 Welcome to the 23rd International Relations Capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. The topic today is a new pandemic treaty proposed by the World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization in a decision on 31st May 2021. The idea is that the members of the World Health Organization would get together from November onwards to negotiate a treaty which would strengthen the World Health Organization to deal with future pandemics in the light of the experience gained in dealing with COVID-19. The expectation is that the failure of the United Nations to deal with COVID-19 should be examined and measures should be taken to deal with such emergencies in future with greater efficiency, incorporate them in a treaty and thus enable the United Nations to deal with such situations in the future. All of us know how the United Nations failed to deal with COVID-19 at the appropriate time. When the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, ideally the United Nations Security Council should have met and authorized the entire UN system including the specialized agencies to work together to combat this pandemic. But we all know why it did not happen. It did not happen because there was suspicion even at that time that China was somehow responsible for the outbreak or at least China had kept it a secret that the Wuhan virus was so lethal and many people had died in China even before the New England. So China used its veto in order to prevent a meeting of the Security Council to take any action. Not even a meeting of the Council was possible. Many statements were made outside but the Security Council did not take any action and therefore the whole issue was moved to the WHO. President Trump criticized the WHO, left it, Chinese defended the WHO and made more contributions to it. So in a sense, international action was stopped by China's attitude and the entire process of dealing with the pandemic fell into the lap of the WHO. This was particularly objectionable because at the time of epidemics like HIV, AIDS, Ebola, SARS, etc., the entire UN machinery was deployed effectively and the situation was brought under control. This demonstrated the fundamental flaw in the United Nations which is that the power of the veto has given the permanent members of the Security Council absolute power even in very grave circumstances. This is the first time that the veto was used to prevent the UN from saving the world from such a disaster. So now the thought of a treaty has come. After millions have died, many have suffered, livelihoods have been lost and irreparable damage has been done to the economy of the world. So it was not because of lack of any system or scheme that the UN failed because if this is an existential threat to mankind, there is no greater to international peace and security. There's no greater threats to international peace and security. So quite obviously the Security Council could have done that. Having failed to do that, now the WHO is finding a kind of excuse that there was not enough machinery, resources and regulations to deal with it. This is really not true because the World Health Organization has detailed regulation relating to pandemics. There was no vacuum of international law to deal with the situation and as it happened in the earlier cases, the UN could have easily dealt with the situation, energized all the specialized agencies and thus prevented or at least reduced the catastrophic effect of COVID-19. So in a sense, World Health Organization is doing something which the UN does all the time. When they fail in something, they blame the institutional structure and the loss and then some good intention people will get together and to prevent this kind of thing, let us have a new treaty, new convention, new declaration, new resolution. None of it was really necessary. So in a sense, this is a kind of cover-up that it was because of the lack of a properly negotiated instrument that the UN and the WHO failed in it. So the idea is that negotiations will start in November 2021 to draw such a treaty because pandemic is a global challenge and no single government or institution can address the threat of future pandemics at all. It is believed that a legally binding instrument under international law would enable countries around the globe to strengthen national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics. Even though the decision was taken by consensus, all the countries of the world are not unanimous in the need for a long negotiations and discussions in order to come to a treaty of this nature because there is no vacuum as far as international law is concerned. But the proposal has come from Europe, the European Council. They had proposed it as early as end of 2020, but it did not gather much momentum and now 194 nations have agreed to do that. But among them, 25 heads of states and international agencies have come up with a statement to support the initiative, thinking that there is not enough enthusiasm for long negotiations. People are more interested in action. So these heads of states, including the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Chancellor of Germany, President of European Council, heads of government of Spain, Norway, etc., have issued this statement urging the international community to seriously consider negotiations. This has also said too, for the feeling that it may not be enthusiastically received by the other countries. So it is yet to be seen how the negotiations will begin and how it will be completed. Something that we must note is that the US, China, Russia and India are not among these 25 countries. So many countries have reservations on this decision, but this is like motherhood, who can challenge the United Nations having a set of decisions in a treaty in order to deal with the pandemic. So nobody will oppose it, but many people feel that this was