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TWN
Info Service on Health Issues (Apr26/05) WHO: Director-General steps up efforts for a compromise on PABS System Geneva 27 April (TWN) – The WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stepped up his efforts to bring a compromise among Member States to reach consensus on various differing positions on the side-lines of the resumed negotiations on the Pandemic Agreement’s Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) System. The resumed negotiations on the PABS System is taking place at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva from 27 April to 1 May in a hybrid mode. During the opening session of the negotiations the DG called upon countries to find a landing zone. In his opening statement he stated: “I urge you to complete an agreement this week… that is fair and operational. We will have time to test and adjust. Your focus now must be on agreeing text that will allow the system to start operating, and take it from there. I continue to offer whatever support is needed from the Secretariat to achieve our collective goal – a “world together”. I truly believe that with your hard work and commitment, you can succeed, and you will. It will not be perfect. No agreement ever is. But it can be fair. It can be functional. It can be a beginning. And beginnings matter more than perfection. So I ask you to find the middle ground. Not the ground where everyone wins everything, but the ground where everyone wins enough to build something lasting together. This week, walk out as winners – not by getting everything you wanted, but by coming together, standing up for multilateralism and global health, and proving what the world can achieve when we stand together. Because as we all know, multilateralism and global health is at stake”. Following this the DG convened a meeting with Ambassadors from selected countries on the first day of the resumed session of 6th meeting of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) tasked to negotiate the PABS System. There is no complete information as to who participated in the meeting. However, it is understood that it was mostly Ambassadors from developed countries who participated as well as Ambassadors of Mexico and the Philippines. The DG apparently proposed to involve officials at the Ambassador and Permanent Representative (PR) level to participate in the text-based negotiations taking place in the IGWG. A developing country delegate responding to information about the meeting told TWN, “You know the meaning of inviting Ambassadors and PRs at this stage, right? The WHO Secretariat wants to have summary discussions and push for a high-level compromise”. According to many observers the DG‘s efforts are mainly focussing on developing countries to make compromise and conclude the negotiations. Many developing country delegates told TWN that the current text is in violation of their international obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Nagoya Protocol. Accepting the PABS text in the current form amounts to debasing the fair and equitable framework built under the CBD and Nagoya Protocol. A developing country ambassador who met the DG two weeks ago told TWN that he had conveyed to the DG that his efforts to find a solution in the PABS Agreement should focus on the European Union and G6 countries, to persuade them to respect the current international norms and standards on access and benefit sharing. Day One Discussions Focus on Benefits Section C.1.a of the negotiating text, resulting from the 27 March discussion, was taken up for discussion after the opening session during the drafting agenda item. This paragraph pertains to the benefits to be shared by manufacturers of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics (VTDs) participating in the PABS System, during all times. Main discussions focussed on monetary benefits, and the non-monetary benefits such as capacity building and technical assistance. Many developing countries expressed concern that there was no serious discussion relating to the non-monetary benefits such as licensing of VTD manufacturing and technology transfer. The IGWG Co-chairs also postponed discussions of text proposals which operationalize some of these benefits, and pushed for yellowing the language which repeats what has been already agreed in Article 12 of the Pandemic Agreement. Regarding monetary benefits, both during formal and informal meetings, there was a clear indication there cannot be a mandatory benefit sharing obligation which requires pharmaceutical companies to share a percentage of the revenue they generate using the PABS system. The only concession the E.U made was a proposal to recover the costs of the running laboratory networks using an annual fee. There is also an offer to consider the share of revenue as an optional benefit. Sources indicated Norway opposed any form of mandatory monetary benefit sharing. Regarding capacity building as benefit sharing, developed countries pushed to have regulatory training to be offered by the pharmaceutical companies as a benefit to developing countries. However, the proposal was squarely rejected. Delegations also seem to have spent a lot of time with respect to cross referencing paragraphs from Article 12 in the PABS Annex, annoying several delegations from both developing and developed countries.+
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