WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the Twelfth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body on a WHO Pandemic Agreement – 4 November 2024

Our Co-Chairs, Precious and Anne-Claire,

Our Vice-Chairs, Ambassador Tovar, Ambassador Ramadan, Dr Viroj and Ms Davis,

Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,

Good morning, and welcome back to WHO to all of you.

Let me begin by thanking all members of the Bureau for their leadership and hard work, and to all Member States for your ongoing commitment to this process, and to global health security.

Next month will mark three years since you met at a Special Session of the World Health Assembly to adopt the historic decision to develop a new instrument of international law on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

For three years you have worked hard to develop that instrument, as you will continue to do over the next two weeks.

With the proposals on the table, I believe you have the ingredients in place to meet your objective.

You face a balancing act between concluding your work in a timely manner and reaching the strongest possible text.

As I have said before, I urge you not to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good - or even of the excellent.

Our divided world needs hope that despite political and ideological differences between countries, they can still come together to find common solutions to common problems.

You can provide that hope. You can demonstrate that multilateralism is still alive and well, as you did at the World Health Assembly earlier this year, by adopting important amendments to the International Health Regulations.

And as I have also said before, no one will get everything they want. Everyone must give something, or no one will get anything.

I urge you to be guided by public health;

I urge you to maintain your focus on consensus;

And I urge you to see the Pandemic Agreement not as a collection of separate articles, but as a single cohesive whole, with three balancing pillars:

First, a Pandemic Agreement without prevention is not an agreement at all. Our first priority must be to take whatever measures are necessary to prevent pandemics in the first place - meaning drying the sources.

Second, a Pandemic Agreement without preparedness is not an agreement. The world cannot again be caught unprepared, as it was for the COVID-19 pandemic. Preparedness must be a constant state.

And third, a Pandemic Agreement without robust, equitable and resilient response is not an agreement. The systems and capacities must be in place to respond when the next pandemic strikes - and strike it will.

Time is not on our side. COVID is still circulating, mpox is a global health emergency, we have an outbreak of Marburg, and H5N1 spillover.

The next pandemic will not wait.

The decision you took three years ago was aptly titled, "The World Together".

It captured your resolve then, and it must be your motto now.

I urge you to come together, to see beyond purely national interest to the global interest - because the world can only be safer, if every individual nation is safer.

I also urge you to remember that equity and security are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other.

I also urge you to complete the agreement by the end of this year if possible, and I believe it's possible. I have been through the pending issues one by one, and I see common ground.

Finally, I want to underscore that this is your process. We continue to see lies spreading on social media that this agreement will cede national sovereignty to WHO.

You know, and I know, that there is not an ounce of truth in this. We ask all Member States to make that clear to your people.

As always, I and my colleagues in the Secretariat stand ready to support you to realize your mission and mandate: a world together.

Thank you, and I wish you every success.

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