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The amendments to the IHR are intended to fundamentally change the relationship between individuals, their country’s governments, and the WHO. They place the WHO as having rights overriding that of individuals, erasing the basic principles developed after World War Two regarding human rights and the sovereignty of States. In doing so, they signal a return to a colonialist and feudalist approach fundamentally different to that to which people in relatively democratic countries have become accustomed. The lack of major pushback by politicians and the lack of concern in the media and consequent ignorance of the general public is therefore both strange and alarming.

The WHO has become a tool of those who would manipulate us for greed and self-interest. In previous eras, people have stood against those who sought to exploit and enslave them, reclaimed their rights and saved society for their children. What we are facing is not new; society periodically faces and overcomes such challenges.

The WHO, most likely with the complicity of your government, is pushing through a set of amendments to international pandemic laws that will put your livelihood and liberties at the mercy of a WHO-appointed “expert committee” whose advice during a pandemic or other “public health emergency” will supersede that of your own government.

The Covid pandemic gave the World Health Organisation and its partners unprecedented visibility and a tremendous amount of “soft” power to shape public health law and policies across the world. Over the past year or so, the WHO has been pushing hard to consolidate and expand its power to declare and manage public health emergencies on a global scale.

The commentary below concentrates on selected draft provisions of the latest publicly available version of the draft agreement that seem to be unclear or potentially problematic. Much of the remaining text is essentially pointless as it reiterates vague intentions to be found in other documents or activities which countries normally undertake in the course of running health services, and have no place in a focused legally-binding international agreement.

The draft of the IHR amendments and an accompanying draft Pandemic Agreement are both still under negotiation a month short of the intended vote at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in late May. Together, they reflect a sea change in international public health over the past two decades. They aim to further centralize control of public health policy within the WHO.

These proposed instruments, as currently drafted, would fundamentally change the relationship between the WHO, its Member States and naturally their populations, promoting a fascist and neo-colonialist approach to healthcare and governance. The documents need to be viewed together, and in the far wider context of the global/globalist pandemic preparedness agenda.

This is the stuff of bureaucrats’ dreams: the legal authority to declare an emergency and the power thereafter to commandeer resources for oneself from sovereign states and to redirect resources funded by the taxpayers of one country to other states. The Covid years saw a successful bureaucratic coup that displaced elected governments with cabals of unelected experts and technocrats who lorded it over citizens and intruded into the most intimate personal behaviour and business decisions.

Tedros made the declaration despite a lack of consensus among members of the WHO’s emergency committee on the monkeypox outbreak. It’s the first time a leader of a UN health agency has made such a decision unilaterally.

If it is indeed the case that our authorities and their supporters within the public health community consider that powers currently vested within national jurisdictions should be given over to external bodies on the basis of this level of recorded harm, it would be best to have a public conversation as to whether this is sufficient basis for abandoning democratic ideals in favor of a more fascist or otherwise authoritarian approach. We are, after all, talking about restricting basic human rights essential for a democracy to function.

The drafting of the Open Letter below, addressing these issues, was led by three lawyers with experience with the WHO, within the UN and in international treaty law, Silvia Behrendt, Assoc. Prof Amrei Muller, and Dr. Thi Thuy Van Dinh. It simply calls upon the WHO and Member States to extend the deadline for the adoption of the amendments to the International Health Regulations and a new Pandemic Agreement at the 77th WHA to safeguard the rule of law and equity. To proceed with the current deadline, against their own legal requirements, would not just be legally wrong but demonstrate unequivocally that equity and respect for States rights have nothing to do with the WHO’s pandemic agenda.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently put up a defense 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. This matters because (i) in ignoring legal requirements and rushing a vote the WHO is putting global health and economies at risk, and (ii) the WHO is acting like a spoiled child, which suggests the organization is no longer fit for its mandate.