WHO Pandemic Agreement: What Was Adopted, What Remains Unfinished, and What It Cannot Do

The World Health Assembly adopted the WHO Pandemic Agreement on 20 May 2025 after more than three years of negotiations shaped by the unequal experience of COVID-19. The formal committee vote preceding adoption recorded 124 votes in favour, none against, and 11 abstentions.

Adoption was a major legal and diplomatic step, but it did not make the agreement immediately binding on countries. It also did not finish every part of the package. Understanding those distinctions is essential in a debate that has often mixed the text, the ratification process, and claims about powers the agreement does not grant.

What the agreement is designed to do

The agreement creates a framework for preventing, preparing for, and responding to future pandemics. Its themes include stronger health systems, surveillance and research cooperation, a better distributed health workforce, supply-chain coordination, technology transfer on agreed terms, and more equitable access to pandemic-related health products.

Equity is not a side issue. During COVID-19, countries with less purchasing power often waited longer for vaccines, diagnostics, protective equipment, and treatments. The agreement attempts to make access planning part of preparedness rather than an improvised negotiation after an emergency begins.

The unfinished PABS annex

The most important unfinished element is the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system, known as PABS. The idea is to connect rapid sharing of pathogen materials and sequence information with predictable benefits, including access to vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.

Negotiators did not complete the annex before the 2025 adoption. The World Health Assembly therefore created an intergovernmental process to finish it. In May 2026, the Assembly extended those negotiations. Under the adopted resolution, the agreement is to open for signature only after the PABS annex has been adopted.

This sequencing matters. The agreement exists as an adopted text, but the signature and ratification stage waits on a key operational component.

Ratification is a national decision

Once the full package is opened for signature, countries will follow their own constitutional processes for ratification or acceptance. The agreement states that it will enter into force after 60 ratifications. Adoption by the World Health Assembly is therefore not the same as automatic domestic law in every member state.

The practical effect will also depend on implementation. Stockpile coordination, manufacturing capacity, surveillance, and financing require institutions and resources—not only treaty language.

What WHO cannot do under the agreement

The text explicitly protects national sovereignty. WHO is not given authority to direct a country’s domestic laws or impose measures such as lockdowns, vaccination mandates, border closures, or travel restrictions. Those decisions remain with sovereign states under their legal systems.

This does not mean international rules are irrelevant. Countries can make binding commitments through ratification. It means the mechanism is treaty obligation and national implementation, not a supranational command power held by the WHO Secretariat.

Where the difficult questions remain

The PABS negotiations must balance speed, scientific openness, commercial incentives, and fair access. Manufacturers need workable rules for research and production; countries providing pathogen data want confidence that sharing will not leave them last in line for resulting products.

Financing and measurement are equally important. Preparedness commitments are hard to evaluate without clear indicators, regular reporting, and the capacity to identify gaps before an emergency.

What this means

The agreement should be judged neither as a complete solution nor as a transfer of national control. It is a negotiated framework whose value will depend on the PABS annex, the number and diversity of countries that ratify it, and the quality of domestic implementation.

The next milestone is therefore concrete: completion and adoption of the PABS annex. Until then, discussion should distinguish the parts already agreed from the operational system still being negotiated.