UsForThem challenges the WHO's Director-General after he attacks elected politicians
Our legal team opines that Dr Ghebreyesus appears repeatedly to have misdirected or misled the press and the public
UsForThem’s Legal Affairs Team today sent this letter, concerning the status of the controversial package of proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, to Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization.
Dr Ghebreyesus is reported as having said last week that “lies have been spread even by members of parliament, and in some cases by heads of government”, and that he found it “difficult to understand how elected officials could mislead the people they are supposed to serve on this issue – either knowingly or unknowingly”.1
From: UsForThem, London
To: Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General, WHO, Geneva
1 April, 2024
Dr Ghebreyesus,
WHO Pandemic Agreement and IHR Amendments (the ‘WHO Agreements’)
On more than one occasion you have described questions and concerns about the Pandemic Agreement as “a litany of lies and conspiracy theories”, and asserted that claims of a WHO power grab were “utterly, completely, categorically false”. Most recently you have attacked elected politicians who have spoken out as being negligently uninformed or deliberately deceptive.
In dismissing those questions and concerns, you appear repeatedly to have misdirected or misled the press and the public by confining your defensive comments specifically to the Pandemic Agreement, when clearly you must know that there are two documents under negotiation and that it is the IHR Amendments which have drawn the greatest criticisms.
For example you said in March 2023 that “No country will cede any sovereignty to @WHO. Countries will decide what the #PandemicAccord says... Any opposite claim is quite simply false”.2
In a speech in February 2024 you reiterated that “the Pandemic Agreement will not give the WHO any power over any state or any individual” and “the draft Agreement is available on the WHO website for anyone who wants to read it … and anyone who does will not find a single sentence or a single word giving the WHO any power over sovereign states”.3
While these statements are true in relation to the Pandemic Agreement, they are not true in relation to the only published version of the IHR Amendments. No subsequent drafts of that document have been published on the WHO website, as presumably you will know. It is conspicuous that you have not used any of your many opportunities to mention the status, purpose or effect of the IHR Amendments.
We find it difficult to understand how the WHO’s most senior official could get this wrong. When you made those statements, were you negligently uninformed, or were you being deliberately deceptive?
Your repeated claims that no sovereignty could be ceded by these agreements appears to be flatly contradicted by the November 2023 words of Lawrence Gostin, Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre, and a senior official who describes himself as “actively involved in WHO processes for a pandemic agreement and IHR reform”. Gostin was refreshingly open about the fact that the aim of the IHR Amendments is to “fundamentally restructure the global health governance architecture” and that the proposals “may require all states to forgo some level of sovereignty in exchange for enhanced safety and fairness”.4
Dr Ghebreyesus, if you stand by all that you have said, we challenge you to put the status of the IHR Amendments beyond doubt by asking the IHR Working Group (a) to include in the final set of amendments for the IHRs an equivalent statement to Article 24.3 of the Pandemic Agreement (which explicitly rebuts any interpretation which could allow the WHO Secretariat or Director-General to interfere in domestic policy-making), and (b) to publish the current draft negotiating text of the IHRs showing that inclusion without any further delay.
Sincerely,
Legal Affairs Team, UsForThem
Copied to:
UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
UK Department for Health and Social Care
UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee
UK Health and Social Care Select Committee
If you enjoy Broken Custodians you may also like the new book by Molly, Arabella and Ben of UsForThem: THE ACCOUNTABILITY DEFICIT, How ministers and officials evaded accountability, misled the public and violated democracy during the pandemic, which launched as a civil liberties and political activism bestseller on Amazon. “Absolutely brilliant analysis … and extremely important for the future so that new generations of politicians can understand and avoid the same failures”, a reviewer has commented.
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Not only loss of national sovereignty, the loss of individual sovereignty is at stake.
Furthermore it appears this WHO pandemic treaty will require a lot of our money to deliver this so called equity….
Would be good to have some visibility of the projected costs.
Excellent work. Thank you.