WHO Now Working on Far-Reaching Amendments to Global Rules After Setback

WHO Now Working on Far-Reaching Amendments to Global Rules After Setback
The flag of the World Health Organization (WHO) at their headquarters in Geneva on March 5, 2021. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Alex Newman
6/5/2022
Updated:
7/17/2022
0:00

The push to further empower the World Health Organization remains a major threat to U.S. national sovereignty and self-government, even after a setback at the United Nations agency’s 75th annual meeting in Geneva in late May, according to experts.

Following some minor changes to the International Health Regulations approved at the meeting last month, the health organization and its member governments are working on new, far-reaching amendments to the global rules. Those will be submitted in September.

At the same time, WHO leaders and member governments are also developing a new International Pandemic Treaty. The looming international agreement, which is still being drafted, is expected to hand vast new powers to the WHO if approved.

The treaty and amendments being negotiated are aimed at empowering the WHO to fight global health crises such as pandemics, according to U.S. State Department and WHO officials.

However, U.S. lawmakers at the state and federal levels are pushing back hard. Experts in international law and health care told The Epoch Times that the ultimate goal is to impose “medical tyranny” on humanity, not to protect health.

“This is just another major totalitarian power grab by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], the WHO, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry, the People’s Republic of China, and others to impose their medical tyranny upon the human race,” said Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva on July 3, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via Reuters)
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva on July 3, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via Reuters)

Boyle, who wrote the 1989 legislation implementing the Biological Weapons Convention that was unanimously approved by Congress, said the WHO power grab needs to be opposed “at all costs,” urging U.S. lawmakers to get involved in stopping it now.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Boyle called the WHO a “criminal organization” that is “completely rotten, corrupt, and despicable.”

He urged strongly against giving the WHO any more power or money.

“It’s nothing more than a front organization for Pharma, the biowarfare industry, and Gates,” Boyle said, referring to billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, saying it should be allowed to “rot on the vine” and then “twist slowly, slowly in the wind.”

The international law professor, who has worked on numerous high-profile cases, also argued that leading WHO officials should be considered for potential prosecution for crimes against humanity.

Among other concerns, Boyle pointed to the WHO’s sponsorship of China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, which many suspect is the source of the outbreak of the global CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, as well as the agency’s role in promoting COVID-19 vaccines, which he called “dangerous frankenshots.”

Boyle, who has been meeting with state prosecutors across America recommending indictments of key government officials, recently released the book “Resisting Medical Tyranny,” making the legal case for prosecutions of senior U.S. officials behind what he called “criminal mandates.”

Now he’s calling on U.S. senators to join forces against the WHO plan. He’s urged senators to create and circulate a letter saying they intend to reject any new WHO pandemic treaty that may come before them for ratification.

“Assuming you can get 34 senators to sign that circular letter, that would make the pandemic treaty dead on arrival here in the United States on its face alone,” Boyle said. “That then might kill off this WHO pandemic treaty in its infancy when next the [World Health Assembly] meets to consider it.”

The WHO Amendments

Without much media fanfare, WHO member states met in Geneva on May 22–27 to discuss major changes to the International Health Regulations (IHR).

The CDC describes the IHR as “legally binding.” The global health rules also played a major role in the coordinated worldwide response to the CCP virus pandemic.

The 13 amendments to the IHR were proposed in January by the Biden administration, with the backing of almost 50 other governments.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the recent mass shootings from the White House on June 2, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the recent mass shootings from the White House on June 2, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Among other changes, the amendments would have further empowered the WHO and its director-general to declare international health emergencies, even without the approval of targeted nations or governments.

While ostensibly focused on health issues, governments around the world have increasingly argued that other issues—including climate change, gun violence, and racism—constitute public-health emergencies. Critics point out that this means almost anything could come under the purview of the WHO.

Lawmakers and activists across the country spent weeks sounding the alarm about the amendments before they were considered last month. Critics referred to them as “dictatorial” and a “power grab” by the WHO and some of its leading members at the expense of the autonomy of nation-states.

Following public backlash, legal analysts and researchers following the developments said the latest bid to empower the WHO has been stopped—for now.

According to the U.S. State Department and the WHO, the main change made to the IHR at the summit was an amendment to shorten the time for future amendments to take effect to one year from two.

Also approved was the creation of a working group to help draft and consider more amendments.

“The United States supported these amendments and was pleased to see broad support for these procedural improvements at the WHA,” a spokesman for the U.S. State Department told The Epoch Times.

A sign on a door asks people to wear masks in downtown Philadelphia, on April 15, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A sign on a door asks people to wear masks in downtown Philadelphia, on April 15, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Senior U.S. officials and news reports in major media also gave the impression that this was a major step forward for the Biden administration’s agenda of even more aggressive changes.

For instance, Sheba Crocker, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, celebrated the changes as “a significant achievement.”

However, independent investigative researcher James Roguski, a key figure behind the opposition to the WHO amendments, told The Epoch Times the Biden administration “got spanked” and was dealt a huge defeat.

“For the media to suggest that this is any kind of victory for Biden is ridiculous, it’s a lie,” he said, arguing that what happened was a victory for the sovereignty of nations and a blow to efforts to centralize more power at the WHO.

Roguski acknowledged that it was a “challenge” to find out what really happened.

“That’s how they play this game,” he said.

He also said the threat isn’t over.

“These people are incorrigible, they are relentless, they will never stop,” Roguski said, noting that the WHO was still pursuing amendments to the IHR to be considered going forward as well as the pandemic treaty being worked on this summer.

Both the WHO and the Biden administration also indicated that the effort to empower the WHO was still moving forward.

“The United States will continue to discuss with other WHO member states proposed amendments designed to clarify early-warning triggers for international response to pandemic threats, promote rapid information sharing by countries and WHO, and improve WHO processes around determinations of public health emergencies,” the State Department spokesman said.

