On May 20, 2025, the World Health Assembly adopted a historic Pandemic Agreement to address glaring deficiencies in the international legal framework for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response made plain by the COVID-19 pandemic. The landmark agreement was the product of three long and often tense years of negotiations by an Intergovernmental Negotiating Body comprised of member states of the World Health Organization (WHO). The agreement’s adoption is not only a significant achievement for global health security but also a powerful testament to solidarity and multilateralism in a geopolitical climate increasingly hostile to international norms and institutions.

One of the core goals of the Pandemic Agreement is to address global disparities in access to pandemic response products like vaccines, tests, and treatments. By one estimate, inequitable access to vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic led to more than a million preventable deaths. The agreement therefore introduces a series of obligations to transform the development and distribution model for these products from one reliant on charity to an end-to-end ecosystem with equity infused at every juncture.

Enabling Equity through Technology Transfer

The agreement sets out obligations for states to promote and otherwise facilitate or incentivize technology transfer, as mutually agreed, particularly for the benefit of developing countries (Article 11). This could entail licensing technologies, building capacity, or including conditions linked to research and development (R&D), procurement, or other funding measures. States also agree to promote technology transfer to established hubs like WHO’s Health Technology Access Programme (HTAP); offer licenses to state-owned technologies and publish the terms of their licensing agreements; encourage technology holders to forgo royalties and share information during pandemics; and cooperate with time-bound measures.

Technology transfer in the context of pandemic preparedness and response involves sharing the technology, knowledge, and expertise—essentially the recipe—needed to make medical countermeasures, especially vaccines. Vaccines are complex products that are harder to imitate and produce at scale than most drugs, making non-originator manufacturers reliant on technology transfer to scale up production. Technology transfer typically requires the cooperation of the technology holder and occurs pursuant to a freely negotiated agreement. However, under specific circumstances, governments can grant rights to third parties to produce or themselves use the technology without the technology holder’s consent through compulsory licenses.

In a pandemic, technology transfer is essential to expand and accelerate the production of pandemic response products by leveraging the production capacities of additional manufacturers. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was little willingness among vaccine producers to transfer their proprietary technology, including by collaborating with WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool. Technology holders are largely concentrated in high-income countries, but a growing number of low- and middle-income countries have invested in vaccine production facilities and infrastructure enabling them to produce vaccines in large volumes. The technology transfer to these countries that did occur during the pandemic, however, was ultimately insufficient to meet global demand, particularly for low- and middle-income countries.

From a commercial perspective, technology transfer presents clear financial and strategic risks to vaccine technology holders. Vaccine manufacturers are private sector actors with financial interests that would make them reluctant to hand over their proprietary technology for fear of losing a competitive advantage or out of concern for the recipient’s ability to maintain high quality standards. Technology holders are more likely to engage in technology transfer where there are clear benefits to both parties, which for them could include financial incentives such as royalties, licensing fees, or public funding to support further R&D.

Technology Transfer as a Flashpoint in the Negotiations

Technology transfer emerged as one of the most contentious issues in the negotiations, remaining unresolved until the final hours. At the heart of the debate was how technology transfer ought to be understood for the purposes of the agreement. Certain Global North countries insisted that technology transfer occur exclusively on “voluntary” and mutually agreed terms, adopting a position strongly advocated by the pharmaceutical industry. The industry argued that failing to describe technology transfer as voluntary would minimize investments in R&D and stifle innovation.

That was unacceptable to many countries, predominantly in the Global South, that argued that such an understanding would foreclose the use of non-voluntary measures even where states’ domestic laws provide for them. This could also set a dangerous precedent by characterizing technology transfer as always voluntary—bleeding through to contexts outside the agreement. Instead, these countries wanted to preserve—if not enhance—states’ ability to implement non-voluntary measures.

These states and other stakeholders argued that while voluntary technology transfer is preferable and can be a lifeline in a health emergency, it is not always reliable. States therefore sought to retain the ability to implement compulsory measures if voluntary technology transfer were unavailable or insufficient. Moreover, defining technology transfer exclusively as voluntary would risk further harm to low- and middle-income countries that already face pressure not to use the flexibilities available to them under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). Reliance on the goodwill of technology holders, they argued, risks exacerbating inequities when urgent needs arise.

