WHO's Pandemic Treaty Thread. Set to be signed in May 2024. - Countries get a vote on whether or not to give away their sovereignty to the WHO and you don't get to vote.

[Fatpacks]

WHO Member States Miss Deadline for Agreement on Pandemic Accord, But Agree to Soldier On in Next Two Weeks
(Link/Archive)
Despite the huge human and economic cost of COVID-19, two years of negotiations and substantial diplomatic pressure, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) failed to reach consensus on a pandemic agreement by Friday, the last scheduled day of negotiations before the upcoming 77th World Health Assembly (WHA).

But the exhausted INB delegates have resolved to solider on with talks right up to the eve of the WHA, which begins on 27 May.

Briefing a handful of media left at the Geneva headquarters on Friday night, co-chairs Roland Driece and Precious Matsoso said the negotiations had finally started to make progress in the past two weeks.

“The closer you get to the endpoint, the more willingness there is to move. We worked very hard and deep into the night, but there’s just so much so many issues that we need to agree upon and which are sometimes very technical or political,” said Driece.

“I think this is the last mile,” said Matsoso, adding that One Health, pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS), intellectual property and human resources had preoccupied delegates – although the human resources article was almost entirely “yellowed” – which meant it had been agreed by the working group.

The INB has developed a schedule of work based on significant areas that still lacked convergence, she added.

“Of course PABS is one… But once you get that, the rest is history,” said Matsoso. “You may ask why we have given PABS so much attention. It’s because they all say it’s the heart, so if it doesn’t go with the instrument, it means there will be no heartbeat.”

She added that there would be one or two days’ work interspersed with breaks in the next two weeks, but that the actual dates still had to be agreed on.

Earlier, some delegates told Health Policy Watch there was simply was not enough time to attend to the outstanding issues. Others, notably Eswatini, remained more hopeful saying that if INB reconvened in the week before the WHA, scheduled to start on 27 May, many of the outstanding gaps could potentially be closed.

“If we can work intelligently and with dedication, I think we can deliver a stronger outcome at the World Health Assembly,” the delegate said.

INB’s mandate​

“Our mandate is to report to the WHA on the outcome of the process, and that is what we will do,” said Driece. “And the outcome will be where we will be a day before the WHA. We do hope if we put all the efforts in that it’s going to be with the final agreements. But if not, we just report on where we are at that moment.”

If no agreement is reached in the next two weeks, other options include an extended WHA running into June, a WHA Special Session in November or December or – the least popular option – postponing the deadline until next WHA.

Whatever happens in the next two weeks, the INB is obliged to report an outcome at the WHA, including sharing the latest draft of the agreement so far, including all of the bracketed, green and yellow text, WHO’s legal department has reportedly told delegates on Friday. The INB will also recommend a way forward on final negotiations, with the WHA making the final decision.

WHO chief legal officer Steven Solomon told the media briefing that “the INB wants to provide the assembly with a basis to consider their two and a half years of work. They want to meet their mandate to give the assembly a basis to consider their work.”

Solomon added that there is confusion about what adoption by the WHA means.

“Adoption doesn’t mean the treaty applies to any country. It’s the start of a process by which countries go back and consider whether this instrument makes sense for them. They would consider, at the domestic level, whether they should ratify the agreement.

“What I’ve seen in the press, and in, particularly social media, is the view that if it’s adopted, then it applies. You all know that’s not the case, but it’s not necessarily clear.

“And I guess the other thing I’d say is that every negotiation of every international agreement, begins as a marathon and finishes with a sprint. Member states have been running this marathon for two and a half years, and they’re in the sprint phase now. That shows their commitment to to achieving a result that delivers both global health equity and global health security, and is effective at preventing future pandemics and responding to them.”

Important progress​

However, WHO officials, INB members and stakeholders stressed that the agreements, even in principle, on key points regarding equity, benefit sharing and technology transfer that have been reached so far are important for advancing equitable access to medicines and vaccines.

Provided there is no backsliding in subsequent rounds of negotiations, these would represent important, albeit imperfect, advances in preparing for and responding to the next pandemic.

Draft text from late Thursday reflected the still large areas of disagreement – with a number of critical articles still to be discussed.
Friday morning’s session did not return to disputed articles but discussed various definitions. This is important for amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), due to be finalised in the coming week, which are supposed to use common definitions.

Knowledge Ecology International’s James Love told Health Policy Watch that, while the current text did not go far enough in many aspects to ensure equitable access to pandemic medicines and vaccines, there were important advances.

