The COVID-19 pandemic laid naked a vital fact that world well being emergencies can’t be contained inside nationwide borders (Davies and Wenham 2020; Regilme and Parthenay 2024; Regilme 2020a; 2023; Regilme 2024; Regilme 2020b; FitzGerald 2024). Pathogens transfer quicker than diplomatic negotiations, and their social and political penalties outpace gradual, fragmented governance. Within the face of such a shared existential menace, the world urgently wants strong worldwide cooperation rooted in human rights, fairness, and solidarity. But an in depth studying of the continuing WHO pandemic treaty negotiations reveals a troubling actuality: as an alternative of constructing a future-ready system of world collective motion, the method is reinforcing an outdated prioritization of sovereign state pursuits on the expense of world public well being (Anderson, Fenton, and Crump 2025) .
The preliminary drafts of the pandemic treaty articulated a cosmopolitan ethic, acknowledging the intrinsic ethical worth of all people regardless of nationality and establishing obligations in direction of the worldwide collective welfare (Anderson, Fenton, and Crump 2025) . These drafts underscored ideas equivalent to common well being protection (UHC), the “One Well being” method (which integrates human, animal, and environmental well being), neighborhood engagement, and inclusiveness. Collectively, these parts envisioned a complete, multi-sectoral, and genuinely cooperative mannequin for pandemic preparedness. Nonetheless, subsequent revisions of the treaty have diluted these commitments. The provisions for UHC and One Well being had been considerably weakened; neighborhood engagement and inclusiveness had been omitted; and human rights protections had been consolidated and stripped of specificity. Concurrently, state sovereignty was elevated to the treaty’s foundational precept.
This shift represents greater than a mere technical drafting adjustment; it exemplifies what students consult with as moral amnesia (Anderson, Fenton, and Crump 2025) : the gradual abandonment of principled commitments to justice and solidarity when political expediency dictates in any other case. Throughout essentially the most extreme phases of COVID-19, world leaders employed the rhetoric of world cooperation, pledging that the failures of vaccine nationalism, useful resource hoarding, and fragmented disaster responses wouldn’t recur. Nonetheless, because the acute sense of disaster diminished, so too did the willingness to embed binding moral obligations into new institutional frameworks.
The dangers related to this retreat are neither hypothetical nor distant. The COVID-19 disaster has already demonstrated how self-serving state actions have exacerbated the state of affairs (Surianta and Dressel 2025; Soulé 2022; Zhang and Jamali 2022; Han, Millar, and Bayly 2021) . In 2020 and 2021, prosperous nations secured substantial vaccine provides by means of advance buy agreements, successfully excluding a lot of the International South. This vaccine inequity, described by UN Secretary-Normal António Guterres as “the largest ethical failure of our instances,” prolonged the pandemic, facilitated the emergence of recent variants, and resulted in quite a few fatalities. Certainly, vaccine nationalism not solely failed to guard home populations in the long run but additionally hindered world restoration, serving as an empirical critique of short-term self-interest (Phelan et al. 2020) .
Even inside seemingly profitable nationwide responses, the absence of a genuinely world perspective was obvious. New Zealand’s early pandemic measures, extensively lauded for his or her effectiveness, had been characterised as a type of nationwide exceptionalism—a victory over the virus—somewhat than as a part of a collective world effort. As Crump et al. (2023) observe, such “well being nationalism” in the end exacerbates world inequalities and diminishes the political will to share assets and information throughout borders.
Moreover, the weakening of specific human rights commitments within the pandemic treaty is profoundly regarding. Pandemics invariably exacerbate current social inequities. Migrants, refugees, Indigenous communities, racialized minorities, and individuals with disabilities disproportionately endure throughout well being crises. These vulnerabilities will not be incidental; they outcome from systemic marginalization. With out specific, enforceable protections for the rights of those teams, future pandemic responses threat perpetuating and amplifying current injustices. The pandemic treaty, in its present type, offers little assurance that states shall be held accountable for human rights violations dedicated underneath the guise of public well being emergencies.
Lowering cosmopolitan commitments is strategically unsound. As I’ve beforehand argued (Regilme 2020a; Regilme and Parthenay 2024; Regilme 2023; 2020b;Regilme 2024) , establishments that neglect to prioritize human dignity and world solidarity in the end compromise the political stability they goal to safeguard. Inequitable responses to pandemics exacerbate resentment, intensify North-South divides, and diminish belief in worldwide establishments. In an period characterised by growing authoritarianism and populist backlash, this erosion of belief poses a direct menace to worldwide peace and safety.
The pandemic treaty, due to this fact, transcends being a mere technocratic doc; it serves as a litmus take a look at for the worldwide neighborhood’s readiness to reconceptualize sovereignty within the twenty first century. Real sovereignty in an interconnected world necessitates a dedication to cooperation, sharing, and actions that safeguard humanity collectively. When threats are world—equivalent to local weather change, pandemics, and technological dangers—the normal mannequin of remoted nationwide responses turns into out of date and counterproductive.
