Open letter to the leaders of the G7, G20, BRICS and all countries on the completion of the annex to the WHO pandemic agreement on access to pathogens and benefit sharing

Dear leaders of G7, G20, BRICS and all nations,

We are writing to you together, from Geneva and from Brasília, with one common belief: that the world must finish what it started and that you can help it to do so.

We do not start with an institution or an annex, but with a memory shared by the whole world. Not so long ago, our hospitals were overcrowded. Families said goodbye to the people they loved through glass, or by phone, or not at all. The children lost their grandparents. The doctors and nurses, exhausted beyond anything we had any right to ask of them, continued anyway. Estimates by the WHO and others put the number of lives lost up to twenty million. Humanity promised itself, in the rawness of that sadness, that it would no longer face such a day unprepared.

A little over a year ago, the world kept the first part of that promise. In the wake of the deadliest pandemic in a century, the nations of the world chose cooperation over division and adopted the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Agreement to strengthen how countries can work together to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics. In a divided world, such an outcome was not to be taken for granted. It was an act of hope and an act of faith in each other. We are writing to you now because that hope has not yet been fulfilled and because it is in your hands to help fulfill it.

One piece remains. To respond in time to future pandemics, countries must be able to quickly identify pathogens with pandemic potential and share their genetic information and material so scientists can develop the tools: tests, treatments, vaccines that decide who lives and who doesn’t. The system that makes this possible, fairly and on an equal basis, is an appendix on pathogen access and benefit sharing. It is the final piece of the puzzle, not just for the Pandemic Agreement, but for everything WHO and member states have built from the hard lessons of COVID-19. Until it is completed, the Agreement cannot enter into force. The promise remains unfulfilled.

We will not pretend that the road was easy. When member states closed their last session on May 1, they had made real progress but agreed that more time was needed. The most difficult questions, including how to define and share the benefits of shared pathogens, how to manage the system, and how to guarantee equality on an equal basis, are difficult for a reason. These are exactly the questions that were left unanswered last time, and the people who could have been protected were not. The world is now grappling with them precisely because they are so important.

The negotiators will meet again from July 6 to 17. We believe in them, and we have seen their commitment up close. But we also know that there are times when good people, doing their best at the negotiating table, need their leaders to look up to the horizon. This is one of those moments and it’s yours.

So, we come to you, clearly, with three requests.

First, political will at the highest level. The remaining issues will not be resolved by technical efforts alone. They need a clear signal that only the head of government can give: that the completion of this annex is a national priority and that your negotiators can reach consensus with courage, not caution. Solidarity is our best immunity, but solidarity must be chosen, and at the top. We also know that you may be asked whether the Pandemic Agreement threatens state sovereignty. It is not, and neither will the PABS annex, as its integral part. Article 22, paragraph 2 makes it clear: nothing in the Agreement gives WHO any authority to direct or change a country’s laws or policies, or to require measures such as quarantines, travel restrictions or vaccination mandates. Those decisions remain with sovereign states. So we ask you, specifically, to instruct your negotiators to come to the July session ready to finish, and to give them the flexibility to fill in the remaining gaps and finalize the annex in this round.

Other, the spirit of righteousness. The PABS system rests on a simple, fair bargain: Those who rapidly share dangerous pathogens must be able to trust that the vaccines and treatments resulting from that sharing will reach their people. Each of us has a stake on both sides. When Brazil chaired the G20 in 2024, the G20 recognized inequality as a driver of pandemics for the first time. This is not charity, and it is not just conscience. It’s also a strategy: PABS exists to stop an outbreak at its source, and containing the threat where it begins is far cheaper, in lives and resources, than fighting a pandemic once it has spread across continents. A virus left burning anywhere will eventually find everything. There is another reason why equality matters, one that governments and industries everywhere will be realizing all at once: predictability. Today, the rules for accessing and sharing the pathogen are improvised on a case-by-case basis, often in the midst of a crisis. PABS replaces this with a single pre-known framework, stable rules that allow laboratories and partners around the world to move at the speed required by the epidemic. Legal certainty does not compete with fairness; it makes capital work. Please ensure that the annex contains equity in its operational details and not just in the preamble, so that access and benefit sharing are guaranteed in practice.

Third, a sense of urgency. The next pandemic will not wait for us. Scientists estimate that there is almost a one in four chance of a new pandemic in the next decade, and the ground beneath our old assumptions is shifting. Climate change, land use change and agricultural development are redrawing the map of where dangerous pathogens are emerging; the comfortable belief that outbreaks only start in remote places is no longer true, and future outbreaks may occur in or near your own countries. At the same time, advances in biotechnology, unevenly aligned with biosecurity, increase the risk of accidental or intentional release. None of these dangers respects borders. Therefore, we ask you to treat July 17 as a deadline, not a milestone, and to say so publicly, sending an unequivocal signal to your negotiators and to the world that this is a done deal round.

And we already know the price of unpreparedness. The latest pandemic has claimed lives on an incredible scale, with estimates by the WHO and others putting the toll at twenty million, and the International Monetary Fund estimating that it cost the world economy more than thirteen trillion dollars in lost production, a loss borne by every nation, in closed businesses, disrupted supply chains, and a generation of lost schooling. In contrast, the investment in an early outbreak detection system is small. As we write these words, an Ebola outbreak is being fought in two countries, with no approved vaccine and no cure, by responders who are risking their own lives to protect strangers. It is not a distant abstraction. This is happening now. Every month that this supplement remains unfinished is a month in which the world is less prepared than it could be, and people less safe than they deserve to be.

The nations of the world have stood together at every major turning point in the story of human health. Together we helped wipe smallpox from the earth. We pushed polio to the very edge of history. We have turned the tide of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria and in doing so have helped save more lives than any of us will ever be able to count. Termination of this Agreement is not a departure from that legacy. It’s his natural next chapter, and it’s within reach.

We promised the millions we lost and the families who still carry their absence. Let’s be the generation that fulfills that promise. Finalizing this agreement, through mutual commitment to each other, is our joint promise to protect humanity. Let’s keep it together and on time.

With respect and in the common goal of protecting human lives,