Nowhere is this more evident than in relation to the apparent nonchalance which has greeted two international legal agreements currently working their way through the World Health Organisation:<\/strong>\u00a0a new pandemic treaty, and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations, both due to be put before the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly, in May next year.<\/p>\n As concerned\u00a0scholars<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0jurists<\/a>\u00a0have detailed,\u00a0these agreements threaten to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the WHO, national governments, and individuals.<\/strong><\/p>\n They would\u00a0hardwire into international law a top-down supranational approach to public health<\/strong>\u00a0in which the WHO, acting in some cases via the sole discretion of one individual, its Director General (DG), would be empowered to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states and their citizens, ranging from mandating financial contributions by individual states; to requiring the manufacture and international sharing of vaccines and other health products; to requiring the surrender of intellectual property rights; overriding national safety approval processes for vaccines, gene-based therapies, medical devices and diagnostics; and imposing national, regional and global quarantines preventing citizens from traveling and mandating medical examinations and treatments.<\/p>\n A global system for digital \u2018health certificates\u2019 for verification of vaccine status or test results would be routinised, and a bio-surveillance network whose purpose would be to identify viruses and variants of concern \u2013 and to monitor national compliance with WHO policy directives in the event of them \u2013 would be embedded and expanded.<\/strong><\/p>\n For any of these sweeping powers to be invoked, there would be no requirement for an \u201cactual\u201d health emergency in which people are suffering measurable harm; instead it would be sufficient for the DG, acting on his or her discretion, to have identified the mere \u201cpotential\u201d for such an event.<\/p>\n It is hard to overstate the impact of these proposals on Member States\u2019 sovereignty, individual human rights, foundational principles of medical ethics, and child welfare.<\/strong>\u00a0As currently drafted, these proposals would deny UK sovereignty and governmental autonomy over health and social policies and, through the indirect impacts of forced lockdowns and quarantines and because each Member State would be required to commit a staggering minimum of 5 percent of national health budgets and an as yet unspecified percentage of GDP towards the WHO\u2019s pandemic prevention and response, also over critical aspects of economic policy.<\/p>\n The proposed new powers would cut across not only the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They would signal a new watershed in our understanding of cornerstone human rights: an express amendment to the IHR deletes language currently reading \u201c[t]he implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons\u201d to replace it with a nebulous confirmation that \u201c[t]he implementation of these Regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n Provisions\u00a0requiring\u00a0<\/em>(my emphasis) \u2013 in particular \u2013 the WHO to develop fast-tracked regulatory guidelines for the \u201crapid\u201d (aka relaxed) approval of a broad range of health products including vaccines, gene-based therapies, medical devices and diagnostics threatens, in the view of legal jurists, \u201clong fought-for standards of medical law aiming to\u00a0<\/em>ensure safety<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and efficacy of medical products,<\/em>\u201d and should be of particular concern for parents.<\/p>\n Indeed, nothing in these documents would oblige the WHO to differentiate its binding directions for their impact on children, thus allowing for indiscriminate measures including mass testing, isolation, travel restrictions and vaccination \u2013 potentially of investigational and experimental\u00a0products fast-tracked to accelerated approvals \u2013 being mandated for healthy pediatric populations on the basis of a real or \u201cpotential\u201d health emergency declared unilaterally by the DG.<\/p>\n As if this weren\u2019t troubling enough, what makes it more so is that, as Thomas Fazi writes, \u201cthe WHO has fallen largely under the control of\u00a0<\/em>private capital<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and other vested interests<\/em>.\u201d As he and\u00a0others<\/a>\u00a0explain<\/a>, the evolving funding structure of the organisation and in particular the influence of corporate organisations focusing on pandemic response solutions (predominantly, vaccines), has steered the WHO away from its original ethos of promoting a democratic, holistic approach to public health and towards corporatised commodity-based approaches which \u201cgenerate profit for its private and corporate sponsors<\/em>\u201d (David Bell<\/a>). Over 80 percent of the WHO\u2019s budget is now \u2018specified\u2019 funding by way of voluntary contributions\u00a0typically earmarked<\/a>\u00a0for specific projects or diseases in a way that the funder specifies.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/2023-04-23_11-56-59.jpg?itok=SKBzLfTU\")
<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\nHistory lesson<\/strong><\/h2>\n