In Article 12, which deals with pathogen access and benefit sharing (PABS), “every version has some amount of vaccines that will be available to the WHO for free and affordable prices”, said Love.

“Some people would like, more some people would like less, but no one is arguing it would be zero. So if that succeeds, it will definitely expand access.”

The current draft has two versions – either “up to” or “at least” 20% of health-related pandemic health products being allocated to the WHO for distribution.
Love also said that a number of the articles also established new norms – such as on public money invested in research and development (R&D), technology transfer and global supply chains.

Putting an obligation on countries that fund R&D of pandemic products to “look after the access conditions” of whatever medicines and vaccines are produced as a result of their investment, not only in their own countries but worldwide, particularly in developing countries, is “something brand new”, said Love.

While much of the language on technology transfer (Article 7) is not binding, the text does mandate countries and the WHO to move ahead on this, ditto with the establishment of global supply chains.

The progress achieved by those who believe in a multilateral approach to pandemic prevention could, however, be viewed as a setback by ultra-nationalists that would rather go it alone even in a pandemic, sources here warned.

For instance, parts of the media in the United Kingdom have been claiming, somewhat hysterically, that an agreement on benefit sharing would mean the UK would have to give up 25% of its vaccines in future pandemics. But this is a distortion of the agreement, WHO officials have pointed out.

Like any international instrument, the proposed agreement would be subject to ratification and countries’ sovereign laws – even though pathogens know no boundaries.

We literally got the WHO to abandon the pandemic treaty. They're not gonna sign it anymore.

"""""""""We""""""""" didn't get them to do shit you fucking mouthbreather. They're still actively working on it as we speak and it's still going to pass at the end of this month. The only source you have in your favor is a retarded clickbait headline from some no-name rag pandering to QAnon boomer faggots. I swear it should be illegal to be this retarded.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

I don't see how this treaty being signed or not actually means anything. If you live in a shithole blue state or Europeon hellhole, you're still going to get fucked. If not, you're slightly less fucked. International treaties can't actually force a country to do anything, like all the extradition treaties that get ignored because some government is afraid they'll give someone the death penalty. In the United States, the Constitution is still valid and that means you have legal ground to sue the government for violation of your rights. Hell, a bunch of red states even put laws on the books that restrict the government from declaring a forever-demic, ban vaccine passports, etc. Those laws don't just get suspended because the WHO or glowniggers in the federal government cried about it.

 

[Dude Snakes]

Too bad. We get no say in this. Nothing can save us anymore. All we can do is remain numb to the madness.


Precisely.

Remember that there was a time when we could have stopped this. It's too late now. This is all our fucking fault.

Then Kill Yourself.

 

[Fatpacks]

African Anti-rights Groups and Anti-Vaxxers Unite in Global Campaign Against WHO
(Link/Archive)
Right-wing African Members of Parliament (MPs), including some of the continent’s most vociferous anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ lawmakers, united with anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists for the first time at a conference in early May.
Aside from the expected rhetoric against abortion and LGBTQ people, the African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty gave a platform to a speaker who claimed that a range of vaccines were unnecessary or designed to reduce African fertility – including the COVID-19, Human Papillomavirus (HPV), malaria and even tetanus vaccines.
Others agitated against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic agreement currently being negotiated, describing it as a “power grab” aimed at imposing abortion, same-sex marriage and lockdowns on the world.
The anti-vaxx charge was led by Kenyan doctor Wahome Ngare and South African Shabnam Mohamed, who describes herself as a lawyer and journalist.
Ngare is chairperson of the African Sovereignty Coalition and a director of the rightwing Kenya Christian Professionals Forum (KCPF).
Mohamed is a leader of an “Africa chapter” of US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Children’s Health Defense, one of the key global sources of vaccine misinformation. She is also part of the World Council on Health, an alliance of anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and alternative health providers.
Ngare told the conference that SARS-CoV2 was produced in a laboratory and the “endgame of the whole COVID fiasco was to vaccinate everybody” for profit; the tetanus vaccine causes infertility and claimed that vaccines against HPV and malaria (one of the biggest killers of African children) were unnecessary.
“Could the COVID pandemic have been created and designed to facilitate the administration of an injection aimed at reducing one population through sterility and death?” asked Ngare, who also claimed that the WHO had been involved for 20 years in developing a tetanus vaccine that prevents pregnancy.
Vaccines have had a massive impact on African lives, cutting infant deaths in half over the past 50 years, according to a recent study. The HPV vaccine offers an opportunity to combat cervical cancer, the most pervasive cancer for women on the continent.
Ngare also called on the African MPs to ensure that their governments reject the proposed amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR), which he claimed would turn the WHO “from an advisory organisation into a governing body”, a false claim that is also made repeatedly by Kennedy.
The actual aim of the IHR amendments is to ensure there is a clear process for responding to “public health emergencies of international concern (PHEIC) to ensure the world is better prepared for the next pandemic.

