The devastating impact of COVID-19 on states and the international community have exposed significant weaknesses in the international legal framework for dealing with pandemics. Accordingly, the Member States of the World Health Organization have began work on a new international instrument aimed at better protecting people, communities and states from future pandemics and improving global preparedness and response to pandemics, which resulted in the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement with 35 articles, many of them cover issues not previously covered by any international rules.

The provisions of the Pandemic Agreement can be divided into three general categories: the international cooperation approach, the health-based approach and the governance-based approach. During the negotiations, states adopted various positions on each article, such as opposition, divergence, convergence (a stage less than agreement and more than opposition or non-convergence) and agreement. The study of the articles of the pandemic agreement shows that in some cases, international cooperation is a sacrifice to the sovereignty and interests of states. In fact, the provisions of the agreement wherever seek to strengthen, sovereignty, the states have been agreed with them, and wherever there has been a fear of sovereignty being shaken, states have shown reactions such as divergence and opposition.