Pressing concrete reforms are crucial. First, the treaty should reinstate binding commitments to equitable entry to vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and different pandemic countermeasures. Solidarity have to be operationalized somewhat than merely invoked rhetorically. Mechanisms just like the WHO’s COVAX initiative, regardless of their imperfections, have demonstrated that worldwide pooling and allocation might be efficient if adequately supported and depoliticized. Constructing on these fashions, the treaty ought to set up everlasting, automated redistribution mechanisms that activate throughout world well being emergencies.
Second, the treaty should institutionalize clear and equitable world surveillance and information-sharing methods. Throughout COVID-19, early warnings had been regularly delayed, distorted, or ignored for political causes. A cooperative surveillance system, with inherent protections for particular person privateness and human rights, might facilitate extra fast and equitable responses. The pandemic treaty ought to mandate open data-sharing throughout nations, supported by clear enforcement mechanisms to discourage knowledge withholding or manipulation.
Third, and maybe most critically, the treaty should embed human rights protections all through each part of pandemic governance—from early preparedness and surveillance to emergency response and restoration. Defending susceptible teams shouldn’t be an afterthought; it have to be a guideline. As an example, throughout COVID-19, people with disabilities encountered disproportionate obstacles to healthcare entry and financial assist. Proactively addressing these gaps would improve societal resilience total, rendering pandemic responses extra simply and efficient.
Some critics argue that binding world commitments are politically unrealistic, that nationwide governments won’t ever cede vital autonomy in issues of public well being. However this view misreads the stakes. Sovereignty at present is much less about resisting exterior affect and extra about managing interdependence properly. Pandemics, like local weather disasters, don’t negotiate with borders. If states cling to sovereignty as an excuse for inaction or inequity, they’ll solely discover themselves extra susceptible, not much less.
The continued WHO negotiations signify a uncommon and fleeting cosmopolitan second—an opportunity to reimagine world well being governance primarily based on solidarity, fairness, and the popularity of our shared human vulnerability. To squander this chance could be a profound failure of political creativeness and ethical braveness. The subsequent pandemic is inevitable. Whether or not it turns into one other preventable world disaster or an indication of true worldwide cooperation will rely on the alternatives being made at present. Strengthening human rights, embedding solidarity into binding obligations, and reclaiming the cosmopolitan ethic that the pandemic briefly made seen will not be utopian aspirations. They’re pressing requirements for a safer, fairer, and extra resilient world.
References
Anderson, Emma M R, Elizabeth Fenton, and John A Crump. 2025. “Pandemic Treaty Textual Evaluation: Ethics and Public Well being Implications.” Journal of Public Well being, fdaf040. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdaf040.
Davies, Sara E, and Clare Wenham. 2020. “Why the COVID-19 Response Wants Worldwide Relations.” Worldwide Affairs 96 (5): 1227–51. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaa135.
FitzGerald, Maggie. 2024. “Care, Politics, and the Political: The Case of the COVID-19 International Pandemic.” Worldwide Feminist Journal of Politics 26 (3): 588–608. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2023.2269947.
Han, Yuna, Katharine M. Millar, and Martin J. Bayly. 2021. “COVID-19 as a Mass Demise Occasion.” Ethics & Worldwide Affairs 35 (1): 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0892679421000022.
Phelan, Alexandra L, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Michelle Rourke, Allan Maleche, and Chenguang Wang. 2020. “Authorized Agreements: Limitations and Enablers to International Equitable COVID-19 Vaccine Entry.” The Lancet 396 (10254): 800–802. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31873-0.
Regilme, Salvador. 2024. “Worldwide Relations in Public Well being: The Pentagon’s Anti-Vax Marketing campaign throughout COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Public Well being, July, fdae139. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdae139.
Regilme, Salvador Santino. 2020a. “COVID-19: Human Dignity underneath Siege amidst A number of Crises.” E-Worldwide Relations. June 12, 2020. https://www.e-ir.information/pdf/85067.
———. 2020b. “Opinion – COVID-19: Human Dignity Below Siege Amidst A number of Crises.” E-Worldwide Relations. June 12, 2020. https://www.e-ir.information/2020/06/12/opinion-covid-19-human-dignity-under-siege-amidst-multiple-crises/.
———. 2023. “Disaster Politics of Dehumanisation throughout COVID-19: A Framework for Mapping the Social Processes by means of Which Dehumanisation Undermines Human Dignity.” The British Journal of Politics and Worldwide Relations 25 (3): 555–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481231178247.
Regilme, Salvador Santino, and Kevinb Parthenay. 2024. “COVID-19 Pandemic and Aggressive Authoritarian Regimes: Human Rights and Democracy within the Philippines and Nicaragua.” Political Geography 115 (November 2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103212.
Soulé, Folashadé. 2022. “Addressing Vaccine Inequity: African Company and Entry to COVID-19 Vaccines.” China Worldwide Technique Overview 4 (1): 156–65. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42533-022-00105-2.
Surianta, Andree, and Björn Dressel. 2025. “A New Period of Vaccine Diplomacy: Navigating the US-China Rivalry in Southeast Asia, 2020–2022.” Geopolitics ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2025.2485206.
Zhang, Dechun, and Ahmed Bux Jamali. 2022. “China’s ‘Weaponized’ Vaccine: Intertwining Between Worldwide and Home Politics.” East Asia 39 (3): 279–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-021-09382-x.
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