There has been some confusion in recent weeks as to the timeline and status of proposed amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations, and in particular as to the significance of December 1st 2023. I aim here to clarify the situation and to signal next steps for those of us concerned by the inertia of our parliamentarians in the face of the WHO’s extraordinary ambitions.
Key concerns
A full analysis of the WHO’s original proposals — the only version currently published by the WHO — can be found in this lawyer-prepared briefing note which also addresses concerns stemming from the financial arrangements of the predominantly privately-funded WHO.
The WHO is expected to release new drafts of the legal texts imminently, but as currently drafted the amendments to the IHR and the new Pandemic Preparedness Treaty propose to grant significant new powers of direction and resource allocation to be exercised by the WHO during and in anticipation of international public health emergencies.
The proposals as published would empower the WHO to give binding directions to individual member states and regions, or globally, spanning a broad range of areas including: mandating financial contributions to fund pandemic response activities; overriding and potentially accelerating national safety approval processes for vaccines, gene-based therapies, medical devices and diagnostics; restricting citizens from travelling; and — astonishingly — requiring citizens to quarantine and undergo mandatory testing or even vaccination. The current published draft of the new Treaty includes provisions pursuant to which the WHO could in principle impose significant public spending commitments on member states including the U.K.
To date the IHRs have been structured so as only to grant the WHO the power to issue expressly non-binding recommendations. Unlike the EU legal regime, in which regulations issued at European level can have direct legal effect, binding on citizens and businesses as a domestic national legal matter, the WHO framework would operate slightly differently, albeit with the same intended effect. Specifically, as currently framed, the IHRs would empower the WHO to issue directions which would be binding on member states as a matter of international law, and which would oblige those member states then to implement and enforce the relevant measures at national level.
The significance of this change can barely be overstated, rewiring the relationship between national governments and the WHO and hardwiring into international law a top-down, paternalistic approach to public health. Additional provisions would give the WHO strengthened institutional capacity to globally coordinate and prevent the spread of mis- and dis-information transforming the WHO, effectively, into a a turbo-charged global censorship agency.
With the exception of a small handful of MPs, the majority of U.K. parliamentarians have so far remained oblivious to the threat these proposals signal for U.K. democracy and national autonomy. A reasonable and welcome intervention by the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Steve Brine MP, over the summer was met by an astonishingly evasive response from Health Minister Steve Barclay MP. You can see that exchange, and UsForThem’s letter explaining our continuing concerns, here.
Making this yet more troubling is the fact that suggestions that the proposals stand to make the WHO’s pandemic pronouncements legally binding under international law risk being labelled ‘disinformation’. See for example this ‘fact check’ from the Associated Press, which misleading focuses on the Pandemic Treaty to establish its ‘fact check’ conclusion, while ignoring entirely the proposals to grant powers to issue legally-binding recommendations clearly set out in the main package of original IHR amendments. The counter-suggestion used in that and other articles that the WHO could not in any event enforce against a member state which breached an international law obligation under the new Treaty or the IHRs rings hollow too, as national governments tend to avoid routinely breaching international legal obligations because doing so has serious collateral implications for, e.g., the cost of public borrowing. These types of ‘fact check’ are, in my opinion as a lawyer, misleading and in most cases manifestly incorrect.
Whilst it is the case that any proposals still in draft form might change, the legal effect of the drafts as published is to give the WHO new explicitly binding powers. Among the amendments proposed for the IHRs is a change to the definition of the categories of ‘recommendation’ which the WHO is empowered to issue, explicitly removing the words “non-binding” in each case, and supplementing this with a commitment that WHO member states “undertake to follow” those directions. Although provisions in the pre-amble to the draft Pandemic Preparedness Treaty purport to recognise and assert the primacy of national sovereignty, those preamble statements conflict with the substantive provisions of both draft texts insofar as they envisage the WHO being able to issue directions which member states would — as a matter of international law — be committed to implement.
The December deadline
The December 1st deadline concerned a narrow but significant amendment which the World Health Assembly, at the initiative of the USA, adopted at its meeting in May 2022.
