Pandemic agreement talks add sessions as the pathogen-sharing annex stays unfinished
Negotiators met in Geneva for five days and agreed to come back in January. Until the annex is adopted, the pandemic agreement cannot even open for signature.
WHO member states finished a fifth day of negotiations in Geneva on 5 December without completing the annex on pathogen access and benefit sharing, and agreed to add sessions to the calendar rather than wait for the next scheduled round [s1].
The fourth meeting of the Intergovernmental Working Group ran 1–5 December [s1]. Delegates will now reconvene 20–22 January 2026, ahead of the fifth full IGWG meeting scheduled for 9–14 February 2026 [s1].
Why an annex holds up a treaty
The WHO Pandemic Agreement was adopted on 20 May 2025 at the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly, after committee approval the previous day [s2]. That was the headline moment. What it did not do was make the agreement operational.
Article 12 of the agreement covers pathogen access and benefit sharing, and the Assembly established an Intergovernmental Working Group to draft the annex that would give it operational content [s2]. Under Article 31, the agreement opens for signature by member states only after the World Health Assembly adopts the PABS Annex [s2].
That is an unusual construction, and it is the reason these December talks mattered more than a technical drafting session normally would. No annex, no signature. No signature, no ratification. No ratification, no entry into force. The treaty adopted in May is, until the annex lands, a document that no country can yet sign.
What PABS is meant to do
Member states asked for a PABS platform to operate as a global system for sharing pathogens and their genetic sequence information, along with the benefits arising from their use, in a way that is timely, fair and transparent [s1].
The structural problem it addresses is old and specific. In an outbreak, samples and sequences flow quickly from the countries where a pathogen emerges to the laboratories and manufacturers with the capacity to develop tests, treatments and vaccines. The products that result have historically flowed back much more slowly, and sometimes not at all, to the countries that supplied the biological material. PABS is an attempt to make the second flow contractual rather than voluntary.
That is why the annex is hard. It has to specify what counts as material entering the system, what obligations attach to receiving it, what benefits are owed in return, in what quantity, on what timeline, and who arbitrates. Each of those is a point where the interests of pathogen-origin countries and manufacturing countries diverge, and none of them can be papered over with aspirational language — the whole purpose of the annex is to make Article 12 enforceable.
What was actually said
The WHO statement is notably light on substance about disagreements, which is itself characteristic of negotiations that have not converged. IGWG Bureau co-chair Matthew Harpur of the United Kingdom said that "Member States have demonstrated real commitment to finding common ground and bridging differences" [s1]. He co-chairs the Bureau with Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes of Brazil [s1].
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus framed the exercise as "both a generational opportunity and a generational responsibility" [s1].
WHO characterised the decision to add January sessions as reflecting shared commitment and urgency [s1]. Read plainly, adding an unscheduled three-day round six weeks before the next planned meeting is what negotiators do when the remaining gap is too large to close in the time already booked.
The calendar constraint nobody named
The implicit deadline here is the World Health Assembly. The annex has to be adopted by the Assembly before the agreement can open for signature [s2], and the Assembly meets annually in May. An annex not ready in time does not simply slip a few weeks; it slips a year in the treaty's timeline.
That is the pressure behind the January addition. Whether it is sufficient is not something the December statement answers.
What to watch
Three things over the next two months.
Whether the January session produces a consolidated draft text rather than another round of bracketed options — the difference between the two is the difference between a negotiation converging and one still mapping positions.
Whether the substantive disagreements become public. Negotiating positions on percentage allocations, scope of covered materials, and sequence-information obligations have historically surfaced through member-state statements and civil society reporting rather than WHO communications.
And whether the February IGWG produces text the Assembly can act on. Everything about the agreement's timeline — signature, ratification, entry into force — sits downstream of that.
Sources
- [s1] World Health Organization, "Countries to reconvene sooner to accelerate progress on WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system negotiations," 5 December 2025. https://www.who.int/news/item/05-12-2025-countries-to-reconvene-sooner-to-accelerate-progress-on-who-pathogen-access-and-benefit-sharing-system-negotiations
- [s2] World Health Organization, "Pandemic prevention, preparedness and response agreement: Questions and answers," accessed 10 December 2025. https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/pandemic-prevention--preparedness-and-response-accord
Sources
- Countries to reconvene sooner to accelerate progress on WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system negotiations — World Health Organization , December 5, 2025
- Pandemic prevention, preparedness and response agreement (Questions and answers) — World Health Organization , December 10, 2025
Pandemic treaty negotiators spent two weeks in Geneva. They need another round.
The seventh session on the pathogen-sharing annex ran nearly twice as long as previous rounds. WHO says the text is narrowing. A new deadline, set in May, gives them until next year.
The pathogen-sharing annex missed its May deadline. Talks now run to 2027
The World Health Assembly gave negotiators another year — or a special session later this year — to finish the annex that has to be adopted before the pandemic agreement can open for signature.
Pathogen-sharing annex clears a fifth round with contentious elements set aside for later
Negotiators finished a week in Geneva with a plan to streamline the text and consult separately on the hard parts. The treaty cannot open for signature until the annex is adopted.
A week of pandemic treaty talks in Geneva ends without a deal, again
The sixth negotiating round on the WHO Pandemic Agreement's pathogen-sharing annex was supposed to finish text ahead of May's World Health Assembly. Member states pushed the deadline to late April instead.