The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently put up a defence of its violation of its own legal requirements by submitting draft amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) for a vote at the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) this May. This was in response to various concerns raised in parliaments and civil society. It matters, because in ignoring legal requirements and rushing a vote the WHO is putting global health and economies at risk, as well as acting like a spoilt child, which suggests the organisation is no longer fit for its mandate.
A rush without reason
For over 18 months, negotiations have been underway at the WHO on two documents intended to change the way pandemics and threats of pandemics are managed, centralising coordination and decision-making with the WHO. As of early May, the amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) and a new Pandemic Agreement are still being negotiated at the Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR) and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) respectively. Despite the WHO being shown to have grossly misrepresented its evidence on the frequency of natural outbreaks and pandemic risk, which have been declining over the past one to two decades, these are proceeding with unusual urgency.
With the COVID-19 outbreak shown to probably result from unnatural means (gain of function research) and a WHO review of the effectiveness of the novel and highly disruptive response not due until 2030, national negotiating teams and the WHO are nonetheless continuing with a paradigm of mass surveillance followed by mass vaccination with vaccines that will not undergo normal clinical trials.
This is clearly inappropriate from a public health standpoint but, perhaps in light of this, is all the stranger in that the WHO is breaking its own legal requirements to go forward with a vote on these in just three weeks time. The WHO still plans for its member states to vote on them in the provisional agenda of the 77th WHA without reference documents.
This planned vote does not respect Article 55(2) of the current IHR that provides:
Article 55 Amendments
1. Amendments to these Regulations may be proposed by any State Party or by the Director-General. Such proposals for amendments shall be submitted to the Health Assembly for its consideration.
2. 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.
Concerns regarding this strange situation have been raised by politicians, academics and grassroots organisations. A recent open letter calling upon the WHO and its member states to halt the planned adoption of both texts has garnered more than 13,000 endorsements of citizens from multiple countries. One European parliament has voted to postpone the votes at WHA and respect legal process (it is, after all, simply sensible to properly review a legally-binding and complex agreement before signing). All 49 Republican Senators signed a strong letter on May 1st calling upon President Biden to withdraw American support to both the draft texts and pointing at the violation of article 55(2).
Perhaps in response to the various concerns raised, the IHR Secretariat recently updated its Q&A online section with a quite imaginative claim that the WHO has fulfilled the requirements of article 55(2), as below:
In fulfilling the Article 55(2) requirement, the WHO Secretariat circulated all proposals for amendments to the IHR on November 16th 2022, some 17 months before the 77th World Health Assembly, which begins on May 27th 2024, when they are proposed for consideration.
In addition, the IHR Secretariat even claimed that it had exceeded the technical requirements under Art. 55(2) IHR by communicating “all proposed changes to these [308] amendments developed by the WGIHR drafting group, to all 196 States Parties, after each WGIHR meeting”.
However, a factual account of the relevant WHO documents easily demonstrates that these claims are flawed. The amendments presented over 17 months ago, by and large, no longer exist. The amendments reached after each round of negotiations have also been largely modified, replaced or deleted. The current amendments are the result of months of revision, bargaining and rewording to change the meanings at the behest of States Parties. To claim that wording that no longer exists and will not be voted on fulfills the requirements for Member States to review a text before a vote, ignoring the text they will actually be held to, calls into question the seriousness of the entire WGIHR process. It is particularly unfortunate and deeply concerning to see a global body like the WHO acting with such disrespect for the people it is supposed to serve, and perhaps says much about the problems that currently beset global public health.
WHO circulated the targeted amendments under its obligation from Decision WHA 75(9) and Decision A/WGIHR/1/5
In reality, when WHO circulated the package of 308 targeted amendments on November 16th 2022, the organisation simply fulfilled its obligation under a Decision of the 75th WHA – Decision WHA 75(9) para 2 (c) – adopted in May 2022.
