Description
The negotiations of a WHO pandemic treaty began in early 2022, yet the fragmented nature of global health governance raises questions over the success of a new treaty. The aim of this paper is to explore what a successful, effective, and legitimate negotiation process for the pandemic treaty should look like. An epistemic deliberative framework of legitimacy was constructed and applied to the negotiation process. The paper reviews the standards of transparency, equal participation and representation, and epistemic justice to identify legitimacy deficits across the negotiations. Whilst the negotiation process exhibits some good efforts to improve the levels of transparency and participation, there remain key legitimacy deficits, particularly in the area of epistemic justice. These findings highlight the value of an epistemic deliberative conception of legitimacy, whilst raising important concerns over the legitimacy and likely success of the pandemic treaty.
