by Michael Nevradakis, Global Research:
The United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly (UNGA) president today approved the non-binding U.N declaration on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPPR), without a full assembly vote and over the objections of 11 nations.
Critics called the declaration, which seeks to create a global pandemic authority with the power to enforce lockdowns, universal vaccination and censorship of “misinformation,” “hypocrisy” and “unhinged.”
The approval came as part of a high-level meeting on PPPR. But what does the declaration mean in practice?
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For proponents, the declaration is a key step toward global coordination in pandemic prevention and public health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it “presents an opportunity … to prevent and prepare for pandemics and their consequences, using an approach that involves all government sectors.”
The WHO also said the PPPR aims to “apply lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic” and “comes as the world faces multiple humanitarian and climate-related crises which are threatening lives and livelihoods around the world.”
In a statement, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “If COVID-19 taught us nothing else, it’s that when health is at risk, everything is at risk.” He linked the PPPR to the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), saying world leaders should “show they have learned the painful lessons of the pandemic.”
Attorney Lawrence Gostin, head of Georgetown University’s WHO Collaborating Center — a key figure “playing a key behind-the-scenes role in negotiations” for the proposed “pandemic treaty” and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) — said the high-level meeting “is our best chance to gain support and deep engagement of heads of state and government.”
‘Unprecedented’ Agreement Comes at Expense of National Sovereignty
Other experts took a different view. Author and podcaster Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, told The Defender it is “very worrying” that the U.N. and WHO “will further encourage, if not actually authorize, the kind of standing capability or authority on their part to essentially dictate what constitutes emergencies.”
“There’s no getting around the fact that it’s going to come at the expense of the sovereignty of the various nations that will subsequently be told that they have an emergency and told what they have to do about it,” he added. “This is unprecedented.”
Gostin said “Negotiators are at a loss” as to how to balance accountability and sovereignty when implementing instruments like the PPPR, IHR or “pandemic treaty.”
Writing for the Brownstone Institute, Dr. David Bell, a public health physician, biotech consultant and former director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund, said “the main aim” of the PPPR “is to back” the “pandemic treaty” and IHR amendments currently under negotiation by WHO member states.
Bell said a “silence procedure” is in place, “meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text.” He said the text is “clearly contradictory, sometimes fallacious, and often quite meaningless,” and intended to centralize the WHO’s power.
Bell told The Defender, “The declaration was not written with serious intent, but is essentially empty rhetoric promoting a continued centralization of control that the U.N. and WHO are openly seeking, at the expense of democracy, human rights and equality.”
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert and professor of international law at the University of Illinois who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, agreed. “The same people who drafted the pandemic treaty and the IHR amendments drafted the PPPR document,” Bell told The Defender.
“This is a full-court press to have the entirety of the United Nations Organization, its specialized agencies and its affiliated organizations, back up and support their proposed globalist WHO worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state,” he said.
Today’s high-level meeting included scheduled speeches from 158 national representatives, including the presidents or prime ministers of 34 countries and, representing the U.S., Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Panelists included German Minister of Health Dr. Karl Lauterbach and representatives of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
What Does the Declaration Mean for You?
The final text of the PPPR political declaration, dated Sept. 1, includes statements and proposals covering a range of issues, from vaccination to so-called “misinformation.”
Screenshot of the PPPR Political Declaration from the UN
According to the declaration, “pandemics call for timely, urgent and continued leadership, global solidarity, increased international cooperation and multilateral commitment … to implement coherent and robust national, regional and global actions, driven by science … to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”
Stating that “health is a precondition for all” and an indicator of “sustainable development,” the declaration calls for:
- Universal vaccination: The declaration expresses “deep concern” about declining global vaccination rates, and includes a commitment supporting “research and development of vaccines and medicines, as well as preventive measures and treatments for communicable and non-communicable diseases.”
“Routine immunization is one of the most efficient and cost-effective public health interventions with the greatest reach and demonstrated health outcomes,” the declaration states, while highlighting the ”important role played by the private sector in research and development of innovative medicines,” including vaccines.
It calls for the improvement of “routine immunization, vaccination and outreach capacities, including by providing evidence-based information on promoting confidence, uptake, demand” and “expand[ing] vaccine coverage to prevent outbreaks as well as the spread and re-emergence of communicable diseases.”
- Makes “temporary” COVID-19 powers permanent: The declaration expresses “concern with the continued emergence and re-emergence of epidemic-prone diseases,” stating “the need … to build on the lessons learned and best practices from the COVID-19 pandemic,” including “turning, where appropriate, temporarily scaled up capacities” developed during the pandemic “into permanent capacities in a sustainable manner.”
- Calls for increased surveillance and digital health documents, such as vaccine passports:The declaration “recognize[s] … the potential of digital health technologies” in “implementing and supporting health measures and bolstering national response efforts” to pandemics and health emergencies.
Digital technologies such as vaccine passports are a key component of the under-negotiation IHR amendments. The declaration, in turn, also states a need for “early warning systems” and “an integrated One Health approach,” for “the earliest and most adequate response” to pandemics and health emergencies.
- Potential social media censorship: The declaration expresses “concern that health-related misinformation and disinformation negatively impacted routine immunization services globally.”
Accordingly, the declaration calls for “measures to counter and address the negative impacts of health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization, especially on social media platforms … including countering vaccine hesitancy … and to foster trust in public health systems and authorities.”
- Calls for “pandemic treaty” and IHR amendments to be finalized: The declaration “encourages” the conclusion of negotiations on the IHR amendments and the “pandemic treaty,” suggesting that this will ensure “the sustainable, affordable, fair, equitable, effective, efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures,” including vaccines.
- You will pay for this: The declaration “Welcome[s] the launch of the Pandemic Fund” to “finance critical investments” for pandemic preparedness and response, at a cost of $30 billion per year. This price tag includes an “estimated gap of $10 billion in new external financing per year outside current official development assistance levels” — namely, dues paid by WHO member states.
According to Bell, “The WHO noted in 2019 that pandemics are rare, and insignificant in terms of overall mortality over the last century” but, “The WHO and the entire U.N. system now consider pandemics an existential and imminent threat.”
He said this is important, because “They are asking for far more money than is spent on any other international health program,” which will “deliver great wealth to some people” and great powers for governments, which can be used to “reimpose the very responses that have just caused the largest growth in poverty and disease in our lifetimes.”