The 75th World Health Assembly (…) decided (…):
(2) with respect to targeted amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005):
(c) to invite proposed amendments to be submitted by September 30th 2022, with all such proposed amendments being communicated by the Director-General to all States Parties without delay.
This decision invited states to submit their proposals of amendments prior to September 30th 2022. The compilation of the notes verbales (designating an official communication between an international organisation and a state’s Permanent Mission) were published online in both original languages and English, entitled ‘Proposed Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) submitted in accordance with decision WHA75(9) (2022)’. Their cover pages showed that these documents were published pursuant to a decision of the WGIHR at its first meeting on November 14th-15th 2022, as reported in document A/WGIHR/1/5:
3. (a) The Secretariat shall publish the proposed amendments online, as submitted by Member States unless otherwise informed by the submitting Member States; further, the Secretariat shall also publish online an article-by-article compilation of the proposed amendments, as authorised by the submitting Member States, in the six official languages, without attribution of the proposals to the Member States proposing them.
The WGIHR went further than the 65th WHA to detail the mode of communication of targeted amendments – online and in a compilation, in all six official languages. Hence, the online publication of the compilation of the amendments by WHO one day later was the result of these decisions, and not of the application of article 55(2) IHR.
The initial intent of respecting article 55(2) IHR was strangely discarded
In addition, several key documents indicated that at the very beginning of this process, the WHO, WGIHR and IHR Review Committee (an expert panel set up in accordance with article 47 IHR to review the outcome of the WGIHR) were all mindful of the requirements of article 55(2) and had intended to respect it.
Back in October 2022, at its first meeting on October 14th-15th 2022, the WGIHR adopted its method of work (document A/WGIHR/1/4) which set its own reporting and timeline (para. 6):
Pursuant to decision WHA75(9), the Working Group will propose a package of targeted amendments for consideration by the 77th World Health Assembly, in accordance with Article 55 of the International Health Regulations (2005).
Separately, the Terms of Reference of the IHR Review Committee also clearly set the expectation for the WGIHR to reach the final package of amendments by January 2024, which would have given states four months to review them prior to the 77th WHA in May 2024.
December 15th 2023: The Review Committee remains ‘dormant’ during 2023, and it will be reconvened in December 2023, to review the package of amendments agreed by the WGIHR, with a view to submit its final technical recommendations to the DG before mid-January 2024.
January 2024: WGIHR submits its final package of proposed amendments to the DG who will communicate them to all States Parties in accordance with Article 55.2, for the consideration of the 77th World Health Assembly.
The Terms of Reference thus undoubtedly refer to the final package of the proposed amendments, that is, the proposed amendments to the IHR in their final wording in which they should be considered by the WHA.
These documents show that the “package of amendments” ready for review and vote should be the final text of any proposed amendments that the WGIHR was mandated to reach. As the guardian organisation tasked to advise and support both the WGIHR and the IHR Review Committee, the WHO has the duty to advise these to respect the rules, procedures, timelines and mandates. However, the negotiations within the WGIHR still continue less than a month before the vote, with the latest draft released on April 16th. If the WHO still intends to advise the WHA to breach legal requirements at the end of May, a breach of trust of both member states and the public at large will be unavoidable. The WHO will be making a mockery of its internal processes.
Appeal to WHO and 196 States Parties to the IHR to respect article 55(2)
There is currently no increasing frequency of natural outbreaks or pandemics, and the burden of natural outbreaks, relative to other disease burdens, is tiny. Many of the interventions being proposed in the pandemic documents – lockdowns, mass vaccination and widespread ‘whole-of-government, whole-of-society’ economic disruption and human rights removal in response to low burden disease or mere threats – have not been demonstrated to be beneficial. Obvious conflicts of interest that afflict the agreements, with corporate sponsors of WHO being among those who will profit from the proposed approach, have not been dealt with. There is a clear risk that resource diversion will degrade overall health.
