How can a new catastrophe like the corona pandemic be prevented? With their own UN treaty, Germany and other countries believe. But the road is rocky.
Geneva (dpa) – What hit the world with the corona pandemic makes some people doubt the meaning of the United Nations.
What is the point when diplomats and politicians have been evoking international cooperation for years and adopting solemn agreements? What if that doesn’t prevent a global tragedy with millions of deaths, new poverty and unprecedented economic collapse? When a merciless national tussle over face masks and vaccines sets in, leaving the poorest by the wayside?
Something like this should not happen again – that is why Germany and around two dozen other countries want to give the go-ahead for negotiations on an international pandemic treaty at the virtual annual meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) from Whit Monday (May 24). Skeptics ask: Another paper tiger? Can save human life? Proponents are convinced that it would be a big piece of the puzzle.
“There will be more pandemics and other serious health crises,” warned Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and more than two dozen heads of state and government at the end of March. “Together we must be better prepared to (…) anticipate, prevent, recognize, evaluate and respond effectively to pandemics. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us relentlessly and painfully that no one is safe until everyone is safe. “
In the pandemic, Germany has become something of a WHO champion: No country has increased its contributions so significantly. For the WHO budget 2020-21, Berlin is transferring the equivalent of around 900 million euros, almost four times as much as in the two years before. Germany has grown from the fifth largest to by far the largest donor. According to a WHO budget analyst, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is currently behind with 30 percent less.
A WHO pandemic early warning center is also being built in Berlin, which Germany is funding with 30 million euros. In it, supercomputers are supposed to analyze vast amounts of data on diseases in animals and humans from all over the world. Even before a pandemic breaks out, the alarm should be sounded at the slightest sign of a possible hazard.
One of the goals of the pandemic treaty would be for all countries to participate in the exchange of data. Laboratories could also be obliged to be more transparent. “If the countries agree that laboratories are visited by a commission every two years, this creates trust and you can fall back on contacts in an emergency,” says Professor Ilona Kickbusch from the Geneva University Graduate Institute, who was with the WHO for a long time . Unworthy mud battles over scarce protective equipment or vaccines are to be avoided in the future by boosting local, regional and global production of the materials.
So that it does not stop at pious words, a binding international treaty is planned: whoever participates must adhere to it. In the future, only rogue states could actually afford to violate it – and would probably have to accept international ostracism.
That probably frightens some of the 194 WHO members. “We can already see that some countries want to prevent something like this,” says a diplomat in Geneva. That countries are made internationally responsible – that is a red rag for some. On the brakemen’s side, Russia and Brazil are mentioned, as is the USA.
A WHO expert commission headed by Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, has proposed that the contract should include the rapid deployment of a WHO team to the site of a pandemic outbreak. But in Beijing, the very expression “independent investigation” is raising alarm bells. They insist on “consensual investigations”, nothing should go without the consent of the governments. Because this has been customary up to now, Beijing was able to postpone the WHO investigation into the origin of the corona pandemic for months and then determine what the experts got to see and what not.
A pandemic contract will probably only make sense if there is broad support; it would certainly need well over half of the 194 WHO member countries. “We are preparing for the fact that we will have to drill a couple of thick boards,” says a diplomat from a pro-country. The model is the “Framework Convention on Tobacco Control”, which came into force in 2005. At first laughed at, around 180 countries have now joined. This makes it “one of the most highly regarded treaties in UN history”, as the WHO proudly says.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210522-99-700354 / 2