The so-called ‘Article 59 amendment’ shortens the period in which WHO member states are required to give notice that they plan to reject any amendment to the IHRs, from 18 months to 10 months. Though pockets of resistance to the WHO’s ambitions appear now to be growing, the Article 59 amendment looks to have been widely accepted by WHO member states and should therefore become legally effective for most, if not all, including the U.K. and the U.S., in time for the next World Health Assembly in May 2024.
As regards the main package of substantive amendments to the IHRs, which are being negotiated alongside the proposal for a new Pandemic Preparedness Treaty among WHO member states, that package remains under negotiation and the December 1st deadline has no immediate relevance for the negotiation process.
Pockets of resistance
In the weeks leading up to the December deadline, news broke across social media platforms of a series of countries apparently rejecting the WHO’s proposals. In some cases this has involved groups of parliamentarians or other representatives writing to their respective government officials; in others it appears to have involved Government ministers and leaders themselves expressing doubts about the WHO’s ambitions.
What is not yet clear is which if any WHO member state governments in fact submitted notices of a decision to reject and opt out of the Article 59 amendment.
In Estonia, for example, it has been widely publicised that 11 MPs wrote directly to the WHO to express their rejection of not only the Article 59 amendment but also the broader package of IHR amendments and the parallel Pandemic Preparedness Treaty. The legal status of that letter in Estonia is presently unclear, however, because (as reported by journalist Simon Ameba) though the letter purported to exercise Estonia’s right to opt out, it was apparently signed by just 11 of the 101 members of the Estonian parliament.
In Slovakia, the recently re-elected Prime Minister Robert Fico is reported as having said during his party’s conference that his Government will not sign up to the Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, but again whether this reflects the Slovak Government’s official position, and whether Slovakia has expressed its position to the WHO in any formal sense, is not yet clear.
Perhaps most significantly, New Zealand appears to have lodged an urgent reservation with the WHO, in the form of a letter stating that the country will not yet support amendments to the International Health Regulations; effectively a stalling process to allow the incoming Government more time to consider whether the amendments are consistent with a ‘national interest test’ required by New Zealand law. What this might mean in practice is hard to discern: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on one occasion seemed to play down its significance saying “as a new Government, [we] want to be able to take a pause and make sure that it meets a national interest test”, adding that this would not necessarily result in rejection but that “we’re just saying there’s a decision that needs to be made”. However, according to the same report the New Zealand Health and Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry has formally notified the WHO of New Zealand’s reservations about the amendments “in their entirety”.
Reports of resistance among parliamentarians in the Philippines, Australia and South Africa are also emerging, although again the initial reporting has not clarified whether this refers to the Article 59 amendments, to the full package of IHR amendments or to both; and the extent of official support for those positions is not yet certain.
Momentum growing
It is encouraging to see that, while seemingly not yet reaching a level of coordinated action to have prevented the Article 59 amendment taking effect, there is a growing momentum now to question and challenge the WHO’s ambitions to acquire new powers and significant new resources from its member states.
That is momentum on which U.K. parliamentarians could certainly now capitalise, with support from the public, to persuade the relevant Government Ministers at the FCDO and the DSHC (a number of whom have recently been appointed) to apply a more critical mind to the Government’s apparent assumption that the U.K. wishes to remain a core advocate for the WHO and to support its coronation as a global public health authority.
The main package of amendments to the IHRs
At its last meeting in Geneva, the IHR Working Group acknowledged that it will not have reached a point of agreement in time for a final set of amendment proposals to be circulated to member states before the end of this year, as had originally been planned.
That caused a minor legal headache for the WHO because Article 55 of the IHR requires that “The text of any proposed amendment shall be communicated to all States Parties by the Director-General at least four months before the Health Assembly at which it is proposed for consideration”. This had been thought to mean that a final draft of the IHR amendments needed to be circulated by mid January at the latest. Fortunately, for the WHO at least, its head lawyer was able to conclude on a technical reading that this did not matter, as long as the WHO had circulated to member states before January 2024 both the original set of proposed amendments and a more recent interim version of those amendments.