Nemo est supra leges – no one is above the law. Our societies are founded on this basis. The respect of the law by leaders and decision-makers must be seen. False claims made in bad faith damage public trust. A sane decision in this case would be to set a new deadline, like end of May, ahead of a new four-month review period. Nothing prevents the WHO from convening an extraordinary session of the WHA later this year to vote on such a final package if reached. What might explain this rush and this contempt to violate article 55(2) IHR? Why does the WHO consider it appropriate that its member states should not have the legally required and expected time to review documents meant to bind them?
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Director of the Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in the USA, Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute.
Dr. Thi Thuy Van Dinh (LLM, PhD) worked on international law in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Subsequently, she managed multilateral organisation partnerships for Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund and led environmental health technology development efforts for low-resource settings.
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When Milliband was last Energy Minister he oversaw the introduction of a scheme whereby you got paid a FIT, a ‘feed in tariff’ if you had solar panels installed. The payments were inflation linked & guaranteed for 25 years. Those of us with a south facing roof & the wherewithal to splash out on the panels have done very well. What’s more, not only do we get paid for every kWh we generate (about £0.65/kWh, adding up to about £3000/year currently), we also get to use the kWs so we don’t have to buy kWh from the grid.
For most users of the scheme they’re now making about a 25% return on their initial investment. It’s all paid for by other utility bill payers who either didn’t have a south facing roof or didn’t have a spare £12k to install the panels to start with.
All told it’s a kind of reverse Robin Hood scheme, money is collected from the poor & given to the rich.
This is the kind of inevitable outcome when you skew markets.
I have a friend who got in on this scheme and he admits to be doing very nicely, thank you, from it. His returns will be even greater because he fitted the panels himself.
My neighbour took advantage of the scheme when it started and now has a healthy supplement to her pension which sould see her through until she is in her 90s.
I self-installed panels so don’t qualify for FIT so donate my surplus power to the grid. I didn’t even get a thank you.
Maybe if they abolished Agenda 2030 and funding Ukraine they could give out free solar panels for those who would benefit.
So glad you are profiting from the money taken out of my pocket and the pockets of other consumers – doesn’t that make you in receipt of stolen property?
Labour governments are very good at using OPM to bribe consumers to see things their way.
See also PFI.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight
(If anyone has a proper video clip of this I’d appreciate a link.)
Just a reminder for people who never saw or have forgotten the advert based on the track.
Many thanks for the reminder. A brilliant advert.
A reminder too of when we had an advertising industry. Now all they can put out is multi-racial, woke drivel, memorable only for the fact that it is ALL totally forgettable.
I’m sure this Cadbury advert could offend someone if they tried hard enough.
RSPCA
Greenpeace
WWF
LGBTQ, plus and thingy
When did you last see an advert on TV with 5 white people in it? —tick tock tic tock tick tock.
2017.
I cheated and used the Interwebs – I’m not actually sure I saw it.
One thing you can say about wind turbines- I think you can still farm underneath them. We need a hell of a storage system which does not exist. There is Dinorwig in North Wales where they hollowed out a mountain, but how many places are suitable for this. Also (along with solar panels) they are not net zero. But we all know this. The thing I want to know though, why are so few new houses being built with solar panels on them? Seems a reasonable solution to me!
Great we (UK? Wales?) can use a hollowed out mountain to store energy in stored hydro power. ‘We’ can lead the world in this brilliant approach. An approach which won’t be followed in the Netherlands (for an example).
Anyway, isn’t the archetypal Bond villain supposed to hollow out a volcano?
It depends what you mean by “few”, but I’ve seen new houses being built with some of the traditional roof tiles replaced by some PV panels. Part of the problem may be that the house layouts are not optimal re. orientation to get the best out of it.
Dinorwig is quite small, but rapid in response to cope with unexpected increases in demand. I guess when it was built, there was an old nuclear station quite close by (Trawsfynydd), so it could soak up the surplus from it from time to time.
why are so few new houses being built with solar panels on them? Seems a reasonable solution to me!
