Cracks are forming in the World Health Organisation’s plans to secure a vast expansion of its powers and resources. Presented as a necessarily urgent response to the empirically unsupported assertion that pandemics are increasing in frequency and severity, negotiations for a broad package of amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) and a new parallel Pandemic Treaty had been expected to be over by the end of 2023. Having missed that deadline, in late January the Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pleaded for WHO member states to give ground so that the negotiations could be completed at all. In the same comments he sought to apportion blame for the unexpected headwinds on those who had misconstrued, or misrepresented, the benign intentions of the WHO and its key supporters (which include China and some wealthy private organisations).
Reading between the lines, it appears that Mr. Ghebreyesus and his supporters may finally have realised that the game could soon be up: the strength of opposition to the ambitions of this unelected technocratic administration has compounded rapidly in recent weeks. That opposition has become more evident not only in smaller less influential countries, but in countries which are major contributors to the WHO. Significantly this has included groups of politicians in the U.K. and the U.S. who are seriously alarmed by the vision of a WHO-centred ‘command and control’ public health system, and by the constitutional and public spending implications of these two proposed international agreements.
The Director-General has perhaps realised that his blind ambition has not only put at risk the negotiations that might have elevated his unelected advisory organisation to the status of a supra-national rule-making authority, but is also now starting to jeopardise the future status, funding and membership of the WHO.
Secrecy, opacity and delay
The original timeline presented by the WHO had envisaged a final text of the proposed IHR amendments – where many of the most contentious proposals reside – being published before January 27th 2024, with a view to their adoption taking place at the World Health Assembly meeting scheduled from May 27th to June 1st 2024, alongside adoption of the proposed new Pandemic Treaty. That timeline, although tight, would have allowed four months for negotiators to brief domestic stakeholders, for national legislatures to debate the combined proposals and for any necessary pre-adoption formalities (approvals, technical scrutiny, cost/benefit analyses, etc.) to be completed prior to a vote at the WHA meeting in May.
Yet, on its own initiative, in October 2023 the Working Group for the negotiation of the IHR amendments unilaterally moved its own goalposts so that in place of publishing a final draft text to be scrutinised well in advance of that WHA meeting, it instead committed to circulate by the end of January a copy of the original set of proposed amendments and an interim ‘working draft’ text showing the current state of play. Negotiations would then continue between February and April 2024. It was – and remains – ambiguous whether this move was compatible with the procedural legal requirements already enshrined in the International Health Regulations, but perhaps member states quietly agreed with the WHO secretariat not to look too hard at that issue.
Notwithstanding this commitment, no interim working draft of the IHR amendments appears yet to have been published, and the U.K. officials involved in the negotiations have been inexplicably reluctant to reveal the current position of the text. Indeed, to date all demands for transparency by U.K. parliamentarians have been ignored or deflected by the ministers responsible for the U.K.’s relationship with the WHO. Astonishingly the U.K. Government has refused even to confirm who is negotiating on the U.K.’s behalf.
We understand that the IHR Working Group anticipates a final text being settled only during April or possibly even into May, but there remains no official deadline for it to publish that final text. It refuses to confirm what the documents say, and it refuses to say when it will reveal those documents. If any further evidence were needed of the disregard and disrespect for democratic process and the sovereignty of national parliaments now alleged of the WHO, then surely this is it.
Out of time
That corrosive secrecy, opacity and delay has left a vanishingly narrow window for domestic public health organisations and parliamentarians to review or comment meaningfully on what may become generationally-significant changes to the U.K.’s relationship with the WHO, with other countries and with the public health business community. It means Parliament will have scant opportunity to scrutinise the IHR amendments and the new international funding and resource-sharing commitments enshrined in the parallel Pandemic Treaty. Yet these are documents with the potential to impact materially on the U.K.’s ability to act autonomously, on freedom of speech and opinion, on health security and on the nature of U.K. democracy itself. They also have the potential to commit future generations to very significant public spending obligations.
