by Frances Martel, Breitbart:
World Health Organization (W.H.O.) member states will pursue amendments to its core legal document, the International Health Regulations (IHR), in Geneva this week, including provisions to make wealthier states invest more money in W.H.O. programs.
On Monday, the W.H.O. began the first day of its annual global gathering, the World Health Assembly (WHA), and is expected to convene through June 1. The push for amending the IHR, the core provisions of which were last updated in 2005, follows the collapse of talks among member states to draft an agreeable global document governing how to handle pandemics. The “pandemic treaty” – officially the “W.H.O. convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” or “WHO CA+” – is a hypothetical international legal document that critics have complained could grant the W.H.O. powers that challenge the sovereignty of member states.
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W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has aggressively rejected all criticism of the WHO CA+ as the result of “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories,” calling the empowering of the W.H.O. to address public health emergencies “itself an exercise of sovereignty.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
The absence of an agreed-upon draft of the “pandemic agreement” at this year’s WHA redirects the energy of those seeking to empower the W.H.O. in light of its glaring failures during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic towards the IHR. Voice of America observed on Monday that the “proposed amendments to the IHR, including adding more nuance to a system meant to alert countries to potential health emergencies of global concern, might have a better chance of being adopted during this week’s assembly, observers said.”
The IHR, unlike the pandemic “treaty,” is an existing document that W.H.O. member states, including America, have already signed onto. The administration of leftist President Joe Biden has been actively involved in attempting to amend the IHR since at least 2022.
US President Joe Biden attends the NAACP Detroit Branch annual “Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner” in Detroit, Michigan on May 19, 2024 (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images).
Also unlike the pandemic agreement, on which little progress has been made since initial proposals to craft such a document began in 2021, the W.H.O. has since successfully amended the IHR. Following the 2023 WHA, member states changed the text of Article 59 of the IHR to specify that the W.H.O. has a 12-month deadline from when amendments have been adopted to formally implement them. The change is markedly less dramatic than amendments proposed by the Biden administration in 2022 to strengthen the W.H.O.’s ability to declare a pandemic.
Health Policy Watch, an industry publication, reported on Sunday that the co-chair of the IHR working group was hoping to finalize amendments to the document during 2024’s IHR.
