The Trump administration withheld support from a proposed United Nations pandemic preparedness declaration, citing unresolved pathogen-sharing negotiations and contested language, leaving the nonbinding document without the consensus expected at a Sept. 25 General Assembly meeting.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
NEW YORK — The United States declined to support a proposed United Nations declaration on pandemic preparedness Friday, joining several countries that raised objections and preventing the nonbinding document from receiving consensus approval during a high-level meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.
The Trump administration said portions of the proposed declaration remained unacceptable because they referred to unresolved international negotiations and contained terminology the United States considers insufficiently defined.
The dispute unfolded during the second U.N. high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, held Sept. 25 at U.N. headquarters in New York during the General Assembly’s 81st session.
The gathering had been expected to culminate in approval of a political declaration developed through intergovernmental negotiations. Instead, objections by the United States and several other delegations prevented consensus, and the declaration is expected to return to the General Assembly for further consideration. The World Health Organization said after the meeting that the document would be forwarded to the assembly rather than considered adopted.
“The United States is not in a position to support this text in full,” the U.S. representative said during the meeting, according to Health Policy Watch.
The representative cited “divisive ideologies that lack definitional consensus” and the declaration’s references to continuing negotiations over a pathogen access and benefit-sharing system.
Despite rejecting the text as written, the United States said it remained willing to cooperate internationally on disease threats and would work with partners to strengthen preparedness and “stop dangerous outbreaks at their source.”
The meeting was convened under General Assembly Resolution 79/333, adopted in 2025 to establish the scope and format of the second high-level pandemic preparedness meeting.
Its stated theme called for a multilateral and intergenerational approach guided by “equity and solidarity.” U.N. materials described the meeting as an effort to assess progress since a previous political declaration adopted in 2023 and strengthen national and international preparedness for future pandemics.
The proposed declaration addressed surveillance, laboratory capacity, emergency coordination, financing, health systems and access to vaccines, diagnostic tests and medicines. Because it is a political declaration rather than a treaty, the document itself would not create legally binding obligations on the United States or other countries. Reporting on the failed consensus described the text as nonbinding.
One of Washington’s principal objections concerned references to the proposed Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system, known as PABS.
The system is being negotiated as an annex to the WHO Pandemic Agreement and is intended to establish a framework under which countries rapidly share pathogens with pandemic potential and related genetic information while also providing for the sharing of benefits that can result from their use, including vaccines, diagnostic tests and therapeutics.
Negotiations remain unfinished. WHO member states agreed earlier this year that additional time was necessary, and discussions continued through July and September without a final PABS annex.
The continuing negotiations were significant to the U.S. objection because the Pandemic Agreement itself cannot yet move into its signature and ratification stage. WHO states that after the PABS annex is completed and adopted by the World Health Assembly, the complete agreement can be opened for signature and consideration of ratification by individual countries under their own constitutional procedures. It would enter into force after 60 ratifications.
WHO member states adopted the Pandemic Agreement on May 20, 2025, after more than three years of negotiations. The United States was already withdrawing from the organization and did not participate in finalizing the agreement. The World Health Assembly adopted the accord after a committee vote of 124 in favor, none opposed and 11 abstentions, followed by adoption in the full assembly.
The agreement contains language expressly addressing sovereignty. Its text states that it does not give the WHO Secretariat or director-general authority to order countries to change domestic laws or policies or impose requirements such as lockdowns, vaccination mandates or restrictions on travelers.
The Trump administration nevertheless chose not to participate.
On the day the agreement was adopted, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a video statement that the agreement would “lock in all of the dysfunction of the WHO pandemic response” and reiterated that the United States would not join it.
Kennedy had also accused the organization of failing to operate independently from member-state political pressure.
“Not only has the WHO capitulated to political pressure from China, it’s also failed to maintain an organization characterized by transparency and fair governance by and for its Member States,” Kennedy said in remarks released by HHS in May 2025.
The administration’s rejection of Friday’s declaration follows a series of steps Trump initiated immediately after beginning his second term.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14155, beginning the process of withdrawing the United States from the WHO.
The order cited what it called the organization’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic,” its failure to make reforms and concerns about political influence from member states.