So the current plan is that an interim draft version of the IHR will be circulated to all member states (and — we must hope and expect — published for us all to see) at or around the time of the next IHR Working Group meeting, which is scheduled to take place in Geneva later this week on December 7th and 8th. Negotiations will then continue between December and April 2024, in anticipation of the final draft text of the amendments becoming available probably only during May, leaving most likely just a few weeks for member states to decide whether to vote in favour of the package at the 2024 World Health Assembly scheduled to run from May 27th to June 1st 2024.
If that package is then adopted by a simple majority of member states at the WHA, the amendments will become binding under international law with effect from May 2025 in all member state countries that do not opt out of those amendments by March 2025 (10 months after adoption, on the basis that the Article 59 amendment has taken effect).
While these are encouraging signs, the dam is far from breaking and if the next drafts of the proposals reveal that widely-held concerns persist, as we expect to be the case, there will be a critical three month window early next year in which to rally parliamentarians and decision-makers in the U.K.
Ben Kingsley coordinates the strategic legal aspects of UsForThem’s campaigns, having completed a career as a partner in the law firm Slaughter and May advising on regulatory, financial crime and commercial law. His new book, coauthored with Molly Kingsley and Arabella Skinner, The Accountability Deficit: How ministers and officials evaded accountability, misled the public and violated democracy during the pandemic is available now at Amazon and other book stores. This article was first published on the UsForThem Substack page. Subscribe here.
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Marianna Spring can be briefly heard on this BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast this morning, ‘AntiSocial – Covid vaccines and misinformation’ – but don’t let Marianna Spring put you off, I said ‘briefly’ and it is in fact an excellent programme, in which Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill is given the opportunity to make his case for free speech, and the presenter, Adam Fleming, makes a genuine attempt to be fair to all sides.
The whole series of ‘AntiSocial’ programmes on BBC Radio 4 are surprisingly fair and excellent, not the usual BBC propaganda, but much more open, and are well worth listening to.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001k837
Wild horses wouldn’t drag me to a BBC programme on misinformation. I wonder how many thousands of Roberts radios (other brands available) have been switched off for good over the last 3 years of unabating BBC propaganda.
Very much in agreement on point one and sadly I’m one of the thousands with a Roberts radio that hasn’t been switched on for the best part of three years.
“The originator of the New World Order conspiracy theory almost certainly believed his.”
Lol. Imagine a world in which powerful people globally talked to each other, shared information and collaborated (when it suited them) in order to further their own wealth and power, and pretended that everything they were doing was for the public good. Only a loony would imagine such goings on.
See Piers Morgan and his pitiful ‘apology’.
Speaking of disinformation, isn’t that all we’ve been bombarded with these past 3 years? So with that in mind, here’s a 13min video illustrating some prime examples of disinformation being spouted by Moderna’s CEO, Walensky, Fauci and more, plus more on the clot shot harms, with a particularly unpleasant clip at the end which is basically child abuse, in my opinion.
https://rumble.com/v2ek51m-who-killed-trista-rand-paul-grills-moderna.html
Misinformation, disinformation and fact checking are weapons used by established, traditional media to suppress competition which has flourished online and in social media.
It’s simple old fashioned gangster tactics used to defend “their turf”.
What’s the point of pretending its anything but that? They aren’t presenting an honest argument so why even pretend they are?
Well put. No one seems to ask the question of how all us middle aged people, who were apparently bombarded with mis and disinformation in the years prior to the internet still have functioning brains.
I was told that Freddie Star had eaten a hamster yet I, and many others, didn’t need a middle class public school educated ‘intellectual’ such as Marianna Spring to allow us to disseminate such information.
The arrogance of these people is simply breathtaking, that they alone are so intellectually superior to everyone else that only they can decide what you and I can and cannot see.
I had a small interaction with this woman on twitter who airily dismissed my question as to why, as a Paramedic, I’d not seen a single serious Covid case. She wasn’t curious but simply explained to me that my observations were incorrect because the doctors HAD seen lots of these patients and as Doctors are far more trustworthy than Paramedics I was simply wrong!
