#ExittheWHO
The World Health Organization is seeking amendments to the International Health Regulations and continues to discuss a global pandemic treaty. We believe the proposed IHR amendments pose serious questions regarding their impact on national sovereignty.
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In 2022, at the Better Way Conference, Shabnam Palesa Mohamed asked a packed house from around the world: “Who here thinks we need to defund and exit the WHO?” The answer was resounding.
On 10th June 2023, the WCH Policy Brief on the WHO Pandemic Treaty and Amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations was hand delivered to all 660 UK MPs parliamentary mailboxes. At additional cost, we included the WHO’s proposed IHR amendment document to ensure that MPs had it and there could be no misunderstandings as to their contents. The printing costs of these documents, including summary and covering letter, were covered by public donations.
On Monday 18th December 2023, an historic debate took place in the UK parliament, attended by a handful of mostly very thoughtful UK MPs and concerned men and women in the public gallery.
This important debate was made possible by a petition initiated by WCH co-founder Dr Tess Lawrie and the more than 116,000 concerned UK citizens who signed it.
This debate was a culmination of several months of work—a multi-disciplinary team effort that drew expertise from our policy and legal department, social media and graphics teams, administrative team, and teams on the ground in communities. A big thank you to everyone who made this possible.
In May 2024 WCH served notices to cease and desist to members
of the World Health Organisation indicating their personal liability
WCH Australia has recently uncovered active WHO centralised collaborating centres worldwide.
Find out what these collaborating centres are, why this is of international concern, and what you can do…
Two complementary instruments of international law are currently being negotiated by the World Health Organization (WHO), its member states, and private stakeholders in relation with the supranational body for adoption by the World Health Assembly in May 2024.
The IHR amendments, if approved, would unduly enhance the powers of the WHO and thus the special interests that exert significant influence over the organization vis-à-vis states and non-state actors—raising serious questions with regard to state sovereignty and the future of governance.
Some amendments represent a framework for the illegitimate exercise of global governmental power without a popular accord, constitutional control mechanisms, or accountability. As such, they create a dangerous precedent if passed.
The proposed pandemic treaty, if adopted, would create a new, cost-intensive supranational bureaucracy and impose an ideological framework under which to operate in matters of global health. This ideological framework includes support for gain-of-function research with pandemic potential pathogens (PPPs) and encourages a globally coordinated effort to counter dissent from the official WHO line. Melissa Fleming, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, stated the following belief at a 2022 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, “We own the science and we think that the world should know it.”
The WCH policy expert group issues a stark warning that any undue concentration of power in the hands of a few or a supranational body without a popular mandate, accountability, and constitutional control mechanisms to restrain it, by nature, leads to abuse of power, undermines and compromises democratic processes, corrupts science, curtails choice, suffocates competing solutions, thereby reducing quality and innovation, and enables control over the flow of information as well as stifling of dissent.
The WCH expert group also points to the fact that the WHO is a compromised organization that only controls about a quarter of its budget. The rest are earmarked contributions from a few high-income states and powerful private interest groups. Handing more power to the WHO equals handing more, not less power to the special national and corporate interests that have impeded effective responses to global health emergencies in the past.
The proposed amendments to the IHR and the WHO pandemic treaty as a whole further raise serious questions—with relevance beyond the field of public health—for societies as well as leaders to address. These questions pertain to the future of governance (global vs. democratic), the increasing concentration of power in the hands of the unelected, unaccountable few, the future of gain-of-function research of concern, the future of free speech and the right to dissent, the future of the right to privacy, the amount of digital surveillance and private data mining capabilities societies are willing to cede to profit- and interest-driven actors that view them as “hackable animals,” the future of the essential independent doctor-patient relationship, the control over the production of and access to medical treatments and the integrity of regulatory processes.
The answers to these questions will have significant consequences for the everyday lives and well-being of people as well as the nature and structure of societies.
Our in-depth policy brief showcases the most important proposed amendments to the IHR as well as central parts of the pandemic treaty (WHO CA+) draft. It explains why they differ from previous approaches to global public health in a significant way and require a swift, effective, and robust response. At the same time, legislative and educational measures are recommended via the policy brief to strengthen public health and to achieve better preparedness, efficient international collaboration and sharing with regards to global health emergencies while avoiding monopolization and ensuring the robustness of democratic ideals in times of crisis.
WCH Issues a Cease and Desist Notice of Liability Nov 2021
WCH Policy on Rejecting the Monopoly Over Health:
Dr Tess Lawrie’s Substack Article on the UK Parliamentary Debate
James Roguski on Exiting The WHO
Exit The WHO: The People’s Voice
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