Pandemic Power Without Equity Is a Dangerous Illusion -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

No amount of legal mythology will vanquish the next pandemic. To assert that on September 19, 2026 the amended International Health Regulations of the World Health Organization became in all cases universally binding and had caused sovereign rights to vanish commits a similar mistake by collapsing procedural deadlines into a suggestion of sovereignty evaporating.

On June 1, 2024, the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted amendments by the WHA to the International Health Regulations of 2005 which subsequently came into force on September 19, 2025. The four nations that opposed the 2022 amendments to shorten procedural timelines kept a longer schedule. However, Articles 59 and 61 protect otherwise legitimate rejections of the after package. Those rejections were not automatically rescinded by September 19, 2026. And such notifications from those four countries are only expressly registered in the consolidated text of the WHO for June 2026. You do not get universal applicability by fiat.

That distinction matters. The proclamations of its proponents exaggerate the extent to which international cooperation is a matter of law, and thereby renders international cooperation less credible. They turn technical rules into an apparent global sovereignty, and opponents have a punching bag.

The more substantive reforms merit a stronger case. A new “pandemic emergency”, identifiable by a communicable-disease emergency potentially leading to actual or imminent international spread, overwhelmed health systems, substantial social or economic disruption, and requisite intensified equitable international response. It is a limited category in international public health emergency that responds with more coordinated responses.

WHO cannot order national lockdowns. The IHR creates international obligations, but its temporary recommendations remain legally nonbinding. Business as Usual Yet, advisory power can have quite a political punch. Policymakers need to justify their own constraints and stop framing Geneva recommendations as though they were orders that they had to follow.

The greater danger is a global system that masters the art of asking for data but fails to protect.

A proposal for the establishment of a States Parties Committee to assist implementation is contained in Article 54 bis. Its role is advisory and nonpunitive. Everybody seems to agree it can support collaboration but cannot force an exchange of technology or a delivery of medicine by manufacturers. It’s a committee, not a supply chain.

At 20.9 Attend The Pathogen Access And Benefit Sharing Annex Of The Separate WHO Pandemic Agreement Adopted In 2025 Is A Work In Progress (Page 209) Meanwhile, The Separate WHO Pandemic Agreement, Adopted In 2025 Was Still Negotiating Its Pathogen Access And Benefit Sharing Annex At The September 14–18, 2026 Meeting In Geneva. It is where the material test of solidarity lies: do contributors of pathogen materials and sequencing data receive timely and equitable access to their resulting products.

Four strategic changes should follow.

First, WHO should make a globally accessible register explicitly identifying to which of the 3 states: accept, refuse or suspend, IHR commitments apply to each country. Why Governments and Citizens Need Legal Certainty

Second, emergency declarations should release not only the evidence supporting them, but also information on uncertainties surrounding that evidence and conflicts among experts about it and how they will be reassessed. Domestic restrictions ought to be subject to proportionality review, oversight by Parliament, avenues for accessible judicial challenge and explicit expiry provisions.

Third, governments that fund medical research will need to set the ground rules for enforceable access conditions: transparent and fair prices; commitments to rapid supply during public health emergencies (a national priority); flexible licensing arrangements; investments in regional manufacture partnerships. Public protection should be paid with public investment.

Fourth, implementation is measured by the capacity and delivery funded: laboratories that will operate, health care workers trained, diagnostics made available and medicines reaching vulnerable populations. Never consider announcement as preparedness.

Those guarantees are what Indonesia and other developing countries should now call for, all the more as they begin to strengthen their own domestic accountability. You cannot protect people without sovereignty; you cannot cooperate in ways that help people unless they receive tangible benefits.

The new emergency label will not please the next pandemic. The government that can name an catastrophe but cannot pull protection is a government that has gotten vocabulary and not preparedness.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia