Former UKIP and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage joined the international advocacy group Action on World Health (AWH) for a global campaign against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) power grab attempts, aiming to reform WHO and raise awareness about its “Pandemic Preparedness Agreement” which is scheduled to be adopted worldwide at the end of this month at the organization’s upcoming Congress in Geneva.
According to its website, AWH’s main purpose is to take back control of national public health in areas where unelected international bodies, such as the WHO, have been interfering with domestic policy.
The group argues that the WHO and all its previous agreements need to be reviewed and reformed in order to prevent the failures we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic from happening again; to restore the principles of individual freedom and bodily autonomy to the heart of public health measures; and to stop the Pandemic Treaty which it says is designed to chip away at member states’ national sovereignty.
According to Farage, it is “unacceptable” that a “failing, expensive, unelected, unaccountable, supranational body” wants to “run roughshod” over national governments by dictating health policy from above. The Reform UK honorary president urged lawmakers to have a “proper debate” about the WHO’s true purpose, saying that if the organization doesn’t return to its original mission of being a voluntary coordination hub, Britain should leave it instead.
Furthermore, AWH’s campaign also calls for significant budget cuts for the WHO, which employs over 8,000 staff members and will cost member countries more than $7 billion in 2024-2025. Western taxpayers contribute the most, with the top donors being the U.S. ($1.3 billion), Germany ($865 million), the European Union ($468 million), and the UK ($396 million)—along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides an additional $830 million.
Action on World Health is calling on countries to reduce their contributions by 50%, thus forcing the WHO to be more cost-effective, and to prohibit the organization from taking grants from non-state actors (like Bill Gates) to avoid them gaining influence that may be used to “undermine nation states.”
How bad is the Pandemic Treaty really?
Originally, the Pandemic Treaty was intended to put the WHO in charge of coordinating global responses in case of new pandemics by allowing it to mandate public health measures. Although it has been significantly watered down due to recent months’ public pressure to address sovereignty concerns, experts warn that it would still open the door for a more opaque and gradual power grab if adopted, and therefore urge countries to vote against it during the coming WHO Congress.
“The first draft of the Treaty made it clear that the WHO wants to force countries into lockdown and mandate vaccines,” AWH said in a statement, warning about closed-door negotiations still happening as we speak.
The lack of transparency is also the biggest shortfall of the Treaty according to the Heritage Foundation’s recent report on the subject, along with intentionally vague financial obligations, encouragement of government censorship during pandemics, “differentiated responsibilities” forcing developed nations to spend a lot more and donate 20% of their vaccines, masks, and other equipment to the Third World.
Fortunately, the most problematic parts regarding WHO’s authority to mandate pandemic responses have been slashed in the revised draft, published on 13th March, with further safeguards added to clarify that:
Nothing in the WHO Pandemic Agreement shall be interpreted as providing the [WHO] any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe the domestic laws or policies [of member states], or to mandate or otherwise impose any requirements that [member states] take specific actions, such as ban or accept travelers, impose vaccination mandates …, or implement lockdowns.
Nonetheless, experts warned that the WHO’s intentions remain the same and the Treaty would still provide the first step toward a more gradual power grab.
“[While] there has been some language change, we must be aware that the essence of the document remains,” Dr. Kat Lindley, president of Global Health Project said. “They are still trying to put us in this perpetual state of pandemic over and over again,” while continuing to push global surveillance, she said.
“Everything is still there, just shuffled around with a lot of legalese behind it,” she explained, adding that despite everything it says, the WHO is still “trying to establish a totalitarian hold on global health.”
More and more countries are also beginning to question the necessity of the treaty. Slovakia was the most recent EU member state to reject the document altogether, while the British government also announced it would vote against it unless the rules about “differentiated responsibilities” as well as the mandatory sharing of vaccine research products are changed.
On the other hand, the Dutch caretaker government led by the outgoing liberal prime minister, Mark Rutte, decided to approve the Treaty despite the majority of the Parliament wishing to postpone the issue until a new government is formed due to “the exact consequences of the agreement [being] unclear.”
According to the WHO’s plans, the Pandemic Treaty will be further complemented by a “wide range of digital products” to track contagious outbreaks under the EU’s and WHO’s jointly developed Global Digital Health Certification Network (GDHCN), including its flagship project, a global vaccine passport system—branded by critics, including members of the European Parliament (MEPs) as something out of a ‘totalitarian dystopia.’
The WHO Congress will also finalize a set of amendments to its International Health Regulations (IHR), seen as a way to make future power grabs easier to pass. When voting on them last year, several conservative MEPs noticed that the WHO violated its own procedural rules which should make the passed amendments illegitimate, yet the organization simply ignored the lawmaker’s demand to explain itself.
