Inside Out | Why binding treaty on pandemic response is not best way forward
- Past experience with negotiating binding treaties suggests seeking one on pandemic response would take too long to have the desired effect
- Instead, close international cooperation and agreeing on a basic set of ground rules would go a long way towards heading off future pandemics
We were up in Big Sky, Montana, close to Yellowstone Park. It was May 2011 and 400 or so of us came together for the second of Apec’s major meetings in the United States’ year of chairmanship.
They were immediately halted by our US chair, with words I will never forget: “Let’s stop this right here. This is not a treaty. We don’t need to spend months on meticulous legal drafting. It is a non-binding document. Let’s try to be aspirational here.”
The legal dogs were immediately pulled off and our simple, “aspirational” document was agreed on within a couple of hours. If we had pressed for legally binding rules in a formal investment treaty, I suspect we would still be haggling today. The main beneficiaries would have been an army of lawyers.
Our modest document did not impose any legally binding obligations on Apec’s 21 members. From the business community, it simply said that if you want businesses to invest in your economy, here is a list of things you need to do. You are free not to follow the list, but from a business point of view, the result will be that you will attract very little foreign investment.
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What is Apec all about?