Eagle Forum, Sovereignty Coalition Warn WHO Treaty is Not Dead

May 14, 2024 | Washington, D.C.

by Kristen A. Ullman, President, Eagle Forum

Eagle Forum is pleased to forward the following statement from the Sovereignty Coalition relating to the latest developments from the World Health Assembly:

The World Health Organization announced on Friday that its negotiators had failed to achieve agreement on a final draft of the proposed Pandemic Response Accord by the declared May 10 deadline. The announcement prompted some to believe that the treaty was “dead” and no longer likely to be approved at the upcoming meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) from May 27 to June 1. 

Not so.

Before the day was out, the WHO clarified that the deadline had been extended for a further two weeks to continue formal and informal negotiations. In other words, the effort to buy support from various nations will be redoubled behind closed doors. For example, the U.S. government recently announced it would be paying fifty additional countries – on top of the fifty it was already paying – to build out its “Pandemic Preparedness Program.” This is being done outside the WHO process but with identical intent.

It remains to be seen if any of the disagreements that have precluded the completion of a Pandemic Treaty to date will be resolved in time for the upcoming World Health Assembly meeting through such secretive and corrupt wheeling and dealing. What is already clear, however, is that the extension of the negotiation’s deadline will have the practical effect of all but eliminating any opportunity for nations to review, analyze, and debate the final text before it is rubber-stamped by the WHA.

The same game will likely be played with the other WHO treaty now in the works. It would amend existing International Health Regulations for the same purpose as the Pandemic Treaty: transforming the WHO’s Director General into a global health dictator. Negotiators haven’t finished that text, either. They are supposed to meet for that purpose on May 16-17. It is a safe bet that those negotiations will be extended, too. And “the Pelosi Rule” will be in effect: We won’t know what is in that treaty either until after it has been approved.

This sort of diplomatic bait-and-switch is necessary because only by subterfuge and deception can the “global governance” these treaties are intended to create be imposed on the American people. Consequently, our Sovereignty Coalition is all the more determined to insist that neither the Pandemic Treaty nor the proposed Amendments to the International Health Regulations can be considered at the WHA’s meeting in two weeks.

Indeed, to press for a vote on these accords would be a clear violation of Article 55 of the WHO’s own International Health Regulations, which requires that any amendments to those Regulations be distributed to the 194 member nations at least four months in advance of their consideration at the World Health Assembly.  Since the International Health Regulations and the new proposed Pandemic Treaty are interdependent and intertwined, neither can lawfully be voted upon at the impending WHA beginning on May 27.

The Coalition demands that, whenever these two treaties do come up lawfully for WHA approval – after their final texts have been disclosed and circulated to the nations at least four months in advance – there must be a roll-call vote on both. Treaties such as these must not be adopted by a consensus or bogus “silence-is-consent” procedure. Furthermore, for either to be binding here, they will each require the advice and consent of the United States Senate. The American people cannot be bound by them through the improper use of Executive Agreements.