Trump’s order also criticized the amount the United States paid to the organization compared with other countries, stating that China “contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.”
WHO records show the United States contributed $1.284 billion through assessed and voluntary contributions during the organization’s 2022-2023 budget period, making it the organization’s largest donor during that biennium.
An earlier Congressional Research Service analysis showed that for the WHO’s 2020-2021 core budget, the United States was assessed 22% of mandatory contributions, compared with 12% for China and 8.5% for Japan. Those percentages concerned assessed contributions and did not account for the separate voluntary funding countries could provide.
Section 4 of Trump’s withdrawal order directed the secretary of state to stop U.S. negotiations involving both the Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations. It also stated that actions taken to implement either instrument would have no binding force on the United States.
The administration followed that directive in July 2025 when the State Department and HHS formally rejected the 2024 amendments to the International Health Regulations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kennedy said the action would “protect our national sovereignty” and prevent international officials from influencing U.S. domestic health policy.
Their joint statement said the administration objected to provisions it believed could permit unwarranted international influence over national policymaking and criticized the process by which the amendments were negotiated. HHS said the United States transmitted its formal rejection on July 18, 2025.
The administration also asserted that the amendments failed to address concerns about the WHO’s vulnerability to political influence and censorship, “most notably from China.”
The United States formally completed its withdrawal from the WHO on Jan. 22, 2026.
In a joint statement announcing the completed withdrawal, Rubio and Kennedy said Washington would instead pursue international health security using “direct, bilateral, and results-driven partnerships.”
HHS said U.S. funding and staffing for WHO initiatives had ended and that future contact with the organization would be limited to matters associated with the withdrawal and protection of U.S. health and safety.
The administration subsequently began developing direct health agreements with individual countries. The State Department announced bilateral health agreements under its America First Global Health Strategy, with arrangements covering such areas as disease surveillance, health systems and outbreak preparedness.
The State Department said in December 2025 that it planned multiyear agreements with dozens of countries receiving U.S. health assistance. The agreements were designed to move more responsibility to partner governments while maintaining systems for epidemiological monitoring, medical supplies and frontline care.
The United States was not the only delegation to raise objections to Friday’s U.N. pandemic declaration.
Italy said it could not support the text and reiterated its opposition to both the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the 2024 International Health Regulations amendments. Italian representatives argued that those measures risk expanding the WHO’s role beyond what Italy considers the organization’s proper mandate and could intrude on national sovereignty, according to Health Policy Watch.
Italy also objected to terminology including “infodemic management,” “misinformation” and “disinformation,” arguing that the terms lack internationally agreed definitions.
The European Union expressed support for the broader objective of strengthening pandemic preparedness but objected to portions of the declaration concerning intellectual property and compulsory licensing of health products during emergencies.
The EU called for technology transfers to remain voluntary and based on mutually agreed terms. Germany raised similar concerns and also sought greater emphasis on prevention.
India warned that the declaration should not predetermine the outcome of the unfinished PABS negotiations.
China and Russia delivered statements during the meeting without announcing a position on whether they supported the declaration as written, according to reporting on the negotiations.
Those objections meant the declaration could not receive the consensus adoption that organizers had anticipated.
General Assembly President Khalilur Rahman said the proposal retained broad support but acknowledged that “there continue to be some observations.”
Member states would consider the document further, he said, without announcing a date for the next action.
Health Policy Watch reported that the declaration could eventually be put to a General Assembly vote, potentially later in the session. WHO stopped short of identifying a date, saying only that it expected the text to be forwarded to the General Assembly for further consideration.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who supported the proposed declaration, urged countries at the meeting to complete the PABS negotiations, calling the unfinished annex the remaining major element needed before the Pandemic Agreement can proceed toward signature and ratification.
The result leaves two separate international pandemic initiatives unfinished from the U.S. perspective: the U.N. political declaration remains unadopted, while the WHO Pandemic Agreement awaits completion of its PABS annex before countries can begin signing and ratifying the accord.
The Trump administration, which is no longer a WHO member, has maintained that the United States can cooperate on international outbreak detection and response without joining those frameworks, while the WHO and countries supporting the agreements argue that coordinated international systems are necessary because infectious diseases can spread across national borders.
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