G2H2 Statements in the PABS Annex to the Pandemic Agreement
IGWG6, 23-28 March 2026

G2H2 Statement on Monday 23 March

Thank you chair, we welcome and support the positions of the Equity Group and the Africa Group.
And we urge other Member States, which are mainly from high-income countries, to accept the consideration put forward on three bases:

• First, the historical basis of these negotiations flows from COVID-19. And as terrible as the COVID-19 experience was, we might have dodged a bullet. Every pandemic, every health emergency is a different animal. And not enabling equity now puts the whole world at risk. As Palestine pointed out, there are no borders to pathogens.
• Secondly, is the fact that, in our view, it is not primarily the people in the countries standing against the global South position that stand to benefit. It is more of the corporations and the billionaire class. It is the sort of people that include the 40 new pharma billionaires that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.
• And lastly, we realise that consensus is of utmost importance. But it must not be a sword of Damocles on equity. It must not be a sword of Damocles over the will of the majority. The bureau must not be to the Member States in this IGWG, what, the UN Security Council is to the UNGA where one veto vote is equal to ninety-two or more. At the heart of this debate is a struggle for multilateralism, which has the decolonisation of global health at its heart. And we do urge that rather than either step things aside or foist a consensus that is at best complicated, that this should be put to a vote. And the position of the majority upheld.