not necessary. So what the WHO is proposing is nothing but a standard practice of multilateral institutions to create new institutions and the bureaucracy. And much of the resources necessary for relief, etc., could get diverted to this new organization or a new bureaucracy. That is the hesitation that people have. But the expectation is that such a treaty can enhance international cooperation in a number of priority areas, such as surveillance, alerts and response, but also in general trust in the international health system. A globally coordinated approach to discovering, developing and delivering effective and safe medical solutions, such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and protective equipment would benefit collective health security. The objectives proposed are certainly novel. But as I said earlier, all these were possible if there was the political will on the part of the United Nations to do that. If you examine the international health regulations of the WHO, you will see that the presumption is that a pandemic outbreak might take place in a developing country. This was the presumption and it will spread to the developed world. So in this set of regulations, the stress is on the possibility of a poor country causing somewhere in the south and then it's slowly spreading to the north. But our experience this time was the exact opposite. Of course, China is a developing country, but the outbreak in the world came when it infected Italy, United States, UK, Germany and other developed western countries. So this is the main correction that you may be required that a pandemic need not necessarily be originating in a developed country. It could also happen elsewhere. Of course, in this particular case, there is already an investigation was already done about the origin of the virus and the WHO inspection unit said that they could not say whether this was natural virus or it was created in a laboratory. But it is widely believed as President Trump himself had believed right from the beginning that this was created by a Wuhan laboratory and the Chinese had suppressed the truth of the matter. Now President Biden has called for another investigation and we do not know how far it will go, but it's quite possible that China will use all the tricks in their bag in order to prevent the truth from coming out. So perhaps one of the reasons why this negotiations on a treaty have been started to divert attention from the discussion on the origin of the virus. So a new pandemic treaty in my view, if it has to be successful, we will have to set aside the conventional wisdom of absolute sovereignty for the country's concern. Because whenever we talk about UN action in certain cases, there is always the principle of consent of the party's concern, even in peacekeeping operations for example. The consent of the party is necessary in order to send a peacekeeping force to any country or any border. And it cannot be removed unless the party is concerned with it. We know the case of the Kashmir peacekeeping operation. There is a peacekeeping unit called UN MOGIT, between India and Kashmir, established with the consent of India and Pakistan. But now it is not doing any work, we do not recognize it because the ceasefire line is not there anymore and it's only a line of control which has no relevance to the United Nations. But United Nations cannot withdraw the peacekeeping operation between India and Pakistan unless both sides agree. We agree but Pakistan does not agree. And so we still have the peacekeeping operation doing nothing. UN is spending money, Pakistan is spending money, we are spending money too, though we would have liked it to be withdrawn. So this is a very important principle in international relations. So the worry about preaching relating to a pandemic is whether the nations will agree to deployment of relief personnel or distribution of vaccine etc. without insisting on their sovereignty for decision making. In fact, if we do not have that possibility of right to influence or right even to intervene, a treaty like this would be not very useful. And this is a concern we have. How much will you be able to do this if necessary even if the nation concerned does not want such intervention? So that will be the crux of the negotiations when they take place. Will the theory of sovereignty and interests of the countries and then finally the treaty will become a meaningless document with the common denominators. They will say the subject to the willingness of the countries concerned and so many considerations will be made and a set of elaborate regulations will be made and it will not be very effective. So whether this treaty will make up for the Security Council having failed humanity on this occasion is the question. Very often what happens is many important issues relating to peace and security are sent to the General Assembly because the Security Council is unable to act because of a veto. There is a uniting for peace resolution according to which if an issue is not possible to consider in the Security Council, they shift it to the General Assembly and discuss and vote on it and most of the time the General Assembly resolution is adopted. But the difference is the General Assembly resolutions are only recommended to be while the Security Council resolutions are mandatory. So on many issues relating to global competence or the global security, such things are negotiated only in the General Assembly because Security Council can only deal with threat to international peace and security. So we can argue that pandemic belongs to that category since it was not done, now this will go to the World Health Organization and the General Assembly. So we have experience of this kind of treaties like for example climate change. The Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It was a very good outcome at that time because very many