While the amendments fell short, the communist Chinese regime did score some major victories. Among them: Beijing-backed WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was given another five-year term at the helm, and Beijing secured a spot on the WHO’s executive board.

The International Pandemic Treaty

Even as governments work on new amendments to submit by September, they are also drafting a new International Pandemic Treaty that could be more significant.

“This makes the amendments look like child’s play,” said Roguski, citing WHO language on “One health, all of society approach.”

A World Health Organization sign in Geneva, on April 24, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
A World Health Organization sign in Geneva, on April 24, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

Boyle, the international law professor, said it seemed like the withdrawn IHR amendments might be simply rolled into the new pandemic treaty, as well as other policies aimed at making the WHO far more powerful.

In Congress, critics are also sounding the alarm about the treaty.

“The WHO’s radical ‘pandemic treaty’ is a dangerous globalist overreach,” said U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) while announcing a proposal to rein in the global agency. “The United States of America must never give more power to the WHO.”

“The WHO is a puppet for Xi Jinping, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and helped Beijing cover up the origins of COVID-19,” Scott said, adding that public health policy for America should be decided by Americans rather than “globalist puppets working for communist China.”

Leading WHO figures have been open about their desire to further empower the U.N. agency using the proposed pandemic treaty.

“We need stronger systems and tools,” said Tedros, who has proposed everything from sanctions on nations that defy the WHO to tighter controls over “misinformation” online.

Earlier this year, outlining his plans to the WHO Executive Committee, he said it was a priority to “urgently strengthen WHO as the leading and directing authority on global health, at the center of the global health architecture.”

“We are one world, we have one health, we are one WHO,” he said.

Entrenching the sort of policy responses prescribed by the WHO during the recent COVID crisis is also on the agenda, according to leading figures involved in the process.

Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and administrator of the United Nations Development Program, speaks with reporters on April 14, 2016. (Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)
Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and administrator of the United Nations Development Program, speaks with reporters on April 14, 2016. (Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)

“On an ongoing basis, every country must utilize all the public health tools available to curb transmission,” said former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, co-chair of the WHO’s independent panel for pandemic preparedness and response, in recent comments about what the new agreement should accomplish. “That’s masking, it’s social distancing, it’s testing and contact tracing, it’s isolation and quarantine; it’s the proven menu for endeavoring to stop transmission of a disease.”

Clark and the pandemic panel also recommended vast new powers and authorities for the WHO in addition to greater financial and political independence for the organization. The panel even called for the WHO to begin setting “benchmark” standards for national health care systems.

Clark didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

The State Department didn’t respond to questions about whether it would seek to add the Biden administration’s amendment proposals into the proposed treaty, but confirmed to The Epoch Times that it was engaged in the process.

European governments have been more open about their views. The Council of the European Union, representing the body’s 27 member states, declared that the objective is a stronger WHO to serve “as the coordinating authority on global health matters.”

Meanwhile, the WHO downplayed its own role in the process.

“WHO’s Member States will ultimately determine the goal of such an instrument,” a spokesman for the global agency told The Epoch Times. The agreement is expected “to promote global collaboration to prevent, prepare for and respond to crises in the future, and prevent a repeat of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The spokesman also said that it was expected that the agreement would “strengthen healthcare, starting at the community level,” while calling on the international community to “work together” to mitigate the effects of another virus such as SARS-CoV-2.

End Goal: Global Tyranny?

Lawmakers, legal experts, and leading medical professionals are sounding the alarm about what they see as the ultimate objective of the WHO’s efforts: centralized global control over humanity.

Dr. Peter McCullough, chief of the Division of Nutrition and Preventive Medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, and author John Leake, who are co-authors of the new book “The Courage to Face COVID-19 Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex,” warn that there are shadowy forces at work.

“The World Health Organization is a key component of what we refer to in our new book as the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex,” they told The Epoch Times via email. “Akin to the ’military-industrial complex' that President Eisenhower warned about in his Farewell Address, the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex (whose agenda is set by the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum) aspires to establish global, centralized government by way of public health policy, especially in response to emerging infectious diseases—real, perceived, exaggerated, and fabricated.”

Dr. Peter McCullough in New York on Dec. 24, 2021. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)
Dr. Peter McCullough in New York on Dec. 24, 2021. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)

Numerous other experts, doctors, and attorneys who spoke with The Epoch Times also said the WHO is seeking to infringe on the rights of people under the guise of keeping them safe and healthy.

Political resistance is growing rapidly in the United States as well.

At the state level, lawmakers nationwide are in discussions about how to block the WHO’s moves in their jurisdictions.

The Kansas Senate approved a resolution that “strongly disapproved” of the organization’s efforts, saying they were aimed at usurping national sovereignty and placing the Unites States under “the control of an unelected international organization that is wholly unaccountable to the people of this country.”

In Washington, lawmakers are working as well. Legislation that would defund the WHO and even withdraw the United States from the U.N. is gaining sponsors amid a growing public outcry over the WHO’s plans. Numerous members of the House and Senate, including the Freedom Caucus, have urged the Biden administration to resume the U.S. withdrawal initiated by President Donald Trump.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been publicly warning that the WHO is trying to create a “world government” with the power to impose mandates similar to those used during the COVID pandemic.

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body is meeting this week to work on the pandemic treaty as the WHO works to engage “all stakeholders,” a WHO spokesman told The Epoch Times.

The goal is to complete a draft of the proposed treaty by August.

Alex Newman is a freelance contributor to The Epoch Times. Mr. Newman is an award-winning international journalist, educator, author, and consultant who co-wrote the book “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.” He writes for diverse publications in the United States and abroad.
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