APPEAL TO UNITED NATIONS MEMBER STATES

to convene an Extraordinary General Assembly and for an International Convention to combat Pandemics

Given that:

• the COVID-19 pandemic is at least the fourth major epidemic since the beginning of the century and it has already assumed such proportions as to become the most serious threat to human health since the time of the plague (“Black Death”) in the fourteenth century, which would have killed about 1/3 of the Europeans at that time, while the so-called Spanish flu caused a minimum of 40 million deaths in a world that a century ago was much less populated than today;
• similar concerns were raised about the HIV / AIDS pandemic that arose in 1979, for which there is still no vaccine to date and that the UNAIDS agency data (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV / AIDS) shows that in 2018 there were 770 thousand deaths worldwide, 1.7 million new infections, 37.9 million people living with HIV (or HIV positive), and that 32 million people have died since the beginning of the epidemic.
• it is now necessary and urgent to provide humanity with a structure that, as far as possible, could prevent, reduce and deal with it worldwide, in order to avoid further social inequalities between Nations, and within Nations, especially with regard to treatment and the Right to know

WE CALL ON UNITED NATIONS MEMBER STATES

To convene, in accordance with article 20 of the Charter of the United Nations, an Extraordinary General Assembly on Pandemics, with the aim of adopting an International Convention to combat Pandemics, which establishes common rules in order to prevent the occurrence of pandemics, reduce the spread of pandemics, avoid consequences of further inequalities between Nations, and to reform the WHO in terms of criteria of action, methods, powers and appropriate resources to the objective.