In this area the grid infra-structure seems to have problems coping with bits and pieces of inputs from solar panels. They are looking for big solar farms that will then justify big new connection cables.
“One thing you can say about wind turbines- I think you can still farm underneath them.”
The only sort of farming I have seen beneath windmills is a few sheep and cattle.
“A reasonable solution” to what?
But why plaster a country in thousands upon thousands of huge Industrial Turbines that might only last 25 years, leave yourself with massive blades you cannot recycle and which are not really green at all, and only provide part time energy with no possibility of having base load, when a Nuclear plant tucked away in a corner in various places would provide all the electricity we need 24 hours a day, every day and will last 60 years? —–The reason is IDEOLOGY. We are governed by UN and WEF lackeys and there is no bigger lackey than the cretinous goon Miliband.
We’re not supposed to farm either, so that “plus point” is irrelevant.
Solar power is only useful when combined with a battery to store the power for at least 24 hrs.
I must say that was a very sage talk on Global Mafia Wins Election – UK.
https://windowsontheworld.net/live-shows/
Good article — I am also hearing on the News that ‘Cancers caused by smoking at all time high’…..How do we know the increased rates are from smoking?
That’s because the anti-smoker lobby hopes for more aggressive smoker bans, obviously. After all, a Labour government could pressured into introducing the ones so far and there’s now again a Labour government. I’ve been waiting for that already.
Good point.
Hmm… Wasn’t there a bill going through the UK parliament to ban sale of tobacco to people born after 31 Dec 2008? Which Party was in government then? Yeah, it might as well have been Labour.
The idiot Sunak proposed such a policy, but he got defenestrated before the nonsense could be drafted as a Bill and presented to Parliament.
This has meanwhile collapsed in NZ (or Austrialia, whereever it was introduced) because – not very surprisingly – it turned out to be impossible to implement in practice. But there are a lot of things which could be implemented, especially, yet more drastic tax rises.
Surely you’re not suggesting some other cause?
What a thought:-)
Because they might have to admit it has something to do with a particular ‘vaccine’ and denying people diagnosis and treatment during something we should all forget… move on… called ‘lockdown’.
That’s strange, when the proportion of people in the UK who smoke has gone steadily down since the ’60s and in particular since Blair’s premiership.
But it supports the proposed age-linked ban so facts/evidence are irrelevant.
As they say, you get what you vote for. My conscience is clean. It voted Reform or nothing because a sizable bunch of sceptics didn’t vote at all because voting is giving consent after all.
So the wholesale cost of ‘clean’ energy will go up and up, but since this is Climate Clown World of economics this means retail electricity prices will be halve as promised by Sir Kneel.
There’s a bit missing in the middle there…
Ah, silly me. The money will come from ‘the rich’. Sorted.
I am old enough to remember ‘taxing the rich’ by Labour – 83% top rate, plus 15% supertax on unearned income… only 99%… in the 1960s/70s but the rich had other ideas and exited to friendlier tax regimes.
I struggle to think what would lead to “undoing” other than voters get bored and fancy a change. You’d think Covid would have led to the undoing of all the mainstream parties but it apparently never happened. Anyway, after their 5 or 10 years in power they will be replaced by equally nut zero Tories so it makes no difference.
Let’s hope Farage can shake things up. In Parliament listening to the groans when he told home home truths about that EU stooge Bercow shows what contempt they have for patriotic people. I have said before that he’s not in Mark Steyn’s league or Neil Oliver, Fox etc, but he is better than nothing and I have followed him from around 2008 watching him in those interviews where he’s wiped the floor with these technocrats.
I think the voters missed their chance but hope I’m wrong
Only one Party promised to get rid of Net Zero, the majority voted for the Parties that insisted it had to be done.
Tragic
One of the few things we can look forward to from this Labour/Fabian government, the abject failure of some of their more deluded policies and ministers.
