Are the pandemic treaty negotiations falling apart? Has the fraud that this is a “member state led process” been revealed?
It never was about health. Or equity. It was always about surveillance and control.
This is excerpted from an Open Letter to WHO officials from 161 NGOs who are observing the proceedings in Geneva and talking to delegates:
… Instead of ushering in a
new era of equity and cooperation, the draft text perpetuates the status quo,
entrenching discretionary, voluntary measures and maintaining inequitable
access as the norm for addressing PPPR. [pandemic prevention, preparedness and response]
The absence of meaningful mechanisms that concretely deliver tangible financial
support and facilitate technology transfer, especially enabling the sharing of
proprietary technology and know-how with developing countries, to diversify
production, is glaring. Equally disheartening is the absence of any provision
ensuring swift and sufficient access to essential health products crucial for
developing countries to respond to health emergencies including a pandemic. The
draft text exacerbates inequity by its imposition of burdensome surveillance
obligations which have been demanded by developed countries, without any
corresponding commitment by developed countries to provide developing
countries with the necessary financial and technological assistance or guarantees of equitable access.
In terms of process, the approach adopted is egregiously unfair. A mere 5 days
have been allocated for 194 WHO Members to negotiate and reach consensus on a
completely new draft text spanning 20 pages. During a briefing on April 19th, the
Bureau made it clear that no new textual insertions or deletions would be
permitted to the Bureau’s text. Instead, to change the proposed text, Members
would have to express their concern with the Bureau’s text and then the WHO
Secretariat or Bureau will propose how the concern could be addressed through
minor changes in the text. If such proposed change is acceptable to all, only then
the text will be changed. If not, the unbalanced, highly inequitable text,
unilaterally determined by the Bureau and Secretariat stands as the default
option. Effectively, this approach leaves WHO Members with a binary choice of
accepting a text that unfairly addresses developing countries’ interests and is
unfit for PPPR or rejecting the proposed dra text.
It is also crucial to acknowledge that the INB process has been marred by severe
flaws and chaos. Since the publication of the Zero Draft, Member States-led
text-based negotiations have systematically been avoided. The draft text has
continuously shifted, with entirely new versions issued by the Bureau almost
every session, based on unilateral decisions by the Bureau and WHO Secretariat dictating what remains and what is removed from the text.