Letter template to raise objection to the proposed pandemic treaty of the World Health Organization

The proposed International Treaty (‘CA+’) and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) build on a growing program of centralizing authority to declare and manage health emergencies amongst the leadership of the World health Organization (WHO) and allied private international agencies. They aim to expand a cycle of intensive surveillance, threat identification, mandated restrictions on populations, and medical responses that will operate above national jurisdictions and outside direct control of the populations they impact. This is the culmination of a growth in private and corporate control over WHO and international health policy, driven by a commercial imperative to expand markets for health commodities. International health is moving from a servant of countries to a commercial cartel in which the populations of countries are essentially captured.

The WHO is a branch of the United Nations, set up in the late 1940s to support countries in managing various aspects of health. It was intended to be subject to control by member states, taking its instructions from the World Health Assembly which is made up of health ministers of member states. However, although it was originally funded by member states, it has become increasingly dependent on funding from private foundations, and corporations, particularly those heavily involved in, or invested in, the pharmaceutical industry.

While the WHO itself has noted that pandemics are rare and impart relatively low mortality, recognising only 4 in the 120 years before 2020, funding within the WHO has shifted increasingly toward a pandemic focus, with an emphasis on pharmaceutical (vaccine) responses. A permanent international bureaucracy is being developed, at considerable cost, to deal with a historically rare problem. It will depend on the declaration of new emergencies or pandemics to justify its existence. It will be funded predominantly by public money, but the beneficiaries of its decisions will overwhelmingly be the commercial entities that are currently promoting its growth.

In the context of Covid-19, it is clear that vaccine-based interventions are having a limited impact on overall outcomes, while other unprecedented interventions promoted by the WHO, against their own former pandemic guidance, have had major negative impacts on all aspects of society, including economies (massively increasing poverty), healthcare and education.

The world needs international forums for sharing data, for concentrating technical expertise to support countries lacking these and to facilitate discussions between countries concerning health issues, including emergencies. Such organisations must be in service of member countries and their people, not act as unelected authorities, funded and influenced by conflicted, non-national interests that attempt to direct and control the lives of free citizens.

Outline of the WHO instruments

IHR draft Amendments (detail here): 

• Expand the definitions of pandemics & health emergencies, including the introduction of ‘potential’ for harm rather than actual harm. It also expands the definition of health products that fall under this to include any commodity or process that may impact on the response or “improve quality of life.”
• Change the recommendations of the IHR from ‘non-binding’ to required actions that the States undertake to follow and implement.
• Solidify the Director General’s ability to independently declare emergencies.
• Set up an extensive compulsory surveillance process in all States, which WHO will verify regularly through a county review mechanism.
• Enable WHO to share country data without consent.
• Give WHO control over certain country resources, including requirements for financial contributions, and provision of intellectual property and know-how (within the broad definition of health products above).
• Ensure national support for promotion of censorship activities by WHO to prevent contrary approaches and concerns from being freely disseminated.
• Change existing IHR provisions affecting individuals from non-binding to binding, including border closures, travel restrictions, confinement (quarantine), medical examinations and medication of individuals. The latter would encompass requirements for injection with vaccines or other pharmaceuticals.

CA+ (treaty) (detail here):

• Set up a new international supply network overseen by WHO.
• Fund the structures and processes by requiring ≥5% of national health budgets to be devoted to health emergencies.
• Set up a supranational ‘Governing Body,’  under WHO auspices, to oversee the whole process.
• Expand scope by emphasizing a ‘One Health’ agenda, being defined as a recognition that a very broad range of aspects of life and the biosphere can impact well-being, and therefore fall under definition of a ‘potential’ international health emergency.

Timeline

Both the treaty and IHR amendments are currently scheduled to be voted on at the World Health Assembly meeting in May 2024. 
The treaty will come into force (for ratifying countries) a month after 30 countries have ratified.
The IHR amendments would come into force for countries that do not reject them in the first half of 2025.
Both would have force under international law.

Please use the letter below as a template to write to your Member(s) of Parliament to alert them to your concerns regarding the proposed WHO pandemic treaty. The letter is intended to stimulate discussion within parliaments on key issues. The concerns raised should be relevant irrespective of the attitudes of the Member to efficacy of various aspects of the Covid-19 response.

It is essential that debate moves on from disagreement on specific public health interventions, and addresses the longer term issues of sovereignty, proportionality and conflict of interest. There are ways for countries to cooperate together in public health without subverting laws and democratic processes that many have fought to achieve over previous centuries.

Dear [insert name here]

We respectfully raise the critical issue of the proposed International Treaty on Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness and the proposed amendments to the International health Regulations (IHR)  ^[1] currently under negotiation by the Government and other member States of the World Health Organization (WHO). We call on you to oppose these proposed agreements by raising this issue in Parliament, demanding debate and open review, in the interests of preserving national sovereignty and individual rights.

These agreements seek to impose WHO dictates in place of national sovereignty and the rights of an individual to make choices regarding their own body and health, and is demonstrably inappropriate and disproportionate from a public health viewpoint.

