A political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response came before the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, drawing 153 votes in support, with Argentina, Israel, and the United States among the three nations opposed and New Zealand and Paraguay each registering an abstention.
Delegates had been expected to adopt the document by consensus when they gathered for a high-level meeting on 25 September. No consensus emerged from the smaller working group after the United States and a few fellow member states withheld their support, leaving the full assembly to take up the question.
The delegate from Chile argued that cross-border threats outpace any single nation's capacity to respond, regardless of that country's size or level of preparedness — a position set out in a declaration carrying no legally binding force. The document pressed for deeper collaboration at national, regional, and international levels, rooted in scientific evidence, equitable principles, and the protection of human rights, while also noting approval of the WHO Pandemic Agreement in the preceding year.
Signing cannot proceed until Member States finish drafting an annex covering pathogen access and benefit-sharing — the framework through which nations would exchange biological samples and genetic sequence data. Participating organisations would be entitled to a portion of any vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics that the collaboration produces.
Negotiations ground to a halt over disagreements between lower-income nations and a bloc of wealthier European countries alongside the United States, with the 194-member body scheduled to revisit the annex text in May of next year. The delegate from Washington pointed to language around contested ideological concepts lacking agreed definitions, as well as the declaration's links to the ongoing annex process, as reasons for the impasse.
Alongside adopting the pandemic declaration, the 193-nation assembly carried several other matters on its Monday schedule, among them draft texts addressing a UN Declaration on Sea Level Rise and a political statement marking twenty-five years since the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action — the anti-racism accord — was first adopted.
A five-year plan covering the operations of the Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence was put forward by the World Health Organization, with the stated aim of bringing newly arising and evolving health threats under detection within a 24-hour window. Launched in 2021 as a response to the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hub began operations during that period.
The aim, as set out in the plan, is that nations at every level be equipped to detect and characterise newly emerging threats promptly enough that disease events can be contained within their origin points rather than widening into broader outbreaks or crossing borders.
