NEW YORK, Sept. 25 -- The applause in the United Nations General Assembly hall on Thursday lasted less than a minute. One hundred and ninety-three countries had just adopted, by consensus, a political declaration committing their governments to more coordinated, more equitable pandemic preparedness. It was a diplomatic achievement. The problem is that the single mechanism designed to enforce the equity part: the clause that would legally compel pharmaceutical companies to share vaccines with the world's poorest countries in a future crisis, is still unwritten.

The declaration, adopted at the Second High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, co-facilitated by Armenia and Rwanda, calls for "timely completion" of ...