WHO Pandemic Treaty Fizzles Amid Disagreements Between Member States

The World Health Organization’s proposed International Health Regulations (IHR) and Pandemic Agreement crashed and burned last week amid disagreements between member countries.

“This is not a failure,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday in his opening remarks at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. “Failure does not stop us,  should not stop us,” he added.

Nation states are convening at the WHO assembly from May 27 to June 1 to discuss ideas to improve global readiness for future pandemics like COVID-19.

Critics of the controversial WHO treaty and IHR amendments said they were a threat to Constitutional rights and freedoms in the following ways:

– Change IHR recommendations from advice to legally binding orders that all member nations must obey.
– Create requirements for vaccine passports that could be used to restrict access and travel as the WHO sees fit.
– Require surveillance of citizens’ online footprint and censorship of information deemed “misinformation.”
– Allow imposition of extreme lockdown measures, including quarantines, required medical examinations and required vaccinations.
– Allow the WHO to declare an emergency at will.
– Require member nations to use certain “health products” like vaccines, drugs, etc., while prohibiting others during emergencies.

Tedros also “failed to provide member states with the final text of the two treaties in advance, as required,” the Defender reported.

The pandemic treaty was shelved Friday after member states “ran into disagreements over sharing information about pathogens that cause pandemics and the technology used to fight them,” the Associated Press said.

However, negotiations are continuing this week as WHO members work to establish legally binding rules that would compel countries “to boost alert, detection and containment capacities and cooperate internationally” to fight the next “inevitable” pandemic.

Envoys say a deal is close, but similar disagreements between rich countries and developing ones that set back the pandemic treaty negotiations linger. Issues remain over proposed “transfer of technology” and the creation of a new fund under WHO in 2030 that would help boost pandemic-fighting capacities “particularly in developing countries.”

Tedros acknowledged that the setback after 2 1/2 years of work was a disappointment, but refused to accept failure.

“Of course, we all wish that we had been able to reach a consensus on the agreement in time for this health assembly and cross the finish line,” he said.

“My wish is, we will come out of the assembly reenergized, he added. “Because the world still needs a pandemic treaty and the world needs to be prepared because many of the challenges that caused serious impact during COVID-19 still exist.”

Tedros noted that “equity” has been at the center of their negotiations to address the perceived need that “developing countries” must have as much access to medical interventions like vaccines as richer ones.

“So let’s continue to try everything and anything is possible, and as we always say, where there’s a will, there is a way,” he added hopefully. “I’m still positive, to be honest, despite the outcome.”