The UNITE Global Summit, which took place in Berlin on 16 October 2024, saw the President of UNITE and many Summit attendees sign a statement in support of the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement.
The Agreement aims to ensure that member states are better equipped to deal with future pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, especially in terms of raw supplies and equitable distribution.
The Agreement was first drafted in 2021 and has been amended several times, with the final version to be published within a year of June 2024.
UNITE is the Parliamentarians Network for Global Health. Its President, Ricardo Baptista Leite, said, ‘By signing this statement, we are […] pledging to ensure that its principles of equity, solidarity, and global cooperation are fully realized in every nation.’
While the Agreement aims to address gaps in parliamentary pandemic readiness worldwide, which largely pertain to poorly distributed access to medicines and safety, critics of the Agreement have said it does not go far enough and does not require enough monitoring of compliance, relying too much on ‘good faith’.
