Knowledge Ecology International
NGO campaigning on access to medicines; proposed new pathogen benefit-sharing text at IGWG7.
Knowledge Ecology International's draft for the WHO pathogen-sharing annex, tabled at talks that collapsed without a text on 17 July 2026, would bind any maker of a registered pandemic product to share benefits, a condition drug makers oppose.
Last refreshed: 4 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Could tying pathogen benefit-sharing to market registration break the PABS deadlock?
Timeline for Knowledge Ecology International
Mentioned in: WHO talks on pathogen sharing fail again
Pandemics and BiosecurityPublished proposed annex text tying obligations to product registration
Pandemics and Biosecurity: PABS annex slips a fourth deadlineBackground
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) is a non-governmental organisation based in Washington DC and Geneva. It was founded and is directed by James Love, and it campaigns on intellectual property and access to knowledge. Its access-to-medicines advocacy goes back to the 1999 push for compulsory licensing of HIV drugs.
In pandemic policy it works on the gap between the countries that supply pathogens and the companies that profit from them. COVID-19 exposed that trade: countries that sequenced new variants first, such as South Africa in 2021, faced travel bans and then waited for vaccines. Industry and many high-income governments prefer samples and sequences to flow freely, with benefit-sharing kept voluntary.
KEI's position sits at the binding end of that argument. KEI wants obligations that attach to the product a company sells rather than to proof that the company used a given sample, which is harder to trace. It carries that position into the talks on the Pandemic Agreement's annex, which must be adopted before the treaty can open for signature.
KEI offers a third route
At the seventh round of WHO annex talks in Geneva, which ended on 17 July with no agreed text, KEI published its own draft. It ties benefit-sharing obligations to a manufacturer's market registration of a pandemic product. The duty would apply whether or not that company actually used shared samples or sequence data.
The draft gives negotiators an option beside the two models already in the room: the Africa Group's federated national laboratories and the European Union's centralised hybrid. Because it hooks obligations to registration, it puts the dispute on who controls the data and the products, not on drafting. The September round closed on 18 September without a text either, so KEI's route is still unadopted and still on the table.
What is Knowledge Ecology International?
What did Knowledge Ecology International propose for the PABS annex?
What other models are being discussed for the PABS annex?
Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Updated 4 October 2026. Editorial standards.