Ensuring Equitable, Affordable, Timely and Universal Access for All Countries to Vaccines in Response to the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) Pandemic

A/RES/76/175View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 74b Human rights questions, including alternative approaches for improving the effective enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, published in 2021.

What other versions does this mandate have?

3 versions · 2021–2022

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2022	A/HRC/RES/49/25	Ensuring equitable, affordable, timely and universal access for all countries to vaccines in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic	3,301	58%Compare
2022	A/RES/76/175	Ensuring equitable, affordable, timely and universal access for all countries to vaccines in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic	3,576	69%Compare
2021	A/HRC/RES/46/14	Ensuring equitable, affordable, timely and universal access for all countries to vaccines in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic	2,961	–

What subjects does this mandate have?

5 subjects

Covid-19 Equality International Cooperation Right to Health Vaccines

What’s in this document?

21 operative paragraphs

Emphasizes the urgent need to ensure the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and to facilitate the development of robust health systems and universal health coverage, encompassing universal, timely and equitable access to all essential health technologies, diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other health emergencies, in order to ensure full access to immunization for all, in particular people in vulnerable situations, as a matter of global priority for all States;

Calls upon States and other relevant stakeholders to take appropriate measures to guarantee fair, transparent, equitable, efficient, universal and timely access to and distribution of safe, quality, efficacious, effective, accessible and affordable COVID-19 vaccines and to enable international cooperation;

Calls for the accelerated provision of 550 million more doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility by the end of December 2021 in order to get on track to ensure global access to vaccines to face the pandemic;

Also calls for intensified international cooperation and solidarity to contain, mitigate and overcome the pandemic and its consequences, through responses that are people-centred, gender-responsive, multidimensional, coordinated, inclusive, innovative, swift and decisive at all levels, with full respect for human rights, including by supporting the exchange of information, scientific knowledge and best practices, and enhancing capacity in particular to assist people in vulnerable situations, and the poorest and most vulnerable countries, to build a more equitable, inclusive, sustainable and resilient future and to realize the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;¹⁶

¹⁶Resolution 70/1.

Encourages States to work in partnership with all relevant stakeholders to increase research and development funding for vaccines, medicines, therapeutics and diagnostics, leverage digital technologies and strengthen the scientific international cooperation necessary to combat COVID-19 and to bolster coordination, including with the private sector, towards the further development, manufacturing and distribution of diagnostics, antiviral medicines, therapeutics, personal protective equipment and vaccines while adhering to the objectives of quality, efficacy, safety, equity, accessibility and affordability;

Recognizes the importance of tools to achieve extensive immunization against COVID-19 as a global public good for health in preventing, containing and stopping transmission, and to bring the pandemic to an end, by ensuring the availability of safe, quality, efficacious, effective, accessible and affordable vaccines;

Calls upon States and other relevant stakeholders to remove unjustified obstacles restricting the export of COVID-19 vaccines, resulting in an unequal distribution in access thereto between developed and developing countries, and to promote the equitable global distribution of and universal access to vaccines, in order to further the principles of international cooperation and solidarity, to end the current pandemic and to promote the realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health;

Urges States to facilitate the trade in, acquisition of, access to and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines as a crucial element of their responses to the pandemic, to ensure the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and to support the administration of vaccines to address the pandemic, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals and in accordance with the relevant international legal frameworks, including international human rights obligations, taking into account the principles of non-discrimination and transparency;

Reiterates the call for States to continue to collaborate, as appropriate, on models and approaches that support the delinking of the cost of new research and development from the prices of medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for diseases, to ensure their sustained accessibility, affordability and availability and to support access to treatment for all those in need;

Calls upon States and all relevant stakeholders to promote research and capacity-building initiatives and to enhance cooperation on and access to science, innovation, technologies, technical assistance, transfer of technology and knowledge-sharing, to ensure universal, equitable and affordable access for all persons to COVID-19 vaccines, including through improved coordination among mechanisms, especially with developing countries, in a collaborative, coordinated and transparent manner and on mutually agreed terms, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and towards advancing the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals;

Urges States to leverage digital technologies for the response to COVID-19, including in support of efficient, transparent and robust immunization, addressing the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19, paying particular attention to digital inclusion, patient empowerment and the right to privacy and protection of personal data;

Reaffirms the right of States to use, to the fullest extent, the provisions of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) and the flexibilities therein, as reaffirmed in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, which recognizes that intellectual property protection is important for the development of new medicines and also recognizes the concerns about its effects on prices and recognizes further that the Agreement should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of the right of States to protect public health, in particular to promote access to medicines for all, to facilitate access for all to COVID-19 vaccines and to bolster coordination, including with the private sector, towards the rapid development, manufacturing and distribution of vaccines, while adhering to the objectives of transparency, efficacy, safety, equity, accessibility and affordability;

Calls upon States, other partners and donors to urgently support funding and close the funding gap for the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and its mechanisms, such as the COVAX Facility, to support the equitable distribution of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines and to further explore innovative financing mechanisms aimed at ensuring affordable, timely, equitable and universal access to, and the fair distribution of, COVID-19 vaccines for all and the continuity and strengthening of essential health-care services;

Welcomes steps taken to provide a suspension of debt service payments for the poorest countries, and by international financial institutions to provide liquidity and other support measures to ease the debt burden of developing countries, and encourages all relevant actors, including private and commercial creditors, to address risks of debt vulnerabilities, through existing channels, in developing countries due to the pandemic;

Notes the most recent decision of the International Monetary Fund to allocate special drawing rights to boost global liquidity and enhance the resilience of the international monetary system, as part of ongoing efforts to support a comprehensive response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and, in this regard, highlights the call for countries to consider voluntarily channelling unutilized special drawing rights, in accordance with national laws and regulations, to the countries which are most in need, including the middle-income countries, to better support sustainable development and a more inclusive recovery, and stresses the importance of ensuring equal access to such resources, to guarantee timely and universal access to COVID-19 vaccines;

Calls upon the international community to continue to assist developing countries in promoting the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, including through access to medicines that are affordable, safe, efficacious and of quality and through financial and technical support for and training of personnel, while recognizing that the primary responsibility for promoting and protecting all human rights rests with States;

Requests all States, international organizations and relevant stakeholders to support transparency in all matters relating to the production, distribution and fair pricing of vaccines, in accordance with national and regional legal frameworks and contexts, and urges States to take immediate steps to prevent speculation and undue export controls and stockpiling that may hinder affordable, timely, equitable and universal access for all countries to COVID-19 vaccines;

Recognizes the immense logistical challenges posed by the lack of infrastructure for the distribution of vaccines in developing countries, including the least developed countries, and calls for greater assistance and building the capacities of developing countries, including through effective training programmes in vaccine delivery in this regard;

Strongly urges all States to refrain from taking any economic, financial or trade measures that may adversely affect equitable, affordable, fair, timely and universal access to COVID-19 vaccines, in particular in developing countries;

Urges Member States to promote an enhanced response to future pandemics based on experience gained and the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health emergencies of international concern, including by building, strengthening and maintaining the capacities required under the International Health Regulations (2005)¹⁷ and by supporting the ongoing efforts in the World Health Assembly to consider the benefits of developing a World Health Organization convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response, while taking into account all the obstacles that impeded the effective response to, and treatment of, the disease as well as the need for all countries to have unhindered access to vaccines and essential health products;

¹⁷World Health Organization, document WHA58/2005/REC/1, resolution 58.3, annex.

Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session on the implementation of the present resolution.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What other versions does this mandate have?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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