Disinformation shopping list​

The pandemic agreement aims to ensure that the WHO’s 194 member countries are better equipped to prevent, prepare for, and respond to future pandemics, including more equitable access to vaccines and medicines.
Yet Mohamed provided a shopping list of disinformation about the pandemic agreement, which is currently in draft form. She took particular exception to the proposed pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) system.
This aims to set up a global system where countries can share biological and genomic information about pathogens with the potential to cause pandemics, and derive benefits for doing so, such as getting access to medicines and vaccines. Under the current draft, the WHO will get 20% of any health-related pandemic products – including vaccines and medicine – to distribute to countries and groups most in need to avoid vaccine hoarding.
According to Mohammed, this PABS system will encourage “biological weapon research” and “dangerous experimentation”.
She also claimed that “South Africa” has drawn up a Bill to withdraw from the WHO. However, she and a couple of MPs from the right-wing African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) are behind a “Bill”, which has not been tabled in parliament.
The ACDP is expressly opposed to COVID-19 vaccines and support for the animal parasite medicine, Ivermectin, as a COVID treatment in its election manifesto prepared for the country’s national elections on 29 May.

‘Kill the gays’ ​

Ngare and Mohammed received a warm welcome at the conference, which was addressed by some of the most right-wing politicians on the continent, including Ugandan Cabinet Minister David Bahati, responsible for his country’s 2009 “Kill the Gays” Bill that advocated for the death penalty for same-sex relations in certain situations. Although Uganda’s Constitutional Court nullified that Bill in 2014, the country passed a similar Bill in 2023, which recently survived a court challenge.
Dr Seyoum Teklemariam Antonios, Africa director of the US anti-rights group, Family Watch International, told the conference that the pandemic agreement and “transgender healthcare guidelines” pose serious threats to Africa’s growth and development and requested Uganda’s leaders to prevent its representatives at the upcoming World Health Organisation Assembly (WHA) from signing these treaties. (No transgender healthcare guidelines are on the agenda at the WHA.)
Antonios is well known for his extreme views and close ties with Western conservatives, declaring homosexuality the “pinnacle of immorality”, and claiming that his country, Ethiopia, “shall be the graveyard for homosexuality”.
Meanwhile, Family Watch International, a US-based organisation designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is one of the most active anti-LGBTQ groups on the continent and at the UN, running annual training sessions for African politicians at its Arizona base.
Uganda’s Minister of Mineral Development Sarah Opendi, chaired the conference, and attendees including Egyptian MP Amira Saber, Eswatini MP and son of King Mswati, Prince Lindaninkosi Dlamini, and Fabakary Tombong Jatta, Speaker of Gambia’s National Assembly.
Later, a small group of delegates, including Ngare and Mohamed, joined Opendi at the State House to meet with Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni, who is also Minister of Education and Sport.

Post-pandemic global realignment of conservatives​

Anti-science dis- and misinformation has become a global movement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a disparate range of organisations and individuals, particularly in the US, spread various conspiracies, including that the pandemic was intentionally created as part of a plan by secretive elites to control the world population through lockdowns and quarantines, and that China was also involved in the spread of a “lab-created” virus.
These groups included the far-right conspiracy theory movement QAnon, America’s Frontline Doctors and Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that 12 people were responsible for two-thirds of anti-vaxx information on Facebook and Twitter at the height of the pandemic in 2021. Nine of the “disinformation dozen” derived their livelihoods from the “alternative health” sector.
Top spreader Joseph Mercola “peddles dietary supplements and false cures as alternatives to vaccines”, while Ty and Charlene Bollinger, the third-biggest spreaders of misinformation, are “anti-vax entrepreneurs who run a network of accounts that market books and DVDs about vaccines, cancer and COVID-19”, according to the CCDH. Kennedy was the second biggest misinformation spreader.
Post-pandemic, these groups and some of their views have found resonance with US right-wing political groups opposed to abortion and LGBTQI rights, as well as the nationalists and anti-China groups.
These seemingly unrelated views have coalesced around opposition to the WHO, particularly the pandemic agreement that is being negotiated at present.
In January, some of the foremost right-wing groups in the US sent a letter to the WHO Executive Board urging it to reject awarding official relations status to the Center for Reproductive Health – and basing their argument on misinformation.
“Giving special status to the Center for Reproductive Rights will further fuel the culture wars undermining the WHO’s mission to tackle health issues. It confirms fears that WHO’s new accord on pandemic preparedness will be used to undermine national laws related to abortion,” claims the letter.
Signatories included the Heritage Foundation, Family Watch International, C-Fam, Family Research Council, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, International Organization for the Family, ACLJ Action and Human Life International.
The pandemic agreement explicitly recognises countries’ sovereignty, noting that the WHO has no power to “direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe the national and/or domestic laws”.

