The Proposed Pandemic Agreement: A Pivotal Moment for Global Health Law

This article discusses the prospects and pitfalls of a legally binding pandemic agreement under the auspices of the World Health Organization, currently under negotiation in Geneva. Such an agreement could foster a rules-based pandemic prevention, preparedness and response as a reaction to the failures by states during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a lack of effective coordination for sharing all kinds of data and the global inequity in the distribution of medical goods fueled by vaccine nationalism. Achieving these goals, however, will depend upon a meaningful engagement by delegations negotiating the agreement, a legally sound formulation of its provisions, and overcoming the currently pervasive emergency-bias in this field of global health law. Thus, as advocated by Lawrence Gostin in his seminal treatise on Global Health Law ten years ago, the pandemic agreement could help realize the transformative potential of law for facing one of the greatest health threats to humanity.