Tory MPs urged the government to block any part of the WHO’s coming pandemic treaty that would give power over national health decisions to the global organization, fearing that the accord would enable the WHO to enforce border closures and vaccine passports, the Telegraph reported on Thursday, May 25th.
In a letter, seen by the publication, the conservative MPs warned ministers of an “ambition evident … for the WHO to transition from an advisory organization to a controlling international authority.”
The so-called “Pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response accord,” also known as the Pandemic Preparedness Treaty (or just the pandemic treaty, for short), is a planned global instrument that was first proposed by European Council President Charles Michel back in 2020, with the aim of creating a common, binding framework of health regulations in order to tackle challenges of future pandemics.
Under the agreement that’s currently being negotiated, all 194 member states would be obliged to follow the organization’s guidelines during pandemics, meaning the potential enforcement of quarantine measures, border closures, and vaccine requirements.
Furthermore, the treaty would require countries to spend 5% of their budget on pandemic preparedness, to share health and research data as well as vaccine patents, and even to crack down on anything that the WHO deems as misinformation.
Now, with the 76th World Health Assembly discussing the pandemic treaty in Geneva between May 21-30—expecting it to be finalized during its 77th conference next year—British parliamentarians rang the alarms about what could easily become an unprecedented power grab in modern history.
In their letter, the Tory MPs urged the Foreign Office to block the WHO from obtaining powers through the treaty that “appear to intrude materially into the UK’s ability to make its own rules and control its own budgets.”
Responding to their concerns, Andrew Mitchell, a Foreign Office minister said that London is generally “supportive of the treaty” because of its preventive data sharing aspects, but “we would never agree to anything that crosses our points of principle on sovereignty or prevents the UK from taking decisive action.”
Six conservative parliamentarians, led by MP Esther McVey, also asked Mitchell to call for a Commons vote on the draft treaty and some 300 corresponding amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations document before they were signed.
The WHO becoming a global “health authority with powers of compulsion … is particularly worrying when you consider [its] poor track record on providing consistent, clear, and scientifically sound advice for managing international disease outbreaks,” McVey said, arguing against the adoption of the treaty.
Concerns associated with the pandemic treaty were also addressed by conservative members of the European Parliament earlier this month, during the EP’s third International COVID Summit in Brussels. “It would be healthier and safer for humanity to sign an agreement with the Colombian drug cartel,” the Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakušić said at the conference, adding that the WHO “should be declared a terrorist organization” instead for lying to the public about the origins of the virus or vaccine efficacy.
While the most serious dangers of this power grab undoubtedly have to do with enforcing lockdowns and vaccine mandates, critics also bring up the point that the WHO should have no business identifying “misinformation.” Such a measure would inevitably end up as a weapon against freedom of speech, as happened in the case of Twitter and other social media platforms during the COVID pandemic. Also, critics note that the WHO has repeatedly made claims that were refuted later, such as dismissing the lab-leak theory or dangerously overestimating the general safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.
“We should all be concerned about the WHO being ordained as an arbiter of pandemic truth,” said Molly Kingsley, the co-founder of UsForThem, a non-profit established to advocate for children’s interests during the pandemic, “especially given [the organization’s] poor record during the pandemic, such as its claim that Covid was definitively zoonotic in origin and its April 2020 denial of the role of natural immunity in protecting against infection.”