The US conservatives’ ‘Project 2025’​

In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation, a far-right US think-tank, launched Project 2025: The Presidential Transition Project, consisting of policy proposals and a recruitment strategy to ensure thel takeover of all government offices and entities should Donald Trump be re-elected.
The proposals are contained in a 920-page book, and include the demand that vaccines “tested on aborted fetal cells” should be removed from US supplies and the promotion of “the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning” – a “natural” method to control pregnancy without contraceptives.
The conservative blueprint mentions the WHO a handful of times – all negatively.
It refers to the “manifest failure and corruption” of the WHO during the pandemic, describing it as “willing to support the suppression of basic human rights, partially because of its close relationship with human rights abusers like the [People’s Republic of China].”
The next US Administration must “return to treating international organizations as vehicles for promoting American interests—or take steps to extract itself from those organizations”, it adds.
This is part of the nationalist rhetoric of rightwing Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans, who have little interest in anything outside US borders.

Evidence-based information​

Globally, the frenzied dis- and misinformation about the WHO’s pandemic agreement reached a crescendo this month – apparently to coincide with the supposed deadline of the pandemic agreement negotiations.
While much of the tone and messaging of the anti-WHO groups is similar to the pandemic-era anti-vaxxers, the chorus is bigger, louder and much more systematic, and the organisations are more diverse.
But making the WHO a target in the “culture war” has serious implications for global health, as well as solidarity and human rights.
WHO spokesperson Paul Garwood said his organisation is “concerned about the impact of dis- and misinformation of people’s well-being and health choices”.
“We will continue to share clear, evidence-based helpful information to our member states and the broader public at large,” added Garwood.
“The WHO’s leadership in public health, technical expertise, and support in disease prevention have significantly advanced health equity and accessibility, fostering global solidarity during times of crisis,” said Tian Johnson, strategist for the African Alliance, a Pan-African health justice organisation.
“The coordinated campaign to undermine the WHO’s global and African work demands a robust response. We must actively resist, advocate for, and confront the far-right groups seeking to propagate hatred, division, and violence on our continent.
“These overseas groups, who benefit from local support and leadership, thrive on exacerbating discord by vilifying our differences and deflecting attention from their own failures to serve their communities. They understand that a unified Africa, one that embraces our commonalities over divisions, poses a direct challenge to their agenda of white supremacy and colonialism,” added Johnson.
“To counter this threat, we must redirect our focus inward, strengthening our local institutions, rallying behind the WHO’s global and regional efforts, and championing science.”

Disinformation: Anti-WHO Convoy Heads to Geneva for World Health Assembly
(Link/Archive)
Some of the most vocal global right-wing conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers are heading to Geneva at the end of this month (May) to agitate against the World Health Organization (WHO) and its pandemic agreement – including a Trump loyalist linked to the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol.

An alliance of right-wing groups, conspiracy theorists and alternative health practitioners calling itself “The Geneva Project” has planned a closed meeting on 31 May, while on 1 June it hosts a 150-minute invitation-only press conference and a public protest to coincide with the end of the World Health Assembly (WHA).

The protest outside the United Nations headquarters aims to “declare independence from global institutions such as the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum while celebrating cultural and individual sovereignty”, according to a press release from the group.

One of their key – and false – claims against the pandemic agreement and the amended International Health Regulations (IHR) is that they will give WHO the power to supersede domestic laws and declare lockdowns and other measures during pandemics and public health emergencies.

