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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One of many side effects of politicising health issues, perhaps. Ignorance and misunderstanding being root causes.
Yes, it’s true. More countries are heading in the right direction, both figuratively and politically;
”Hungary has built a fence and does not allow social (welfare) tourists to enter Europe unchecked. Hungary protects Germany and Austria from further chaos. So, what does the conglomerate of mentally ill lawbreakers in Brussels do in response? It obliges Hungary to pay a massive fine. These previous sentences were delivered by Austrian politician and commentator Gerald Grosz in a statement, but they describe the EU’s mishandling of the problem of illegal immigration so succinctly and accurately that any sane patriot could have said them. Today, the situation has become so much better that more and more people dare to take on their attitude in public, agreeing with the Hungarian position all over Europe.
It is no coincidence that the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) won a historic victory on Sunday in the election whose central theme was illegal migration. Our neighbor has seen unbearable conditions develop in the big cities, for example, more than half of the students in Viennese schools do not know the German language. Whoever forms a government must radically change the current migrant policy, otherwise serious social conflicts may break out, the consequences of which are unforeseeable.
The situation is similar in several EU member states. In the Czech Republic, Andrej Babiš’s party, ANO, won the Senate election by a landslide. Although their strengthening does not bring an immediate change in the Czech migrant policy, it is still a very important development. It is no coincidence that Viktor Orbán concluded his congratulations by saying, “They can tremble in Brussels, the Patriots are coming.”
https://rmx.news/article/patriots-are-advancing-across-europe/
The narrative of the global elite, with its promotion of multiculturalism, wokism, leftism will hopefully trigger a self-preservation defense mechanism in the population.
I remember Vienna from the 80’s. It was a chocolate-box image of affluence, peace and safety. Apparently it’s not like that any more. I suppose some Austrians have started asking the question why.
Killed in a car crash in 2008? That’s a really cute way to word it. Crashed his car against an obstacle on the way back from a Cocaine-fuelled orgy at a certain Gay club is more realistic description. Not quite the kind of political leader we ought to be looking forward (or back) to.
The FPÖ has been part of Austrian governments from 1983 – 1987, 2000 – 2007 and 2017 – 2019. It’s absolutely nothing but another Austrian establishment party.
Is it the cocaine, the gay, or the orgy you object to in a leader?
Get yourself a Haider-T-Shirt if you like. It’s not illegal.
I don’t want a Haider t-shirt (I know nothing about him and don’t want to know) but I am interested in an answer to Arum’s question.
That’s not a question but an attempt to put words in my mouth which differ from the statement I made. Haider (and the FPÖ in general) has a track record of accomplishing exactly nothing when in office and the FPÖ is – in Austria – rightfully regarded as nothing but another corrupt establishment party. Further, he also wasn’t “killed in a car crash” but killed himself (and luckily, no one else) when he lost control of his car while driving under influence. Considering why he was driving under influence, one can also conjecture that he – like Geert Wilders, BTW – mainly objected to Muslim immigration because he didn’t believe this would be beneficial to certain spare-time activities which were very dear to him.
If you think being sex-obsessed and a reckless and irresponsible law breaker who effected his own untimely demise because of this is just the kind of material our political leaders should be made of, then, I suggest to vote for such types whenever the opportunity arises. I must, however, caution you against expecting anything from that save saddling yourself with their lifestyle bills I certainly don’t want to pay.
What political leaders do in their spare time is very low on my list of priorities
What people do in their so-called spare time is a function of what kind of person they are and I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised if the claim that’s implied in your statement, namely, character doesn’t exist, just inherently featureless people who turn into whatever they’re dressing up at the moment once they did this, is also a Marxist ‘intellectual innovation’.
But there’s really no issue here:Vote Keir. And be grateful for whatever befalls you.
I tend to think most people attracted to politics are probably somewhat questionable
There is no “Right wing” only “Far Right”. Populism – what the people want and vote for has replaced democracy which is what the Establishment want for which the people are required to vote.
In next door Germany, the AfD (Far Right) is being blocked from Parliamentary committees (like Reform) despite its high level of electoral support, and harassed in other ways as ‘a threat to democracy’.
The problem with the headline, Centrism (aka Statism rooted in Socialism/Fascism hybrid) holds all the levers of power and has the monopoly on violence.
Death throes of a mortally wounded beast is when it is at its most dangerous… and has nothing to lose.
I don’t suppose those ‘unclean’ unvaccinated persons from 2021/2022 will have forgotten their treatment by the Austrian State at that time. Time for payback hopefully.
You can always tell an article is propaganda as soon as the terms “Far right” and “Populism” appear.
The global wave of Right-wing populism … Whether consciously or unconsciously, Right-wing populists from Trump to Farage have been following in Haider’s footsteps …
Populism simply means doing something that a majority appreciate: is there something wrong with that and is it not something every politician hopes to achieve?
And the terms right-wing or far right are just a short step away from Nazi, or a step beyond for some people.
I would refer to German AfD politics (my knowledge of Austrian politics is scant) as being centrist, or what would have been called conservative a few decades ago. Today’s European politics are all what I would term “Far left”, adhering to rather extreme ideological viewpoints, including publishing such propaganda pieces as this one!