Basic principles governing public health

The breadth of factors impacting an individual’s health, and the importance of personal, community and national control over health, are reflected in principles previously accepted by the World Health Organization:

Definition of health: Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. (Constitution of the WHO, 1946) ^[2]

Informed opinion and active co-operation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people. (Constitution of the WHO, 1946) ^[2]

The people have the right and duty to participate individually and collectively in the planning and implementation of their health care. (Article IV, Declaration of Alma Ata, 1978) ^[3]

The UN Declaration of Human Rights ^[4], 1948, also supports the fundamental rights of the individual: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Public health priority of pandemics

Pandemics severely affecting a high proportion of younger and middle-aged people have not occurred since the pre-antibiotic era (1918-20), when a majority of deaths were considered to be due to secondary bacterial ^[5] infections. The WHO lists only four pandemics ^[6] in the 120 years prior to Covid-19; 1918-19, 1957-58, 1968-69, and 2009-10, with only 1918-19 causing more than 1.1 million deaths. Severe pandemics are rare events. The Covid-19 pandemic, whilst resulting in considerable disruption and collateral harm, resulted in mortality at an average age ^[7] similar to that of all-cause mortality, with severity concentrated within clearly identifiable population groups ^[8].

The diversion of resources and various mitigation measures used mostly unsuccessfully during the Covid-19 public health response are demonstrated to have had a considerable negative impact on the economy and healthcare access. In doing so, they divert resources to private and corporate entities that are closely allied with WHO in promoting the proposed health emergency program. This underlines the importance of national and local control in time of disease outbreaks to ensure long-term harms do not outweigh intended short-term benefit, responses are in line with population priorities, and free of conflict of interest.

Dangers of the proposed agreements

This proposed treaty and IHR amendments raise a number of fundamental concerns that we believe should lead to their immediate abandonment:

1. People in countries complying with these instruments will lose sovereignty over major aspects of daily life to unelected international bureaucrats, who are subject to significant conflicts of interest from private individuals and industry.
2. These WHO bureaucrats will decide on the criteria for and timing of such take-overs.
3. The track record of the WHO in managing international outbreaks is poor. It is inherently dangerous to delegate control over complex issues that heavily impact the economy, society and public health to individuals in a distant location with no community or relevant national affiliations, and no direct stake in the outcomes.
4. Such centralization is contrary to the fundamental pillars of community-based, locally organised healthcare, and antithetical to the principles of individual rights and autonomy upon which the WHO’s constitution is based.
5. The increasing emphasis on pandemics instead of on the actual major causes of human illness and mortality is inappropriate, and the diversion of funds and activity will have hugely negative impacts on overall population and individual health.

The world needs international forums for sharing data, for concentrating technical expertise to support countries lacking these and to facilitate discussions between countries concerning health issues, including emergencies. Such organisations must be in service of member countries and their people, not act as unelected authorities, funded and influenced by conflicted, non-national interests that attempt to direct and control the lives of free citizens.

The definition of pandemic and health emergency used by the WHO are arbitrary ^[10], leaving the decision to subvert national sovereignty in health matters at the whim of individual interpretation.

The WHO was set up after World War II as a body to serve countries, governed by them, and not as a body that would govern the actions of member states. Our laws and process of governance have developed over centuries to protect the rights of individuals and to preserve national sovereignty at the will of the people. It is imperative that those setting policy and rules on complex issues have a direct stake in the outcomes.

We therefore request that steps be taken urgently to review the sovereignty and health issues that are at risk through the process currently under way, and to ensure that the role of the WHO, and other international organisations, remains strictly advisory and technical, whilst all decisions affecting citizens remain within the ambit of local and national government as well as the individuals themselves.

Sincerely,
Sign your name here

Letter References

1. WHO International Negotiating Body (INB) website for CA+ (pandemic treaty). https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2023/02/27/default-calendar/fourth-meeting-of-the-intergovernmental-negotiating-body-(inb)-for-a-who-instrument-on-pandemic-prevention-preparedness-and-response
2. WHO Working Group for the International Health Regulations website. https://apps.who.int/gb/wgihr/index.html
3. The Proposed Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations, and their Implications for Individual and National Sovereignty https://pandata.org/proposed-amendments-whos-ihr/
4. Proposed WHO Instruments for Pandemics and Health Emergencies https://pandata.org/proposed-who-instruments-for-pandemics-and-health-emergencies/
5. Council of the European Union, An international treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/coronavirus/pandemic-treaty/
6. WHO, Constitution of the World Health Organization, https://apps.who.int/gb/bd/pdf_files/BD_49th-en.pdf#page=6
7. https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/documents/almaata-declaration-en.pdf?sfvrsn=7b3c2167_2
8. International Conference on Primary Health Care, Declaration of Alma-Ata, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
9. National Institutes of Health, Bacterial Pneumonia Caused Most Deaths in 1918 Influenza Pandemic, https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/bacterial-pneumonia-caused-most-deaths-1918-influenza-pandemic
10. WHO, Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1
11. Office for National Statistics, UK, Average age of those who had died with COVID-19, https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/averageageofthosewhohaddiedwithcovid19
12. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, People with Certain Medical Conditions, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html
13. WHO, Special session of World Health Assembly 29 November 2021 – 1 December 2021, https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2021/11/29/default-calendar/second-special-session-of-the-world-health-assembly
14. WHO, Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1