Marie-Laure Salles, the director of the Geneva Graduate Institute, says international cooperation needs to be reconfigured around key existential issues, from health to environmental survival. (Geneva Graduate Institute)

Marie-Laure Salles: Students who feel they can no longer study freely in the US are turning to Geneva. The Trump administration’s visa restrictions, anti-immigration policies and widespread attacks on academic freedom are driving more students to universities in Europe, including the Geneva Graduate Institute, according to its director, Marie-Laure Salles. However, Europe isn’t impermeable to the climate of fear, she warns.

⏳LOOMING DEADLINE. WHO member states are down to the wire. Only two weeks of formal negotiations remain before countries hit the May deadline for reaching an agreement on a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (Pabs) system – the penultimate round kicking off this week.

Good thing then that the UN health body’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is confident that countries can put aside their differences and finalise the text on the last remaining jigsaw piece of the pandemic treaty, adopted last year. “There is no scope for delay because the next pandemic will not wait,” he said, cited by Health Policy Watch, at the body’s Executive Board meeting last week.

However, as sources told Geneva Health Files last month, many countries would rather guarantee a good quality outcome, even if that means not concluding negotiations by May’s World Health Assembly. There’s still a long list of outstanding issues – including the level of access to pathogen information, and whether there should be conditions attached; and what kind of database system should be set up for sharing information.

Qasem Alsharari, Saudi Arabia, raising point of order at theUN ntergovernmental Science-Policy Panel n Chemicals, Waste and Pollution’s irst plenary in Geneva, 5 February 026. (IISD/ENB/Mike Muzurakis) Qasem lsharari, Saudi Arabia, raising a point f order at theUN Intergovernmental cience-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste nd Pollution’s first plenary in eneva, 5 February 2026. (IISD/ENB/Mike uzurakis)

🧪UN chemicals panel talks end with little progress as procedural skirmishes eclipse science. Procedural disputes and geopolitical rivalries overshadowed the launch of a body in Geneva meant to assess the science on chemical pollution.

⚕️WHO board nudges US, Argentina breakups forward before big meet Ahead of the World Health Organization's big meeting in May, board members may have granted legal favors to the US and Argentina as they withdraw from the agency.