Given their significance, the IHR proposals and the parallel Pandemic Treaty require a commensurate degree of examination by Parliament. The current nature of the WHO’s funding, 85% of which now comes from private commercially-interested organisations, creates an additional imperative for rigorous, investigative scrutiny. In November 2023, Human Rights Watch wrote that:
The draft [treaty] reflects a process disproportionately guided by corporate demands and the policy positions of high-income governments seeking to protect the power of private actors in health including the pharmaceutical industry.
Without sight of any working drafts of the revised IHRs, nor of the current state of the draft treaty, scrutiny is completely frustrated. At this late stage in the process, after repetitive calls for transparency seemingly have been ignored, one is left to wonder whether this is precisely the intent of the officials involved.
Deferral is the rational solution
As the window for full, fair, candid appraisal by national democratically-elected legislatures is now all but shut, the logical and necessary solution is for member states to demand that any vote to adopt either of these two international accords is held over to the next WHA meeting in May 2025. This will allow ample time both for the conclusion of the negotiations and for member state-level scrutiny of the proposals served up by the negotiating teams.
If it is truly the case that the WHO and its member officials do not intend for national legislatures to cede rule-making sovereignty to an enlarged WHO technocracy, they will surely accept the need for state-level legislatures to control the timing of this process. Calls for deferral have begun, but more voices will be needed to press relevant political leaders and officials to accept that deferral is the only legitimate response to this situation.
A turning point
Even now, in the face of a chorus of rational legally-grounded concerns raised by U.K. parliamentarians about the substance of the proposed amendments and the opacity of the negotiations, the Government has remained steadfastly unwilling to comment on its negotiating intent and objectives, beyond vague platitudes. Efforts by members of the public, legal experts and parliamentarians to understand the current state of negotiations, and even just the arrangements within the U.K. Government to conduct the negotiations, have been stonewalled. The WHO equally has remained virtually mute and offered no meaningful evidence to support claims that its ambitions have been misunderstood.
This has served only to fuel distrust in this process, in the Government and its senior officials, in the U.K.’s relationship with the WHO, and in the WHO’s relationship with its influential funding providers.
Behaviour of this overtly undemocratic nature indicates that the WHO project has long since lost sight of its noble foundations in post-war benevolent multilateralism, and indeed of its reason for being: health for all in pursuit of global peace and security. Unfortunately, the WHO is now a symbol of all that is wrong with what has become a system of global public health patronage. This shamelessly undemocratic and chaotic power grab is also indicative of an organisation which has reached the end of its useful life, at least in its current guise. We suggest that this sorry episode should become the impetus for the U.K. to revisit its relationship with the WHO, and the relationship of the WHO with its funding providers.
The U.K. will not be an outlier if it does so, but rather a role model and – judging by the breadth and strength of international expressions of antipathy for the WHO’s ambitions – a leader of fast followers. This may well be the U.K.’s best post-Brexit opportunity to be an actor of global significance on the international stage.
Molly Kingsley is a founder and Ben Kingsley is the Head of Legal Affairs at children’s rights campaign group UsForThem. Find UsForThem on Substack. Ben and Molly’s new book (co-authored with Arabella Skinner) The Accountability Deficit is available now at Amazon and other book stores.
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A completely useless organ, like the UN. No benefit or need whatsoever.
If we had real leadership we would have left both eons ago.
An obvious front door to a World Government – health fascism and tyranny.
Defund it, tear it down, burn it.
In the real world, we don’t have time for the stupidity and fascism of fake scamdemics and magical flying viruses.
Not a single coherent argument exists to have the WHO. None.
Nobody is safe until everybody is safe.
Until everyone is safe, everyone is in danger.
WAAAAAAIT….
Oh, yes, I see what you mean… it’s all a MASSIVE CROCK OF MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT!
Ted , the Tin Pot Terror1st Dictator !
‘….the U.K.’s best post-Brexit opportunity to be an actor of global significance on the international stage.’
