Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday that the new World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic treaty is a landmark effort, but is flawed and inadequate in its implementation mechanisms and effectiveness to combat inequalities between countries.

In its statement, HRW noted that the treaty presents a unique opportunity for countries to cooperate in times of a pandemic crisis, avoid the mistakes during COVID-19, and reduce “rising global health inequalities as well as the likelihood, and human rights impacts of, the next pandemic.”

The treaty outlines commitments by governments to enhance both domestic and international policies, addressing a broad range of interconnected issues. Article 4, for example, stipulates that parties should develop, strengthen and implement measures to prevent future pandemics, re-emerging diseases, prevention of infections transmitted between humans and animals, and the strengthening of immunization programs.

While the treaty introduced the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system, a multilateral mechanism where parties can share biological materials of pathogens with the potential to instigate a pandemic, it left several questions to be resolved in the future. Particularly, as Article 12(2) notes, the classification of pathogens, the legal terms of data sharing, traceability, benefit-sharing mechanisms, and making manufacturers fulfill their commitments will be devised in a future annex.

HRW noted that another problematic aspect of the treaty is the voluntary nature of its enforcement. As HRW Economic Justice and Rights Researcher Matt McConnell stated, “whether this agreement can live up to its promise will depend on whether governments live up to theirs,” reflecting the difficulty of domestically enforcing international law.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, wealthy governments, particularly from the “global north,” allegedly prioritized private profit over public health by creating obstacles of waiving intellectual property rules that could have “diversified” the global production of Covid-19 vaccines. At the same time, the lack of government regulations encouraged pharmaceutical companies to avoid sharing crucial lifesaving technology, negatively impacting less wealthy countries.