CIDCE advocates a pandemic convention anchored on “One Health” and underpinned by the human right to a healthy life in harmony with nature, mindful of present and future generations.
To prevent, manage and eradicate pandemics in a rapid, efficient and equitable manner, while respecting human rights and planetary boundaries, such convention should:
- urge States to create coordinated national strategies on pandemics; develop scientific research on zoonotic risks; strengthen epidemiological surveillance through early detection and warning systems;
- oblige States to alert the population immediately after a pandemic outbreak is detected, deploy an emergency plan, and notify potentially affected States;
- enshrine vaccine equity, recognize world access to vaccines as a global public good, and ensure their universal availability, together with medicines and medical equipment;
- strengthen scientific and technical cooperation on pandemics and promote transfer of technologies and skills;
- establish an Intergovernmental Panel of Experts on Pandemics to collect/assess relevant data on pandemics, and to provide scientific, technical, socioeconomic and legal advice;
- provide for adequate monitoring, sustainable funding and increased coordination among relevant international institutions, including WHO, FAO, OIE, UNEP, WIPO, WTO and World Bank, with a Secretariat involving them.
Along these lines, CIDCE drafted, with NCP and GPN, a pandemic convention available in English, French and Spanish, to support the INB process.
Considering the health emergency, CIDCE calls for a prompt conclusion of such convention at a WHA special session, preferably by end of 2022.