State Attorneys General Warn Biden About WHO Pandemic Agreements

By | May 16, 2024

NEW YORK, May 17 (C-Fam) Twenty-two attorney generals have told President Joe Biden they oppose the World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic treaty and international health regulations because it gives the WHO “unprecedented and unconstitutional powers over the United States and her people.”

“The federal government cannot delegate public health decisions to an international body,” the letter states. “The U.S. Constitution doesn’t vest responsibility for public health policy with the federal government. It reserves those powers for the States.”

The letter charges that the two agreements “threaten national sovereignty, undermine states’ authority, and imperil constitutionally guaranteed freedoms” including by creating a “global surveillance infrastructure, ostensibly in the interest of public health, but with the inherent opportunity for control.”

The letter says the agreements “transform the WHO from an advisory, charitable organization into the world’s governor of public health” and that “ultimately, the goal of these instruments isn’t to protect public health. It’s to cede authority to the WHO—specifically its Director-General—to restrict our citizens’ rights to freedom of speech, privacy, movement (especially travel across borders) and informed consent.”

The Attorneys General charge that the agreements give the Director-General the power to “unilaterally declare a public health emergency of international concern.” And it cautions that such a declaration can be expanded to include events that are marginally relevant to public health, including so-called climate emergencies.

The letter cites the example of how the WHO handled the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of why the WHO cannot be trusted. It accuses the WHO of restricting civil liberties in the West, including freedom of speech and religion, while doing nothing to hold China accountable for its failures.

“Rather than learning from these failures, some inexplicably want to relinquish more power to unelected and unaccountable institutions,” they say.

They warn the president that they “will resist any attempt to enable the WHO to directly or indirectly set public policy for our citizens.”

Diplomats trying to finalize the binding international treaty and the international health regulations keep running into snags and failing to meet deadlines. The Biden administration faces the legal hurdle of advice and consent in the U.S. constitution, as previously reported in the Friday Fax. The Biden administration is rumored to want to bypass this entirely.

Forty-nine U.S. Senators sent the Biden administration a letter last month telling the President that the pandemic treaty was “dead on arrival” in the U.S. Senate and that the international health regulations were being forced through the WHO illegally. According to the Senators, the amendments must clear a four month waiting period before they can be adopted.

Negotiations for the pandemic treaty were extended once again at the end of last week. The treaty is most important to developing countries because it sets up a mechanism for distributing international assistance. Its provisions are mostly vague and leave almost all matters to be decided by a Conference of States at a later date.

Negotiations for amendments to the International Health Regulations concluded today in Geneva. These amendments were a high priority for the Biden administration and other Western countries. They define the powers of the WHO during a health emergency. The purpose of the amendments is to force countries to follow the directions of the WHO and restrict their ability to adopt their own approaches to future pandemics, as the Trump administration did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

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