A policy doesn’t just work because you want it to work, even if you really really want it to work!
At least he twied
The PPE graduate [yawn..] who can’t tell the difference between a bacon sarnie and a kilowatt-hour. What qualifications does he have for performing this latest role? Roll on the next CfD auction…
Strange that PPE no longer teaches anything but economics from the perspective of bankruptcy. How to get there fast!
This appointment almost makes Claire Coutinho seem competent. From Order Order.
https://order-order.com/2024/07/10/new-energy-ministers-calls-for-mass-nationalisations-and-free-energy/
This is just nonsense predicated on a world that will never be. Just carry on arguing about the green agenda or the trans agenda. When it hits you it will be like a punch to an unconditioned stomach. Surely you can see that they are just pssing you about.
So Milliband wants further decimation of our wildlife by installing yet more bird/bat chompers. This is supposed to be ‘green’ and environmentally friendly?
When all the chemicals used in the production of the turbines are beyond their use-by-date and are buried in landfill these chemicals will leach into the ground and poison our earth even further.
Turbines and solar panels are more destructive to our plant than coal/gas/oil have ever been.
How infuriating. ————-I saw this article yesterday and could not wait to tear strips of this imbecile Miliband and the phony planet saving Labour Party but alas I could not login. I kept getting this message saying “could not connect to reCAPTCHa” and I spent the entire day “temporarily locked out of Daily Sceptic”———If any moderators are reading this can you please advise what to do when this happens.
Why tell the truth when a lie will do. The Labour gov’t has just spewed their first lie in their first 72 hrs. In office. Excellent start Kier. You have to wonder how many, many more lies we will be faced with. And now we have a secretary of energy and net zero. They just create titles as they see fit, because you sucker will pay their wages. The beginning of a very dangerous regime.
This is the most dangerous cretin in this country. This is the Eco fundamentalist that gave us the Climate Change Act (2008) that has seen electricity bills skyrocket as wind is the most expensive way to produce electricity. You will hear rabid climate change activists tell you that “Wind is now cheaper than Fossil Fuels”. If that is the case how is it that the countries with the most wind turbines in Europe (Germany, Denmark, and the UK) all have the highest prices? ——-The eco socialists and their bought and paid for media are the biggest bare faced liars on the planet.
This Edstone will be Labours Tombstone
‘It is almost offensive in its stupidity,’
There!
For some time I’ve been struggling for a sum-up phrase to describe a plan to commute – spot the analogy coming up – using a car you know will not start on 2 random days a week, requiring you to keep a taxi, meter running, on permanent stand-by,
The plan to rely on wind power is almost offensive in its stupidity.
The Ponzi scheme has to fail quite soon, and it will. The first day there are power cuts due to shortages, Millipede will be gone and the Labour Government will be finished. Today wind and solar are providing about 22% of our needs (a modest 30GW) and gas and nuclear most of the rest. Today we need 5 times as many turbines and solar panels, for a fraction of the maximum demand of the UK, about 55GW. Clearly this cannot work, ever as every acre of Britain will have to have wind turbines and solar panels, and on low wind days this is nothing like enough! Where is the plan of how this will work? I know, there isn’t one, it is all based on “averages” which are meaningless in the context of electricity supply. I wonder if anyone in the Government even knows this? If they do they are covering it up with plain ordinary deceit! Nothing new there then!
All of these green policies are predicated on the fact that burning fossil fuels generates CO2 which causes global warming and results in changing earth’s long term climate for the worse. Money & propaganda has been pushing this narrative for over 40 years. There are now thousands of the world’s top scientists that dispute these claims. Man Made Climate Change is a contested theory. Surely for something like net30, that will transform our world into ways unimaginable, that it would be advisable and prudent to really have an honest scientific based investigation and debate on these contested theories?
Does he have the power to do this Scotland as well? Or are we going to be impoverished by having to end N Sea oil and have our wonderful country further despoiled with wind turbines?