The director-general of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, complained on Monday that a “torrent of fake news, lies, and conspiracy theories” had successfully thwarted globalist efforts to establish a worldwide pandemic treaty.
Tedros has spearheaded an effort to draft and implement a global pandemic treaty, covenant, or other accord giving his organization authority over public health policy above national governments since at least late 2020 when the world was struggling to contain the wave of death and severe illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. The 2021 World Health Assembly (WHA), the annual meeting of all W.H.O. member states, discussed the possibility of passing a pandemic accord but a draft did not exist until early 2023.
At the 2023 WHA, parties discussed the draft of something called the “W.H.O. convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” as the countries could not decide on whether they wanted to agree to a treaty, covenant, convention, or other international legal document. Disagreements on the document’s call for the ceding of intellectual property rights on life-saving pandemic medication, “equity” regarding coordinated responses to pandemics, and “differentiated responsibilities” between poor and wealthier nations stagnated the progress on advancing the legal document. Widespread concerns regarding the erosion of sovereignty and human rights, possible if the W.H.O. obtains the authority to dictate public health policy, have also prompted pause, as has the W.H.O.’s abysmal response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
Tedros accused hesitant governments of failing to understand the urgency of empowering his agency and blamed a “torrent of fake news, lies, and conspiracy theories” for the delays, according to the Agence France-Presse (AFP). He claimed it was “absolutely false” that the pandemic accord would allow the W.H.O. to enforce lockdowns and other civil rights violations above the wishes of member states.
“We cannot allow this historic agreement, this milestone in global health, to be sabotaged,” the AFP quoted Tedros as saying.
Tedros delivered a speech on Monday at the opening of the first meeting this year of the executive board of the W.H.O. in which he noted that the organization was seeking to conclude its establishment of a pandemic accord at the 2024 WHA and time was allegedly running out.
“At the political level, world leaders at the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting agreed a strong political declaration, including a commitment to conclude negotiations on the pandemic agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations by May this year,” he noted, “But I must say I am gravely concerned that Member States may not meet that commitment.”
“Time is very short, and there are several outstanding issues that remain to be resolved,” he warned.
“In my view, a failure to deliver the pandemic agreement and the IHR amendments will be a missed opportunity for which future generations may not forgive us,” Tedros added.
The IHR is a separate international legal instrument known as the International Health Regulations. The W.H.O. is also seeking to expand its authority through amendments to the IHR that would allow it greater freedom to declare health emergencies, among other powers. The 2023 WHA resulted in some successful amendments to the IHR, including one allowing the W.H.O. to declare a public health emergency without having to “consult with and attempt to obtain verification from the State Party in whose territory the event is allegedly occurring.”
The approved IHR amendment was intended to prevent a repeat of the situation in early 2020, when the W.H.O. possessed evidence of an outbreak of a novel disease in Wuhan, China, but the Communist Party intervened to delay the declaration of a health emergency, allowing the disease to spread and the situation to evolve from an epidemic to a pandemic.
Tedros was re-elected to run the W.H.O. in an uncontested election in 2022 despite global condemnation of the agency’s handling of the pandemic and its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of the World Health Organization, (L) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People, on January 28, 2020, in Beijing, China. (Naohiko Hatta – Pool/Getty Images)
“It will take courage, and it will take compromise. You will not reach consensus if everyone remains entrenched in their positions,” Tedros advised member states in his remarks on Monday. “Everyone will have to give something, or no one will get anything.”
Tedros also used his remarks to repeat his demand for $1.5 billion “to support our work responding to emergencies.”
The campaign this year for a pandemic treaty began earlier than usual. Tedros made a similar pitch during the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January, in which he warned that a yet-unknown “Disease X” could devastate humanity to an even greater degree than the Wuhan coronavirus.
“We lost many people [during the coronavirus pandemic] because we couldn’t manage them,” Tedros claimed. “They could have been saved, but there was no space. There was not enough oxygen. So how can you have a system that can expand when the need comes?”
“The pandemic agreement can bring all the experience, all the challenges that we have faced and all the solutions into one,” he claimed. “That agreement can help us to prepare for the future in a better way.”
“This is a common global interest, and very narrow national interests should not come into the way,” Tedros asserted.
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