Developing the WHO's Pandemic Treaty To Facilitate Global Solidarity and International Accountability

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause suffering for millions of people around the world. The virus, initially discovered in 2019, has spread rapidly due to increased globalization and has affected every country. Many of the approaches to containing the pandemic have led to human rights violations and have furthered human suffering. Global health governance has attempted to control the spread of COVID-19 through existing international law. However, the pandemic has exposed gaps in that governance framework, highlighting the need for international law reform to close those gaps and prevent, detect, and respond to the next pandemic. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization ("WHO") has prioritized drafting and enacting a convention, agreement, or other international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response. The WHO proposes using its constitutional powers to pass one of these legal instruments, making this so-called "pandemic treaty" only the second time the WHO has used its Article 19 powers to create a legally binding instrument. With negotiations and discussions currently happening on the global stage as to what should go into this treaty, the WHO should take this opportunity to include meaningful accountability measures and provisions to ensure global solidarity in pandemic responses, complementing existing global health law sources to prevent, detect, and respond to the next pandemic, and respect human rights in responses to future pandemic threats.