The World Health Organization wants the power to run the world. In three weeks, it will make its bid for global control.
The World Health Assembly, the 194-member body governing that organization, convenes in Geneva at the end of May. The main agenda items will be the amendment of the International Health Regulations and the signing of what is now called the "WHO Pandemic Agreement." Together, the amendments and agreement would give WHO, as the worldwide health body is known, sweeping powers before and during pandemics to dictate actions of national governments.
The current version of the agreement, dated April 22 of this year, gives WHO emergency powers to take 10 percent of a country's "pandemic-related health products" and to force the sale of another 10 percent of such products at "affordable prices." The agreement also requires parties to make "annual monetary contributions," but it does not specify terms, conditions, or amounts.
Moreover, the document contemplates the forced licensing of technology, commits countries to a radical "One Health approach" covering all forms of life, and prohibits "national stockpiles of pandemic-related health products that unnecessarily exceed the quantities anticipated to be needed for domestic pandemic preparedness and response." And a signatory to the agreement is required to "set aside a portion of its total procurement of relevant diagnostics, therapeutics, or vaccines in a timely manner for use in counties facing challenges in meeting public health needs and demand."
The agreement has open-ended language, intended to work in conjunction with the International Health Regulations regarding "public health surveillance."
The draft agreement states that after adoption, its scope will be spelled out. For example, Article 12's broad "access and benefit-sharing" provisions "shall be further defined in a legally binding instrument that will be operational no later than 31 May 2026." And once in place, obligations can be increased. A Conference of the Parties is given essentially unlimited power to "take actions, as appropriate, for the achievement of the objective of the WHO Pandemic Agreement."
Of even greater concern, the Conference of the Parties may on its own "adopt amendments to the WHO Pandemic Agreement."
It appears the provisions of the agreement have, during a long process of negotiation, been watered down to make them acceptable to countries worried about the centralization of power in WHO, but the Conference of the Parties can reinstitute the most objectionable of the early provisions—and even adopt more onerous ones.
WHO is, in reality, asking for a blank check.
"The devil is in the details and WHO refuses to spell out those details," Reggie Littlejohn, founder of Anti-Globalist International, told me this month, referring to the pandemic agreement.
"The amendments to the regulations and the adoption of the agreement look like the institution of world government, 'global governance' as they call it," Frank Gaffney, cofounder of the Sovereignty Coalition, said to me.
Do we need world government? The international community's slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic left much to be desired, but the World Health Organization of Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cannot fix the problems. On the contrary, WHO was responsible for helping China turn a one-country epidemic into an almost-every-country pandemic.
Beijing knew that SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing COVID-19, was highly transmissible human-to-human no later than the second week of December 2019 but told the world for weeks it was not. WHO spread China's false statements, especially with the organization's January 9, 2020 statement and its January 14 tweet.
WHO knew or had to know its public statements were false. Taiwan on December 31, 2019 informed the health body that coronavirus was contagious to humans, and WHO professionals also knew that to be the case. Maria Van Kerkhove, a senior WHO doctor and a virus expert, said at a press briefing in April 2020 that "right from the start" she thought the coronavirus was H2H, human-to-human contagious. The senior leadership, however, disregarded evidence and warnings when it issued its statement and tweet in January.
Moreover, WHO in public statements supported Beijing's attempt to prevent the imposition of travel bans and quarantines on arrivals from China, publicly backed the reliability of Beijing's statistics on coronavirus infections and deaths, and delayed the declaration of a "public health emergency of international concern" until January 30, 2020 and a "pandemic" until March 11.
Tedros was elected director-general with a massive effort by China, and he will almost certainly continue to allow China to dictate his actions. This control will have consequences if Tedros gets even more power at the end of this month. "The Pandemic Agreement is a way for China's regime to impose its totalitarian model on the world through the World Health Organization," Littlejohn said to me.
Unfortunately, WHO cannot be fixed. Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, former lab director of the viral disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, says that the structure of the organization defeats accountability, because its leaders report to many member states and therefore to no one. As a result, unacceptable conduct goes unpunished.
To make matters worse, the Conference of the Parties feature of the pandemic agreement looks designed to defeat accountability.
China has plans. "Beijing Genomics Institute has created the world's largest genetic database and its scientists, along with those of the People's Liberation Army, are using that data to create next-generation bioweapons for 'specific ethnic genetic attacks,' " Brandon Weichert, the author of Biohacked: China's Race to Control Life, told me. "With an adoption of the Pandemic Agreement, we have to remember that the World Health Organization itself has been coopted and corrupted by the Chinese regime. The powers to be conferred upon the CCP-controlled WHO will not be used to prevent the next pandemic. They will instead be used to help spread it."
"The next pandemic might destroy us all," he adds.
Yet it seems that the Biden administration will support the amendments to the International Health Regulations and sign the WHO Pandemic Agreement.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