Nope
This was it:
‘French President Emmanuel Macron threatened to close France’s border with Britain on Friday if Prime Minister Boris Johnson failed to take more stringent measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak, a French newspaper reported.
On Friday evening, Johnson ordered pubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas and gyms to shut their doors to slow the accelerating spread of the disease, days after other European countries put their citizens on lockdown.’
‘We had to clearly threaten him to make him finally budge,’ the report quoted an Elysee official as saying.
Contacted by Reuters, Macron’s office declined to comment.
But a source close to Macron confirmed there was a phone call between the two leaders on Friday. “The way it’s presented is a bit harsh, but we were indeed preparing to close (the border),” the source told Reuters.’
March 22, 2020
And Bunter blew it…….
March 22, 2020. Three days AFTER the Government had downgraded Covid from a High Consequence Infectious Disease because they KNEW it had low mortality rates.
I have explained the downgrade more than once RTSC. It was not as it seems.
…and, as Hux has pointed out too, they HAD to downgrade to eliminate all potential treatment options like IVM, HCL, antibiotix, Vtd D, etc etc and ensure the EUA could be applied.
Absolutely. I was just too lazy to repeat this once more. Thanks WW.
100%
That, would have been his desired “Churchill Moment”.
Still, he’s did his best to achieve it by ordering Zelennski to cease negotiating peace talks with Putin (allegedly).
Still, whats a few hundred thousand deaths between friends.
Or not really…..
“Johnson was one of the people whom Zelensky listened to – not because of a dependence on him, but because of relations of trust”
Britain’s prime minister hadn’t come to Kyiv to order a termination of the peace deal; this was advice at best, and as such, his scepticism about Russia’s trustworthiness wasn’t unique. There were strong concerns within Zelensky’s closest entourage that the Kremlin wouldn’t stick to an agreement for any longer than it suited its interests.
The risks of signing the Istanbul agreement were high for Ukraine: key provisions, to do with the status of Donbas and Crimea, couldn’t be agreed until a later meeting between the presidents of the two states.
Zelensky and his negotiators’ most important worry about the Istanbul agreement was that “Ukrainian society might not accept such a deal”.
While we don’t know what public opinion was regarding the possible deal in early April, in a survey conducted in mid-May, 82% said that “under no circumstance should Ukraine give up on any of its territory even if it leads to the continuation of the war and threatens its independence”.
Roman Romanyuk: ‘From Zelensky’s “surrender” to Putin’s capitulation. How are the negotiations with Russia going?’ THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2022
Both sides are ‘Soviet’ in mindset, approaching negotiations simply from a position of expediency.
There is no trust whatsoever……
The only way forward for peace is a Military Demarcation Line and Demilitarised Zone, as per the Korean status quo but there is a way to go before that looks interesting to either side.
Putin hasn’t got to Odesa, may never get to Odesa. The U.S. strategy of weakening Russia continues to work well, so, tragic but true, no end in sight…..
I suppose it depends on who you believe, and more importantly, why.
As with so much regarding diplomacy, nuance is all.
It suits Putin to claim the West scuppered any deal. After all, he won’t be ready for a deal until/unless he gets to Odesa.
One of Zelensky’s close associates at the time:
‘Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv: Putin is a war criminal, he should be suppressed, not negotiated with. And secondly, if you are ready to sign any agreements on guarantees with him, then we are not. We can with you, but not with him, he will still abandon everyone’
Putin’s claim, yesterday, that ‘they (Ukrainians) succumbed to Mr. Johnson’s demands or persuasion’ is not quite the same thing.
Ukraine’s response is:
‘The Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Belarus and Turkey in February-March 2022 did not reach an acceptable result for the parties. Moscow tried to persuade Kyiv to surrender. The only reason why Ukraine participated in these conversations was the threatening situation at the front in the first weeks of the full-scale Russian invasion. However, the Defence Forces, having stopped the invaders near Kyiv, relieved Ukrainian diplomats from the need to succumb to Russian diktat. Horrific April footage from Bucha and other liberated cities and villages demonstrates what happens where “hostilities stop” and Russian occupation begins. However, even after that, Kyiv preserved an opportunity for dialogue with Moscow: to stop the war on compromise, not imposed conditions. The only condition on the Ukrainian side was that Russia refrain from another attempt to annex the territory. But Putin did not listen and eliminated any possibilities for negotiations.
