Earlier this week the director of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, lambasted a “torrent of fake news, lies and conspiracy theories” which he claims is jeopardising efforts to negotiate a new treaty to ensure “collective security” against pandemic threats by May. Claims about a “coordinated and sophisticated” disinformation campaign were echoed by the co-chair of the International Health Regulations (IHR) negotiations, Ashley Bloomfield.
Tedros claimed that, under the legally-binding treaty, the idea that the WHO could “impose lockdowns and vaccine mandates” on countries was completely false, since “the agreement is negotiated by countries and will be implemented in countries in accordance with your own national laws.”
Yet these comments, supported by fact-checkers and much of the media, sidestepped and misrepresented legitimate and growing concerns — in the US, UK, New Zealand and elsewhere — about the pandemic treaty. These concerns reflect a profound loss of trust in the legitimacy of the WHO due to critical mistakes made during Covid which have not been seriously addressed.
Firstly, Tedros’s comments that the treaty would not directly cede national sovereignty to the WHO are technically correct but splitting hairs. A pandemic treaty would certainly shape national emergency legislation through the soft power of norm-setting and socialisation. Indeed, studies show that soft power is what makes most legally-binding international agreements effective.
To pick one example, UK lockdown laws — which alarmingly suspended democratic process for two years — were a direct repercussion of the 2005 IHR reforms led by the WHO after the 2003 Sars epidemic. While national governments don’t strictly have to follow the organisation, as we witnessed with the lockdown and vaccine mandate domino effect, elected policymakers will be pushed to adopt stricter national legal frameworks. Coordinated efforts to ensure they are educated about Covid mistakes — impacting civil liberties, human rights and constitutional rights — are unlikely.
A second issue concerns the pandemic strategy of the WHO itself. The lofty rhetoric of the treaty repeatedly claims to ensure that “mistakes” made during Covid are never repeated, and Tedros warned this week that “future generations” may not forgive us if the treaty fails. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO emergencies program, stated on Monday that Covid “ripped apart our social, economic and political systems and became a multi-trillion-dollar problem”.
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