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Info Service on Health Issues (Mar26/06) WHO: Public Services International call on North to not institutionalize data extraction and biopiracy Geneva, 30 March (TWN) – Public Services International (PSI) had called on the Global North to respect equity in the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) negotiations. An open letter from Mr. Daniel Bertossa, PSI General-Secretary, ahead of the last negotiations session (23 – 28 March 2026) expressed deep concerns on the status of the PABS negotiations and stressed that the final text may dilute the guarantees “that the WHO pandemic agreement can provide for equitable access to VTDs (vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics), putting lives of healthcare workers, especially at the frontlines, at risk”. [PSI is a global union federation of more than 700 trade unions representing 30 million workers in 154 countries. They work to bring workers’ voices to the UN, ILO, WHO and other regional and global organisations, defend trade union and workers' rights, and fight for universal access to quality public services.] The letter stated that the European Union was proposing an unbalanced system which pushes developing countries to share their genetic resources and biological materials without any guaranteed benefit sharing, thus institutionalizing data extraction and biopiracy. According to the letter, “In its current form, the draft text of the annex [to the Pandemic Agreement] does little to alter the status quo, leaving developing countries exposed to the same inequalities they faced during COVID-19, when thousands of our colleagues died or were scarred by those terrible years. And consequently, this leaves the whole world vulnerable in the possible event of another pandemic. It is particularly troubling that several other European nations are actively working to maintain such status quo, and putting impediments to developing countries’ positions to be included in the text”. The letter stressed that “benefit-sharing must be a binding component in order to prevent outbreaks from becoming PHEICs (public health emergencies of international concern)”. PSI urges the Northern member states in the WHO Intergovernmental Working Group tasked to develop the PABS system to support the following as part of PABS: “• All actors accessing pathogens or genetic data must sign standardized contracts regarding the terms of use and benefit sharing obligations, before they access pathogens and data. All agreements, transactions, access to pathogen samples or data, transfers of pathogens to third parties, PABS sequence database records and benefit flows must be fully transparent and subject to public audit. Countries must assume obligations to implement all components of the PABS system effectively, including traceability mechanism. • The WHO IGWG should develop multilateral PABS system into a trustworthy platform for States to share pathogens and genetic data by establishing significant benefit-sharing commitments and robust governance and accountability mechanisms that ensure that sovereign rights over shared resources are well respected and safeguarded. If this does not materialize, countries would continue sharing such resources bilaterally and unlike during Covid19 Pandemic period, each of them will seek to secure benefits through agreements. This will contribute to the fragmentation of the Global Health Emergency Framework and will undermine WHO coordinated global public health response. • Countries have sovereign rights over their genetic resources and sequence information, as established by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol (NP). Indigenous peoples and local communities also have rights over genetic resources, and countries, communities and individuals have rights over health data. All these rights must be respected when accessing, sharing or using PABS materials and sequence information if PABS is to achieve the status of a specialized international PABS instrument.” Another open letter with similar demands was also sent by Solange Caetano President of the President of the Interamerica Health Federation of PSI. Due to resistance from a large number of developing countries who continue to push for an equitable PAB system, the March negotiations did not conclude and will be resumed from 27 April to 1 May, with informal intersessional discussions taking place in advance of that meeting.
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