Suerie Moon
Co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute; a leading academic on global health governance and benefit-sharing regimes.
Last refreshed: 12 May 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can the WHO Pandemic Agreement deliver equity without resolving PABS?
Timeline for Suerie Moon
Mentioned in: ECDC counts 11 Andes cases, three more than WHO
Pandemics and BiosecurityMentioned in: Pandemic Agreement still unsigned after one year
Pandemics and Biosecurity- Who is Suerie Moon and why does she matter for the WHO Pandemic Agreement?
- Suerie Moon is Co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, one of the world's foremost analysts of pandemic equity, IP, and pathogen-sharing frameworks; she has argued PABS is the operational core of the WHO Pandemic Agreement.Source: https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/faculty/suerie-moon
- What is PABS and why is it controversial?
- The Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system would require countries to share pathogen samples with WHO-linked repositories and in return receive binding access to diagnostics and vaccines; it remains unresolved because wealthy nations and pharmaceutical companies resist mandatory benefit-sharing terms.Source: WHO Intergovernmental Negotiating Body documentation
- Why did COVAX fail to deliver equitable vaccine access?
- Moon's research documented that COVAX was underfunded, competed with bilateral deals struck by wealthy nations, and lacked binding procurement obligations, producing a two-tier system where rich countries received doses months before the programme could procure them.Source: Moon et al., The Lancet, ACT-A evaluation
- What does the Geneva Graduate Institute do on global health?
- The Global Health Centre at IHEID conducts policy-facing research on health governance, pandemic finance, access to medicines, and WHO reform, with Moon's group specialising in pathogen-sharing and equity in health technology access.Source: https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/globalhealth
- How does intellectual property law affect access to pandemic vaccines?
- Patent protections restrict generic manufacture; Moon's work shows that without mandatory TRIPS flexibilities being activated quickly and uniformly, patent barriers slow vaccine rollout in low-income countries by 12-18 months relative to wealthy nations.Source: Moon et al., BMJ Global Health, TRIPS and COVID-19
Background
Suerie Moon is Co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID) and one of the world's leading scholars on the political economy of pandemic preparedness. Trained in international relations and global health at Harvard, she previously directed research at the Harvard Global Health Institute before moving to Geneva, placing her at the intersection of WHO negotiations, academic analysis, and advocacy on equitable access to health technologies.
Moon's scholarly focus is the structural tension between intellectual property regimes and public health necessity. She has produced landmark analyses of how TRIPS flexibilities have been used and abused during health emergencies, and her work on the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT-A) Accelerator documented the limits of voluntary burden-sharing. She co-chairs coordination on TRIPS Council issues affecting pandemic preparedness, giving her direct institutional exposure to how IP and pathogen-sharing interact in practice.
In the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations, Moon has been explicit that PABS is not peripheral: it is the operational core. Her argument is that access commitments in the treaty body are meaningless unless there exists a binding mechanism obligating countries to share pathogen samples promptly and on terms that do not permit monopoly-holding. She is one of the few analysts who has modelled the downstream consequences of a PABS-less treaty and found them indistinguishable from the status quo.
During the final phase of WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations, Moon was among the most cited academic voices warning that a treaty without a resolved PABS annex fails its central purpose. She has consistently drawn the line between diplomatic progress on the treaty text and substantive progress on equity: the two do not automatically follow each other. Her analysis of pandemic financing gaps complements her PABS work, arguing that even with equitable access rules, low-income countries cannot benefit without sustained pre-negotiated financing mechanisms for vaccine procurement.
