Independent monitoring of the WHO pandemic agreement is non-negotiable, experts say

An accountability framework, together with impartial monitoring of state compliance, is important for the pandemic settlement’s success, in keeping with researchers at Columbia College Mailman Faculty of Public Well being and associates at Spark Avenue Advisors. The paper and findings are printed in BMJ Global Health.

“International locations signing as much as a pandemic settlement isn’t any assure of its efficient implementation,” mentioned Nina Schwalbe, adjunct assistant professor within the Division of Inhabitants and Household Well being and principal visiting fellow at Columbia Mailman Faculty. “International locations’ lack of compliance with the Worldwide Well being Laws have contributed to a number of failures to include outbreaks, together with COVID-19.”

To evaluate how the pandemic settlement might finest incorporate monitoring to advertise compliance, the researchers did a complete literature evaluate of the governance of 11 current international monitoring mechanisms and performed over 40 interviews with stakeholders and specialists. This included broad session with lecturers, advocates, activists, and officers from governments, worldwide organizations, and foundations from world wide.

Based on the researchers, an impartial mechanism to observe states’ compliance with and reporting on the pandemic settlement can promote compliance with the settlement.

Schwalbe and colleagues recognized key options for profitable compliance monitoring of the pandemic settlement:

• Unbiased monitoring ought to be politically, financially, technically, and operationally impartial of member states, the WHO, and donors to extend its reliability.
• The monitor ought to report back to a high-level political physique to be efficient.
• Unbiased monitoring ought to evaluate states’ self-reporting to the Convention of the Events, the primary governing physique of the settlement.
• It ought to triangulate state reviews with shadow reviews by civil society and UN businesses, confidential reviews from the general public, nation visits, and inquiries to state events.
• It ought to share reviews transparently into the public domain, highlighting finest practices and selling mutual studying.
• Along with self- and peer opinions, the pandemic settlement ought to have impartial accountability mechanisms constructed into it from the beginning.

At present, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Physique, tasked with negotiating a pandemic settlement, is aiming to current it for the states to undertake on the World Well being Meeting in Could 2024. Whereas a precursor to this settlement offered necessary provisions for fairness, intellectual property rights, and profit sharing, it contained little on holding international locations accountable.

It steered as an alternative that the governing physique ought to conform to accountability measures after the settlement is adopted. At an Intergovernmental Negotiating Physique (INB) assembly held in December 2022, a number of WHO member states emphasised that accountability mechanisms ought to be negotiated into the agreement from the beginning.

On the idea of the findings, the researchers suggest establishing an impartial committee to observe the state events’ compliance by assessing the timeliness, completeness, and accuracy of state reporting. The committee would report back to a heads of state-level physique, have the capability to gather data, and share their findings publicly. The INB is assembly this week and once more in December in Geneva.

Co-authors are Layth Hanbali, Elliot Hannon, and Susanna Lehtimaki, Spark Avenue Advisors; and Christine McNab of Toronto, Canada. Nina Schwalbe can be affiliated with United Nations College Worldwide Institute for International Well being.