A new pandemic treaty is in the works. Countries are negotiating its terms, along with amendments to the International Health Regulations. If ready in time, the World Health Assembly will approve them in May. The deal may give the WHO power to declare global health emergencies. Countries will promise to follow WHO directives. Lockdowns, vaccine mandates, travel restrictions and more will be in the works. Critics say that the agreements will override national sovereignty because their provisions will be binding. But international law is the art of the Big Pretend.
You drive down Main Street. Cars are parked everywhere. The signs say “No Parking” but they also say, “The City does not enforce parking restrictions”. In effect there’s no rule against parking. Laws are commands imposed with the force of the state. Rules without sanctions are mere suggestions. Some people may honour the request, but others won’t. Those who disagree with the rule can safely ignore it. In domestic law, “enforceable” and “binding” are synonyms.
But not in international law, where promises are called ‘binding’ even if they are unenforceable. In the international sphere, countries are the highest authority. Nothing stands above them with the power to enforce their promises. No such courts exist. The International Court of Justice depends on the consent of the countries involved. No international police enforce its orders. The UN is a sprawling bureaucracy, but in the end, it is merely a place for countries to gather. The WHO is a branch of the UN whose mandate countries negotiate amongst themselves.
In the proposed pandemic treaty, parties are to settle disputes through negotiation. They may agree to be subject to the International Court of Justice or to arbitration. But they cannot be required to.
Yet international law jurists insist that unenforceable treaty promises can be binding. “The binding character of a norm does not depend on whether there is any court or tribunal with jurisdiction to apply it,” Daniel Bodansky, a Professor of International Law at Arizona State University, wrote in a 2016 analysis of the Paris climate agreement. “Enforcement is not a necessary condition for an instrument or norm to be legally binding.” Without this Big Pretend, international law would collapse like a house of cards on a windy beach.
All countries are sovereign. They are free to retaliate against each other for perceived wrongs, including breaches of treaty promises. They can seek to have other countries censured or expelled from the international regime. They can impose trade sanctions. They can expel ambassadors. But retaliation is not ‘enforcement’. Moreover, international relations are a delicate business. Aggrieved countries are more likely to express their disappointment in carefully crafted diplomatic language than to burn bridges.
The threat from WHO proposals come not from outside but from within. We live in a managerial age, run by a technocratic elite. Over time, they have acquired for themselves the discretion to direct society for the common good, as they declare it to be.
As journalist David Samuels puts it:
Americans now find themselves living in an oligarchy administered day-to-day by institutional bureaucracies that move in lock-step with each other, enforcing a set of ideologically-driven top-down imperatives that seemingly change from week-to-week and cover nearly every subject under the sun.
These bureaucracies regulate, license, expropriate, subsidise, track, censor, prescribe, plan, incentivise and inspect. Pandemics and public health are the most recent justifications for yet more control.
Domestic governments, not international bodies, will impose WHO recommendations on their citizens. They will pass laws and policies that incorporate those directives. Even an exasperated WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said so in a briefing this week:
There are those who claim that the pandemic agreement and [amended regulations] will cede sovereignty… and give the WHO Secretariat the power to impose lockdowns or vaccine mandates on countries… These claims are completely false… the agreement is negotiated by countries for countries and will be implemented in countries in accordance with your own national laws.
Ghebreyesus is correct. Local and national authorities will not give up their powers. To what extent international commitments will be ‘binding’ on a country depends not on international law but on that country’s own domestic laws and courts. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, for example, provides that the Constitution, federal laws and treaties together “shall be the supreme Law of the Land”. That does not mean that treaties supersede the constitution or federal laws. Domestic legislation and policy will be required for the proposed pandemic treaty and WHO directives to be enforced on American soil. Such legislation is an exercise of sovereignty, not a repudiation of it.
The proposals are not benign. Domestic authorities seek cover for their own autocratic measures. Their promises will be called ‘binding’ even though they are not. Local officials will justify restrictions by citing international obligations. Binding WHO recommendations leave them no choice, they will say. The WHO will coordinate their imperatives as the face of global public health.
The WHO is not taking over. Instead, it will be the handmaiden for a coordinated global biomedical state. Managers hate straight lines. Diffuse, discretionary powers avoid accountability and the rule of law. The global health regime will be a tangled web. It is meant to be.
Bruce Pardy is Executive Director of Rights Probe and Professor of Law at Queen’s University. This article was first published by the Brownstone Institute.
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Not just Americans. Every country. And the more “developed” the more it is like that.
And if I’m perfectly honest, I see no escape from this except when the machinery collapses, as it eventually must. But the misery we will have to endure in the meantime for those of us who just want to be left alone and free to live our lives how we want will be almost unbearable.
