11 countries abstained, including Poland, Israel, Italy, Russia, Slovakia and Iran. Following the vote, the abstaining countries were given the opportunity to explain why they took this decision.
The Polish delegate explained that they could not support the treaty ahead of a domestic review, whilst Russia raised the issue of sovereignty as a concern. Iran’s representative said that “key concerns of developing countries were not addressed,” and that they regretted the “lack of binding commitments on unhindered access and equitable access to medical countermeasures, technology transfer and knowhow, and continued silence on negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on health systems.”
During the high-level segment which preceded the vote, a notable intervention came from the United States which has begun the year-long process of withdrawing from the WHO, and did not take part in the vote.
In a video addressed to the Assembly, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy excoriated the WHO, accusing the UN agency of having “
doubled down with the Pandemic Agreement which will lock in all of the dysfunction of the WHO pandemic response...we're not going to participate in that."It is worth noting that each of the countries that voted yes will have to have their parliaments to ratify this treaty before it can come into effect. It is by no means the same to vote yes at the UN and to have a national parliament agree to it and pass it into national law. Nor is it the same thing to have something ratified by a democratically elected parliament and by a pseudo-parliament like China's and other third world sham assemblies.