WHO's pandemic treaty is a shot in the arm for multilateralism

It has been a little more than five years since the authorities in the Chinese city of Wuhan announced the first death from what was then a new respiratory disease – Covid-19. Two months later, the World Health Organisation declared the rapidly spreading infection to be a global pandemic, one that would go on to cost millions of lives and devastate economies across the world.

In December 2021, as the virus surged and health bodies rallied to beat the infection, senior figures at the WHO began a talks process with one aim: to beat the next pandemic. In the early hours of Wednesday, WHO member states came together in Geneva to reveal the result of three years of complex discussion: a global, legally binding pandemic treaty. This is a milestone moment because it is only the second time in 75 years that WHO members have reached a binding accord; the last was a tobacco-control deal struck in 2003.

This new document offers much. According to the WHO, the treaty includes “a commitment to a ‘One Health’ approach to pandemic prevention, stronger national health systems, setting up a co-ordinating financial mechanism, and creating a globally co-ordinated supply chain and logistics network for health emergencies”. These are important developments that merit consideration but there is an even done story behind this achievement – how this proposed treaty offers a timely shot in the arm to the idea of multilateralism.

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That dozens of countries have invested years in formulating a common approach to an issue that affects all humanity is a welcome departure from increasing fragmentation in the international order. At a time when UN Security Council resolutions are routinely ignored or breached, and when leading countries withdraw from treaties such as the Paris climate agreement, it is welcome to see a sense of unity and common purpose. Nevertheless, much work is still to be done and formidable challenges remain.

The treaty text must be ratified at next month’s World Health Assembly in Geneva. Maintaining consensus and momentum to achieve this will also be needed to implement the agreement in the years to come. That the US – currently the world’s largest financial contributor to the WHO – is in the process of quitting the organisation certainly complicates the global response to the next pandemic but does not derail it.

This is because countries routinely work together on a collection of global health projects. Just one example is the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a partnership that brings together governments, civil society, philanthropists and local communities to fight deadly diseases. Since 2002 it has disbursed more than $65 billion in health grants to low and middle-income countries. Such co-operation is the norm, not the exception.

Pandemics have always bedevilled humanity, making these kinds of partnerships indispensable in the years ahead. “We don’t know what novel pathogen will cause a worldwide pandemic, whether an influenza virus, a coronavirus, an Ebola virus, or Disease X,” US health expert Prof Laurence Gostin wrote in The National last January. “But we do know that the next pandemic is coming and it could be right around the corner.”

Given the likelihood of a new infection sweeping the globe, it is crucial that the treaty is ratified and implemented. It is time to seize the moment.