The COVID pandemic revealed serious flaws in the response to a major health crisis. In an attempt to remedy this, and recognizing that future pandemics are inevitable, the World health Assembly (WHA) decided to prepare a Treaty to respond to future pandemics. One of the central issues for the WHA in May/June 2024 was the negotiation of this treaty. Discussions around this treaty have been tense and have so far been inconclusive. To ensure that the errors and injustices committed during COVID-19 can be effectively remedied, negotiations should be conducted with greater ambition, particularly with a view to establishing a binding international treaty. To make progress towards achieving this goal, the revision of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), which enables the drafting and negotiation of a convention, an agreement or another WHO international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and of the International Health Regulations (IHR) must go hand in hand. These two parallel processes on very similar issues often led to overlap and even confusion, for example over which document discussed which issues. The two and a half years of negotiations around the INB with relatively little progress compared to the challenges that a new pandemic could pose to the world, and the mediocre results of the IHR 2024 revision confirm the impasse in which the multilateral system finds itself.