will cede sovereignty to the World Health Organization, giving it power to impose lockdowns or vaccine mandates on countries. These claims are completely false. The WHO does not have, has never had and is not trying to attain the power to dictate public health policy for any country, or to impose public health measures on any country. The WHO Pandemic Agreement is being written by countries, for countries. It will be implemented in countries in accordance with their own national laws. No country
The WHO Pandemic Agreement is being written by countries, for countries. It will be implemented in countries in accordance with their own national laws”
will be signing away its sovereignty to the WHO. As an agency of the United Nations, the WHO makes recommendations to countries, but we cannot tell them what to do. Nor would we want to. This is not a choice between global health security and national or regional interests. It is about working together towards a safer, healthier and more equitable world for all. A COMMON TOOL Legally binding international agreements are not new. They are a tool that countries have used often since the end of the Second World War to meet common threats with a common response: the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Paris Agreement, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the WHO Constitution, to name a few. Even as negotiations for an overarching framework are ongoing, much has already happened to strengthen the global health security architecture. In the past two years, the WHO, our member states and partners established several initiatives to detect outbreaks earlier, strengthen sharing of biological samples and sequences, expand regional manufacturing of vaccines and other tools, improve equitable access to medical countermeasures, and strengthen financing of national preparedness and response capacities, especially in lower-income countries. In a world facing increasingly complex and compounded challenges, from conflict to climate change, resource depletion to overstretched health systems, it does no good to bury our heads in the sand. In his classic novel La Peste , Albert Camus wrote, “There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise”. As the generation that lived through the Covid-19 crisis, we have a collective responsibility to protect future generations from the suffering we endured. We have no future but a common future.
TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was elected director-general of the World Health Organization in 2017 and re-elected for a second term in 2022. He is the first person from the WHO African Region to serve as WHO’s chief technical and administrative officer. He served as Ethiopia’s minister of foreign affairs from 2012 to 2016 and minister of health from 2005 to 2012. He was elected chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Board in 2009, and previously chaired the Roll Back Malaria Partnership Board, and co-chaired the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Board.
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2024 — G7 ITALY: THE APULIA SUMMIT
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