Leibniz Lab Pandemic Preparedness: Towards a Global Pandemic Treaty

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only exposed the challenges facing the German healthcare system in dealing with a pandemic, but has also shown how international interdependencies and global inequalities complicate the fight against a virus raging worldwide. It has become painfully clear to all of us just how crucial international cooperation is in preparing for, preventing, and responding to pandemics. Pandemics are a global challenge: neither their prevention nor an effective response to future pandemics can succeed if countries act in isolation.

However, the crisis in international cooperation does not stop at global health policy. While the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrates the conclusion of a global pandemic treaty, key challenges remain unresolved and are preventing the treaty from entering into force. In contrast, the United States is attempting to address pandemic response issues bilaterally rather than multilaterally.

Work Package 10 (“Toward a Global Pandemic Treaty”) within the Leibniz Lab Pandemic Preparedness addresses these complex issues of pandemic preparedness and response in two different ways. On the one hand, the work package aims to identify the key issues that a pandemic treaty must address, such as patent protection, biodiversity, and access to medical interventions. On the other hand, the work package examines how international cooperation can be effectively shaped, how conflicts of interest between government and private actors can be balanced, and how such cooperation can thereby gain broad (governmental) support. How can states be persuaded to comply with international regulations in the absence of coercive enforcement power? In this regard, the project also draws on the principles of discourse ethics.

PRIF contributes primarily its diverse research and expertise on the significance and dynamics of international organizations within a sustainable peace order. Insights into how norms are enforced and contested internationally, how crises in international order can be identified and overcome, and to what extent norms and institutions shape international cooperation – in this case, in the area of pandemic preparedness and response – are especially relevant.

We will only be able to meet the challenges ahead if we balance key conflicts of interest both within our society and globally. That is why the Leibniz Lab Pandemic Preparedness is developing proposals on how to ensure the equitable implementation of global pandemic preparedness, prevention, and response. The goal must be a “Global Accord on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response” that is attractive to all countries and whose proposed measures can actually be implemented in preparation for and response to future pandemics.