The World Signed a Pandemic Treaty. Why Can’t It Start?

Governments have signed the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement, adopted by the World Health Assembly on May 20, 2025, but the compact has not entered into force. It requires 60 states to deposit instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession; it then takes effect 30 days after the sixtieth deposit. Signatures express intent. Each government must still complete its own legal process, while negotiators and the WHO turn disputed provisions into rules that countries can actually use.

The agreement was written in answer to recognizable failures. Covid-19 warnings traveled unevenly. Vaccines and treatments reached wealthy states first. Export restrictions and bidding wars strained supplies of masks, oxygen and other medical goods. Manufacturing capacity remained concentrated even as officials repeated that a virus respects no border. The treaty records those failures as a shared inheritance, but a record is not yet a reserve of medicine, laboratory capacity or trained staff.

The argument inside the inheritance

Delay is not explained by forgetfulness alone. Governments want assurances that sharing pathogen samples and genetic information will produce dependable access to resulting vaccines, diagnostics and treatments. Countries with large pharmaceutical industries resist rules they believe could weaken intellectual-property rights or discourage investment. Countries without that industry ask why they should surrender vital information promptly if the finished products will again be priced, patented or allocated beyond their reach.

Sovereignty objections also deserve their full weight. Pandemic rules can touch border policy, surveillance, procurement and domestic health authority. Governments are reluctant to accept vague duties that might later be interpreted by an international body or used against them politically. The agreement does not give the WHO power to order national lockdowns or rewrite domestic law, but its credibility still depends on clear obligations, transparent review and consequences strong enough to matter without pretending the WHO is a world government.

Financing is the less theatrical dispute and perhaps the more decisive one. Surveillance networks, regional manufacturing and emergency stockpiles require recurring money between outbreaks, precisely when legislatures prefer to spend elsewhere. A promise to cooperate during catastrophe cannot substitute for laboratories maintained during calm. Memory becomes operational only when it receives a budget.

The next milestones are therefore measurable: which signatories ratify, what money they commit, how pathogen access is linked to benefits, where manufacturing can expand, and which surveillance rules protect both speed and public trust. If those pieces acquire dates, funds and accountable owners, Covid-19 will have left working instructions. If they do not, the agreement will remain a carefully signed description of what the world once wished it had done sooner.