Numerous formulations were discussed in the final negotiating days. At times, it looked as if the negotiations would collapse over a single word. But consensus was ultimately reached on a footnote defining “as mutually agreed” for the purposes of technology transfer under the agreement as “willingly undertaken and on mutually agreed terms, without prejudice to the rights and obligations of the Parties under other international agreements.” At the eleventh hour, countries led by the European Union added “as mutually agreed” together with the footnote to every reference to technology transfer throughout the agreement. In its closing statement, Germany stated that it understood the provisions to mean that technology transfer would occur on a voluntary basis.

The adopted formulation balances the interests of pharmaceutical manufacturers and their host countries as well as countries seeking greater access to those technologies. It preserves parties’ use of flexibilities under the TRIPS Agreement and provides policy space for other measures in the absence of a willingness to agree.

However, some Global South countries were of the view that Article 11 was “an empty shell” that would not sufficiently alter the status quo on technology transfer and questioned states’ rhetorical commitment to pandemic preparedness and response when the text showed a lack of willingness to catalyze needed reforms.

While the text is less ambitious than some countries and stakeholders had advocated, it nonetheless provides a foundation for action. Embedding obligations for technology transfer in a binding treaty, regardless of whether those obligations are couched in discretionary language, sets norms of expected behavior between states and non-state actors. It also establishes an understanding between states that they would take steps to facilitate technology transfer by private actors in their jurisdiction—actors that are not traditional subjects of international law.

Technology Transfer as One Piece of the Puzzle

It is important to consider Article 11 as part of a package of obligations that are mutually reinforcing. Technology transfer for medical countermeasures is meaningless in isolation—it hinges on effective and harmonized regulatory systems (Article 8); strong and geographically diverse R&D and manufacturing capacities (Articles 9 and 10); a well-oiled global supply chain network (Article 13); and procurement and distribution mechanisms (Article 14). All of these factors are necessary for technology transfer and would be reinforced by the agreement. While the language on technology transfer itself falls short of strong legal compulsion, the agreement binds states to other commitments up and down the development and distribution chain that ultimately encourage technology transfer by increasing the likelihood of its success.

States are also encouraged to include provisions in their publicly funded R&D or purchase agreements enabling access to technology to facilitate R&D (Article 9.5) and licensing (Article 14.2). A new system of pathogen access and benefit sharing (PABS) established under the agreement would support technology transfer by including, as a benefit-sharing option, the granting of non-exclusive licenses and other forms of technology transfer (Article 12.8). All of these obligations are underpinned by a general obligation to cooperate, including specifically on the promotion of technology transfer (Article 17.1).

An established end-to-end ecosystem for pandemic response products, complete with routine technology transfer as one piece of the puzzle, would not only work to correct the global disparities in access to countermeasures between the Global North and South but would also spur greater South–South cooperation, creating more equitably distributed pockets of resilience to pandemic threats.

What Comes Next

Now that the Pandemic Agreement has been adopted, WHO member states will launch a process to negotiate an annex to the agreement governing the PABS system, including defining applicable pathogens and its operational dimensions (Article 12.2). Once that instrument is adopted by a future World Health Assembly, the agreement in its entirety will open for signature (Article 31). But in the meantime, states can begin to take steps to finance and build up the capacities required under the agreement. Likewise, technology holders can commit to working with existing technology-transfer mechanisms, including WHO’s HTAP. Building up end-to-end product development and distribution capacities and establishing a warm base for technology transfer will ensure that those capacities are functional when the next pandemic strikes. Achieving this—and implementing the agreement more broadly—will take enormous political will and solidarity from governments and the participation of non-state actors, including technology holders.

The adoption of the Pandemic Agreement is a significant achievement for global health, as well as for multilateralism at a time when the very idea of multilateralism is fragile. While the text could have been more ambitious in many areas, including on technology transfer, it is nonetheless groundbreaking. This is particularly the case for the obligations it creates to prevent pandemics at their source through a One Health approach, for PABS, and in establishing a Conference of the Parties to monitor and support treaty implementation and continue to develop robust norms on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Taken together, these obligations create a firm foundation for action on pandemics now and in the future.

Alexandra Finch LLM is a Senior Associate at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University. During the negotiations on the Pandemic Agreement, she represented the Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, which was a relevant stakeholder in the negotiations.

See more articles in our GO series on the Pandemic Agreement.