These were my notes from KEI’s intervention on April 30, 2026.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments. This morning, we received the latest version of the Annex. It was 7882 words and 17 pages long, with 450 brackets, and with very little text marked as having reached consensus. And at the opening of this short session, you tell us that the document you shared with does not reflect actual landing zones being discussed.

As KEI and other groups have repeatedly stated, secrecy limits the usefulness of public input, and also undermines trust in the WHO and public health institutions in general. Going forward, we urge negotiators to reduce the secrecy of these talks. You can have Informals, off the record, and no one objects to that. But the plenaries should be public.

On the Annex, the relationship between access to digital sequence information and genetic resources is being discussed in multiple fora, and has taken different directions than the talks here. These negotiations seem excessively focused on the PIP Framework as a model, where the equity provisions are linked to access to access to samples, and enforced through contracts with the WHO.

However, KEI agrees with those who want the equity provisions to be triggered by downstream activities, and in particular, the filing of patents or registering of products, and we also would like governments to assume a role in enforcing the benefit sharing obligations, or providing different measures to address equity, such as meaningful access promoting conditions on relevant government funded for R&D.

Finally, when considering the terms that may be associated with access to digital sequence information, it will be important to consider the legal interoperability with other legal obligations researchers face.