Indeed, such a thing is really a dead letter in any individual nation who decides that it is. Especially in the USA. Contrary to what some loose constructionists believe, international treaties do NOT supersede the Constitution.
It is ‘appeals to International Law’ that are now the last home of scoundrels…
“The WHO Pandemic Treaty is ‘Binding’ But it’s Not Enforceable”
As I have posted many times – the rule of law is now a fiction and applies ONLY if it suits those controlling the narrative.
Indeed.
It will be enforced through the UN, WTO, trade agreements, financial flows (or ending them), sanctions, and endless propaganda through the fake news and faker science. Once this signed it will be updated in ’25, ’26, ’27….and if a country does not participate in Rona Scamdemic Part 2 can you imagine the insufferable wailing from the usual cadre of idiots?
“The Science has confirmed that Slovakia, a non-signatory to the world-saving WHO agreement of 2024, is experiencing a mass genocide and rampant death because it refuses the magic mRNA stabbinations, LDs and diapers…the EU dictator VdL warns that the EU will cut off all trade, investment and exchange with the pariah state if it does not follow EU rules and ‘values’…the US DoD has announced that an invasion of the genocidal state might be needed to ‘save democracy from fascism in Europe’….” etc
Absolutely. 👍
Yes it doesn’t matter if the treaty is binding, people like Sturgeon would be in competition with another Boris or that Bit@h from New Zealand whose name is hard to spell. If Sturgeon wan in competition with Sweden on who could be more ‘liberal’ that would be another matter. But fascism is back with the public-private partnerships.
Well, talking from the UK, our bureaucrats will be very keen to implement such measures without any democratic consultation. Look at their track record. The provisions will be silently incorporated into relevant guidelines, policy and legislation in just the same way as the Agenda 2030 Sustainability provisions.
“our bureaucrats will be very keen to implement such measures without any democratic consultation.”
This statement requires NO debate.
Don’t think the Tories will miss the last chance they have to dump a final huge turd on the British people for their controllers before they are booted out.
“The threat from WHO proposals come not from outside but from within. We live in a managerial age, run by a technocratic elite. Over time, they have acquired for themselves the discretion to direct society for the common good, as they declare it to be.”
—–
Precisely, it’s why the “Elite” in the House of Frauds, Parliament, the CS etc use the cover of the ECHR to prevent us from controlling our borders and deporting those who have no right to be here.
It’s why those same people want us signed up to the WHO’s power-grab. It’s so the next time they declare a “crisis” or scamdemic they can remove our Civil and Human Rights; lock us down and claim that they have no choice because the WHO has told them to.
Exactly.
We will not be signing away our sovereignty but when the WHO declares a PHEIC we will make a decision in the House of Parliament to go along with it. Not because the WHO dictates are binding – oh good heavens no – but simply because it will be in our interests to do so. All for the public good. A sort of “save Granny on steroids.”
And when he highlight that demographics suggest that we will be replaced in a few decades, they come up with ‘stirring up racial hatred’ with vague interpretations so you can’t even raise awareness when imported criminals are dumped into a small community. UK Column covered the ‘Hate Legislation’ today.
That is exactly how bureaucrats operate. They are always just doing what they’re told, supposedly. Bit somehow they love it.
Become ungovernable. Voting won’t get us out of this.
Feel free to quote me GDA:
Our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
Is anyone else sick to death of seeing the Gormless face of Tedros the Terror1st !!!…
National Sovereignty is under threat.
“The emerging ‘environmentalization’ of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.” Mikhail Gorbachev
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
UN’s Commission on Global Governance
“Government in the future will be based upon . . . a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise specially trained philosopher/ecologists. These guardians will either rule themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based on their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for the task”
David Shearman [IPCC Assessor for 3rd and 4th climate change reports]
“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument [Kyoto Protocol] of global governance,’…”By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace.”
Jacques Chirac
As part of the WHO Pandemic Treaty their annual budget will go from $3.5 billion of variable donations, a good portion from Gates Foundation, to $33 billion of fixed country payments. Let’s not forget what this is all about. Bill Gates modus operandi, as he has done with GAVI, is to get governments to fund his philanthropic programs, while he still maintains control. Ghebreyesus previously worked for Gates in one of his vaccine organizations and has been put in place by Bill Gates. So now we end up with an Oligarch controlled world wide vaccine delivery organization paid for with your tax money. Just what the world doesn’t need. Gates is currently ranked as the 7th most powerful person in the world, he soon will be number 1. The UK PM does not rank in the top 10.
The Tories are not going to let their controllers down. This may be the last big turd they have the chance to dump on the British people.