The WHO negotiations on a pandemic treaty should be more transparent

The WHO World Health Assembly meetings begin on Monday, May 27, 2024, and will have to decide what to do with the WHO pandemic treaty negotiation. While the failure to get it done by the WHA disappointed many, there has been too much focus on deadlines, and too little public debate on the contents of the agreement.

Around the world political leaders are inundated with a flood of opposition to the WHO and the Pandemic treaty on various social media platforms. Secrecy has not been helpful in countering misinformation.

When negotiations resume, the WHO should consider taking steps to make the negotiation more transparent.

Versions of the negotiating the text should be posted to the WHO web pages on a regular basis. In some WIPO negotiations have I been involved in the Secretariat would make copies of the text available several times in the same day, to anyone attending the negotiation. The WHO does not need to publish every edit of the negotiating text, but they need to publish negotiating drafts more frequently than they do now. The last version of the text on the WHO page page is dated April 22, 2024, five weeks ago, and a lot has been changed since then. At a very minimum, the WHO should be publishing the current versions of the text at the end of every week of an active negotiation.

The negotiations should also not be entirely behind closed doors (with the existing limits on public access to the closed webcasts). Some of the negotiations will certainly be off the record, but some of it should also be open to the public.

By allowing the public to hear the negotiators argue their positions, the social media narratives about the negotiation will become more grounded in reality.

Among Geneva insiders, one defense of the lack of transparency is that the wing-nuts who don’t like the WHO or the pandemic treaty won’t change their minds, regardless of the evidence. That is certainly true for many of the loudest voices on social media or people like RFKjr, who seems so dug in on his anti-vax positions that nothing is likely to change his mind. But it is not only about changing the minds of the wing-nuts, it is also about pushing back on a broader public perceptions of the WHO and the pandemic agreement among people who are hearing from the wing-nuts.