principles of equity, justice were incorporated into that and developing countries were supposed to get technology and resources to deal with the Climate Change Challenge. But we know what has happened since then. Meeting after meeting, principle after principle was being dropped from the future negotiations of protocols and decision making etc. So in 1992 to now, most of the principles adopted in Rio de Janeiro have been dropped and we have come to the Paris Agreement which is entirely voluntary and also further now we are moving towards a new regime by which each member state is supposed to declare when they will be carbon free and work for it and there is no talk about technology or resources for the development practice. So such negotiations may raise many hopes but it may not reach a conclusion that is desired and that is the problem of multilateral institutions. Another example is a comprehensive convention on terrorism which India proposed to the UN General Assembly. I personally presented it in the General Assembly in 1992. Of course, people misunderstood it. They said that this is a trick by India to criticize Pakistan and negotiations started, how do we start the negotiations and it has not started even till today. Basically the problem was how do you define terrorism? This is the funny thing about the UN. You are negotiating a convention against terrorism and then people ask questions as to what is terrorism and therefore we are not able to move forward. So even here the question may be immediately asked how do we know it is a pandemic or we know where we originated and all these things are real excuses for inaction which of course the United Nations is famous for but this our draft for a comprehensive convention on terrorism was lying around in the sixth committee which is a legal committee of the United Nations for some years but suddenly when 9-11 occurred there was a great interest in this convention against terrorism. Only it appeared that it will immediately be adopted by the General Assembly because of the sense of despair and the sense of feeling that we had that the whole globe was under the attack by terrorism but it cooled off, special meetings were held, special discussions were held, everybody spoke about the need to adopt this convention but again somebody asked but what is terrorism and the whole thing stopped. So the history of the UN recently negotiating a set of rules which will give it strength to deal with such important issues that has not been very encouraging. Of course we have many conventions and declarations quite particularly human rights conventions etc are helpful you can criticize some countries for not following those agreements will stay themselves have accepted all this happens all the time. So basically what the UN tries to do is establish standardization of behavior but within which that standardization of behavior it happens that many countries will escape responsibility. Developed countries have really escaped the responsibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and also supporting developing countries to do so. So the fear is that and so what are the things that we should look for in this? What is it that countries have to insist in this new pandemic treaty? In my view it should focus on security of people without considering national borders because when you say health security it is not the security of borders or security of countries it is the security of people. Are we willing to accept that? And since this is a matter of international peace and security this dimension should be taken into account and perhaps say in the treaty that in such circumstances the batter will be immediately referred to the security council for action and this is the test whether such a provision can be included in the new convention because everybody accepts that nobody is safe until everybody is safe. So even if the entire world is focused on something suppose one country like China or anybody else says that we do not need your support we will manage it ourselves and perpetuate the pandemic than what happens. So there are many possibilities of course they will take the WHO regulations and correct them here and there update them etc. But in my view unless this relationship with the security council is established in a binding of course similar resolutions are not binding or at least in a recommendationally manner included in the new pandemic treaty such a treaty may not be of great use. Hopefully there will be no pandemic in the for the next 100 years and so the world will carry on. But to have a meaningful treaty we need to deal with the issue of borders and security of health means security of mankind and security of a particular country and the country should be able to surrender a bit of their sovereignty to enable the UN to take action and that is where we may probably have a problem with this. But interestingly in as early as 2005 Barack Obama who was a senator at that time had predicted something similar because he said that in an age when you can board planes in Bangkok or Hong Kong and arrive in Chicago, Indiana police or New York in hours we must face the reality that these exotic killer diseases are not isolated health problems half a world away but direct and immediate threats to security and prosperity here at home in the United States. So at that time there was no COVID-19 but he had the vision or the fear to think that such a thing could happen and if we are able to accept that fact that this is a common threat to humanity and able to incorporate in this new pandemic treaty it may not be worthwhile. So let us see how the negotiations take place and what route it will take and whether in the continuing crisis around the world the United Nations will have the will to draft a treaty which will be effective timely and every country will be accountable to implement it. Thank you very much.