In any case, Putin has zero credibility now outside Russia.
A Trump Presidency might get negotiations restarted but negotiations, if they ever take place, will not be entered into in good faith by either side.
This is the Ukrainian view today:
‘Russia and Putin regularly violate all agreements and refuse to comply with international agreements signed by the Russian leadership. By carrying out a full-scale attack on Ukraine, the Russians violated about 400 international agreements. Russia violated the Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Final Act) on the inviolability of European borders. Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum; according to which it, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom, pledged to be guarantors of Ukraine’s security in exchange for the transfer of the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal to Russia. Russia violated the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, On the Ukrainian-Russian State Border, On the Use of the Azov and Black Seas, and hundreds of other agreements with Ukraine. Russia uses international agreements as a weapon against those states with which it concludes them and plays a dishonest game. Negotiating with Russia at the expense of Ukraine means untying Putin’s hands for an even bigger and more terrible war in Europe and on other continents.’
Bill Gates owns the WHO, he is the largest private invester through his various foundations, so he who pays the piper calls the tune as they say. The UK ministers and M.P.’s who are “negotiating” with the WHO have perfectly examplified that we are no longer a democracy, the arrogance and contempt for those who elected and pay their wages is breathtaking, we don’t even know who it is who is selling our country down the river, and to what they are agreeing too.
The WHO like the U.N. the WEF, and the E.U. needs closing down they are damaging the world and its people’s so that a few very rich and mentally ill men and women can play at being Gods.
Stupid lefties. Shows the power of just ‘not joining in’ with their nonsense. Its normally so badly planned and thought through, it is bound to fail anyway.
It may well be badly planned and organised but the Depopulation agenda will still be pushed through.
They will try for sure Hux. They may have already set elements of it in motion, but it will flounder and die on the rocks of reality. The excessively wealthy, the big pharma, the big anything cannot be ‘big’ if there are only 1 in 10 of us left. Indeed the world could not function if 90% of us left. They may have grand visions of the world being some form of paradise in which they can live in some kind of heaven on earth, but who is going to serve their gin and tonic, who is going to make the gin, who is going to grow the barley and juniper to turn into the things they need to make the gin. who is going to make the tractor they need to farm the barley… Lefties never think about second and third stage consequences. Thats why they are always doomed to fail. They will cause huge damage getting to the point of failure, but they will fail.
I hope you are right Neil – ultimately, but the damage before failure could be horrific.
Still not heard any new evidence on the Georgia Guide Stones.
They seemed to have started that in Canada, they are now euthanising people with mental health issues, and they don’t have enough Doctors to carry all these suicides out…Staggering. Eugenics never ended after WW2, the name just got changed to Family Planning.
The Globalists have installed the Brits Jeremy Ferrar as Chief Scientific Officer and Communist Susan Michie as Chief Propagandist ….. both heavily involved in imposing the Covid Tyranny in the UK.
The chances of the Establishment allowing the UK to leave, let alone ignore, the WHO are nil.
“That opposition has become more evident not only in smaller less influential countries, but in countries which are major contributors to the WHO. Significantly this has included groups of politicians in the U.K. and the U.S.”
What about other countries, did Ireland support “this shamelessly undemocratic and chaotic power grab”? Did Germany?
If you have a point try making it coherently. Your question has bee answered, generally, in the quote.
“That opposition has become more evident not only in smaller less influential countries, but in countries which are major contributors to the WHO.”
“This may well be the U.K.’s best post-Brexit opportunity to be an actor of global significance on the international stage”
Yeah instead of leaving it to Africa to save democracy….again!
At last!