The Pandemic Agreement was adopted in May 2025 at the 78th World Health Assembly. Under Article 12 of the Agreement, Member States agreed to establish a multilateral system for the sharing of pandemic pathogen materials and sequence information that would provide ‘safe, transparent, and accountable access and benefit-sharing.’ The details of this system, the WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System, or PABS system, are to be negotiated in an annex to the agreement.
An Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) has been established, under WHA Resolution 78.1, to negotiate this annex (the PABS Instrument), and to conduct several preparatory tasks for the Conference of the Parties for the pandemic agreement, including developing the terms of reference for the Coordinating Financial Mechanism. Member States have set an ambitious timeline for the completion of the IGWG’s work: March 2026, with adoption in May 2026 at the 79th World Health Assembly.
This Briefing Paper was prepared by Anna Bezruki in partnership with rani (previously known as PAN). The author and rani are grateful for comments from Viviana Muñoz-Tellez, Timothée Poisot, Adam Strobejko, and Gian Luca Burci which helped strengthen the paper. The analysis and views presented do not necessarily represent those of the persons that provided comments.
This paper is intended to provide an outline of what was agreed upon in the pandemic agreement regarding the establishment of the PABS system. The paper also seeks to provide answers to some frequently asked questions about the possibilities for the PABS system, and provides a brief overview of some of the other access and benefit-sharing systems in other international agreements. The paper is meant as a helpful contribution to IGWG discussions; there are many issues in this paper that merit a deeper dive as negotiations continue.
Read the Briefing Paper.
