The Real Work Begins for the Pandemic Agreement’s PABS Annex

In May 2025, the corks popped for what was billed as a “landmark” Pandemic Agreement. But as any family elder will tell you, the vows are the easy part. The real test is the annex—specifically the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) mechanism—which now decides whether this global health marriage of the century makes it to its first anniversary. The cynics are taking bets.

We at Policy/Strategy Group are choosing the less gossipy, more matrimonial line. Think marriage brokerage, not scandal sheet. Our Academy’s October briefing stripped the issue to its working parts and the picture was, frankly, unforgiving. The timetable is merciless: informal huddles in early October; text on the table for the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) from 3–7 November; and a version watertight enough for the World Health Assembly by May 2026. That is a sprint, upwind, in heels.

As Alegnta Gebreyesus Guntie of Ethiopia’s Mission in Geneva put it, the margin for error is thin: “We are less than six months away from submitting the outcome of these negotiations… There is no treaty if we don’t get this right.” That is not diplomatic embroidery; it’s a structural warning. So what is everyone actually fighting over? On paper, tame nouns: scope, triggers, benefits, governance. In practice, each of those nouns behaves like a transitive verb—doing things to people and systems.

Scope. Sounds harmless until you try to define “pathogen of pandemic potential,” decide how far genetic sequence data (GSD) runs, and who, exactly, gets to be custodian of which databases. Those choices will not stay in Geneva; they will land on the desks of national regulators, on the benches of reference labs, and in the memories of countries that feel they have been burned before.

Triggers. This is about timing, which is to say power. Who can switch obligations on? Must the machinery wait for all formalities to clear, or should a more forward-leaning, public-interest instinct prevail? That distinction is the difference between immediate supply in an emergency and contractual trench warfare that eventually drags in lawyers and courts.

Benefit sharing. Here principle meets the production line. Current drafts imagine manufacturers setting aside 10% of output free and 10% at “affordable” prices in an emergency. That reads like a press release; it lives like a spreadsheet. It means capacity assumptions, logistics planning, dual-track pricing, and clauses in MTAs and APAs drafted before the sirens sound. Around the money sits the muscle—technology transfer, training, capacity building. Done well, that creates new partnerships; done badly, it exposes hollow ones.

Governance. This is the plumbing: who watches, who enforces, who gets to say “no.” How do WHO, Africa CDC and regional organisations divide labour in a way that adds teeth rather than paperwork? Here our faculty member, Dr Ebere Okereke, offered two sharp admonitions. First, urgency: “If we wait until May before we start preparing, that boat will have sailed. The time to act is now.” Second, representation: “Too often, expertise is assumed to sit in the global North. We need to make sure our African experts are accredited and in the room.” Governance without the right people in the room is theatre.

What made the October conversation useful was that it climbed out of committee language and asked, bluntly, how this lands on implementers.

• For policymakers there is dull-but-decisive homework: align domestic law with whatever definitions and triggers emerge; designate competent authorities and focal points; budget for the data- and material-sharing chores that make the elegant Geneva text actually work.
• For manufacturers and supply-chain actors, the 10%+10% set-aside is not theory. It reshapes contract templates, ring-fencing of supply, and how technology transfer is staffed and sequenced—especially across multiple jurisdictions with different export, IP and security rules.

It is tempting to park all this under “multilateral complexity” and wait for the final text. That would be a mistake. PABS is not just about solidarity; it is about industrial positioning and health security.

Definitions—and who controls them—will tilt advantage toward certain geographies, reference labs and data hubs. Set-asides will decide who experiences scarcity, and when. (We all remember COVID.) The direction of travel is already clear enough to act on. Public and private actors alike should now:

1. map likely obligations on data, benefits and supply against their current contracts and budgets;
2. start pre-drafting the clauses they will need when the switch is flipped;
3. stress-test capacity and supply assumptions against a scenario in which the trigger is early, not late.

Do not underestimate the politics. In a multipolar world, every one of those steps—data provision, benefit allocation, manufacturing priority—will be read through a geopolitical lens. The annex work is a reminder of an old truth: implementation is where values either harden into practice or crumble into recrimination.

Which brings us back to the clock.

What’s next

Text-based negotiations run 3–7 November. On 11 November we will publish a clear, fast readout—what changed in the draft, what it means for governments, the private sector and civil society, and what concrete first steps need to start immediately.

Join the 11 Nov readout & implications session – register here.