I don’t think it is arrogance. They are just paid gatekeepers used to try to control the public discourse so as to support undemocratic narratives.
Misinformation and disinformation are just two of the most recent words to be subjected to ludicrous redefinition by government, institutions and authoritarians.
It has been done to corrupt the true meaning of the words in order to provide the so called elites an opportunity to weaponise language and bolster their cynical psychological projection onto others.
What it appears to mean is a comfortable little box that people draw around themselves, and within which they can unquestioningly for or against something, without anyone forcing them to think about its consequences or alternatives.
Excellent.
Questions are raised given the sheer amount that we have been able to discover in recent years and the concommitant understanding of how much is hidden. The main focus should be, where is a person now. That system is well and truly dead and not just dead but targeted for destruction. If you want to put as much distance as possible between them and you then you need to align yourself with the forces of goodness and beauty and truth. The bickering over the past leave it to them. Let the dead bury the dead.
Stupid cow.
Frome here on in who knows but it certainly isn;t the BBC. We are talking about months not years left of our culture. I hope you are savouring the last if it because if you have clear vision you can see exactly where it is going. I think the nasty English weather will help us with endurance.
I think everything that is happening is part of a grand project that involves the destruction of European Christian civilisation and the eradication of Europeans.
I was born in 61 and it seems to me it was happening fairly slowly, in second gear, (although decimalisation and metrication were acts of gross local cultural vandalism) until 97, when they went up a couple of gears.
After the election in 2019 they went up another couple of gears.
(I’m not aware of any cars with 7 gears,so my analogy will fail with the election of Labour next time!)
Certainly the destruction of the west is foremost for them. And to be honest they have largely achieved it by surrepititious means. The have moved very far forward since 1945. It is our job to tell them here and no further. We are here to restore a basic simple understanding and we will brook no quarter.
The very use of the terms misinformation and disinformation are offensive in themselves. This is simply pandering to the Orwellian language which is being foisted on us. In reality a twisted way of encouraging people to view the world through the vocabulary of the oppressors. I’m having none of it.
Misinformation is a mix up and disinformation is telling lies. End of.
The issue is the lateness of the hour. We aren’t just naive young bucks learning for the first time that things aren’;t as they seem.We are deeply involved in a war and all of our names are on the missiles.I would just ask for a bit more circumspection because in miltary terms we cannot win and to pretend otherwise is just stupid.
I can’t make anyone feel happier but as long as we gel with our intentions then we’re good to go.I genuinely want to keep this country and this culture alive no matter what.We try our best and see what happens.
All you need to remember is that when your country starts using depleted uranium then all optipns are on the table. Don;t imagine that because you’re an island that you will be safe forever from retaliation.Depleted uranium causes major environmental damage and severe birth defects in civilian populations and civilian injuries generally. This was all listed in a 1990s UN report. This is a very serious matter and you won’t be able to brush it under the carpet for long.
Of course the BBC should not have a misinformation correspondent. It is like they employ their own fact checker. The BBC as arbiters of truth, don’t make me laugh. Pure hubris and an insult to our intelligence.
Check out funding for BBC Media Action…including funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
We need to unplug from the BBC forever
*****
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Ditched my BEEB license, 3 years ago and loving it. Have you heard and the latest corruption of Great Expectations with a black Estella. Renamed ” Great Exploitation “. I kid you not. Remind us about the Anne Boleyn fiasco
There is “truth” and there is “Official Truth”.—– There is “Science” and there is “Official Science”. ——-If someone says there is no such thing as an elephant then that would clearly be misinformation as most of us have seen elephants, even if only on TV. ———————–But NO ONE has seen “Climate Change”. You cannot look out of your living room window and say “Oh look at all the climate change”. ——–An individual might think they have seen it. They might feel a hot day and assume that is climate change. They may see a heavy downpour and think that must be climate change. They might hear about some ice melting and assume yep, that is climate change. ———–But those are all assumptions. But when officialdom tells you that those assumptions represent “Truth” then that is misinformation. They are “Official Truth”. ——————Climate Change is therefore “Official Science” in support of Public Policy.