Protest speakers include Trump campaigner Dr Kat Lindley, UK anti-vaxxer Dr Aseem Malhotra, biologist and author Bret Weinstein, and Swiss lawyer Philipp Kruse.
Lindley is Texas president of the far-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. She was in Washington DC in 2021 during the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, using her Twitter account to call on “patriots” to “answer the call” and “#StopTheSteal”, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Malhotra is a cardiologist who has campaigned against COVID-19 vaccines globally, including in South Africa, where he supported a court bid by an anti-vaxx group, the Freedom Alliance of South Africa (FASA), to stop the government from administering the Pfizer vaccine.

Weinstein hosts a podcast in the US that promotes anti-vaxxers and has steadily promoted the animal anti-parasite medicine, Ivermectin, as an effective treatment against COVID-19.

Recently, he was part of perpetuating an astonishing conspiracy linking the attempted assassination of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico with that country’s “courageous rejection of the WHO’s audacious Pandemic Preparedness Treaty and International Health Regulations”.
This conspiracy has been repeated by Republican far-right Member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene. Meanwhile, Meryl Nass, a US doctor who had her license suspended for COVID-19 misinformation, intimated in a webinar hosted by Robert F Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense that WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was linked to the assassination.

The Geneva Project mainly consists of far-right groups from the US, including the Brownstone Institute, which claims its “motive force” was policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and “a willingness on the part of the public and officials to relinquish freedom and fundamental human rights in the name of managing a public health crisis”.

Brownstone president Jeffrey Tucker is also a senior economics columnist for Epoch Times, an international media company founded in the US by supporters of the Chinese dissident group, Falun Gong.

Epoch Times “has become a key media source for COVID-sceptic and anti-vaccine movements in France, Italy and Spain,” according to openDemocracy. It was the major funder of Trump advertisements over six months in 2019 outside of his presidential election campaign, NBC found.

Other supporters include a chiropractic practice, a group called Treehouse Living, the Alliance for Natural Health and Freiheitstrychler, the Swiss nationalists who made themselves known during the pandemic for ringing cow bells in protest against COVID-19 laws.

‘Political opportunism’​

Dis- and misinformation exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has gathered momentum as the deadline for negotiating a pandemic agreement at the WHO has approached.

As previously reported by Health Policy Watch, African anti-rights groups and anti-vaxxers met in Uganda earlier this month where there were calls by speakers to reject the pandemic agreement and disinformation that the agreement was a WHO power grab that would undermine member states’ national sovereignty.

Even mainstream media outlets such as the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Newsweek and Sky TV Australia have given prominence to anti-pandemic agreement views in the past few weeks.

Eloise Todd, the executive director and a co-founder of Pandemic Action Network (PAN), says that “some of the recent spikes in disinformation have come about through political opportunism from electioneering politicians”, and that the truth about the pandemic agreement needs more coverage.

“It was national leaders – prime ministers and presidents – of many political stripes that first suggested an international pandemic agreement in late 2020. Even at the height of COVID-19, leaders recognized they needed a roadmap towards better cooperation for future crises,” says Todd.

“Much of the recent disinformation has been around national sovereignty, and yet the wording of the pandemic agreement could not be clearer: ‘Nothing in the WHO Pandemic Agreement’ can be used to ‘direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe the national and/or domestic laws….such as ban or accept travelers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures, or implement lockdowns’, ” said Todd, quoting from the draft agreement.

She adds that those responsible for disinformation need to be “held to account: the individuals, those that back them and the companies that enable the spread”.

‘Treat disinformation like organised crime’​

Justin Arenstein, CEO of Code for Africa, argues that the best defence against disinformation is to target covert actors and deliberately deceptive behaviour.

“Rather than pumping billions of dollars into endless literacy initiatives that have questionable or partial impacts at best, let’s also put resources behind following the money so that we can better identify covert and criminal behaviour, and the shadowy bad actors who are pulling the strings,” Arenstein told a recent United Nations Information Committee meeting on information integrity.

“What we should instead be doing is treating disinformation and other coordinated info-manipulation for what it is: organised crime. The ‘digital mercenaries’ who offer info-manipulation, surveillance and trolling as a commercial service all operate covertly, and their core service is to mislead and subvert the public. That’s a criminal enterprise,” says Arenstein, who has worked to combat the “infodemic” in Africa for the past few years.

He also calls for positive initiatives to strengthen online trust, such as investing in “the champions who are creating trustworthy, credible content” such as Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, and transparency tools like CrowdTangle that help people to understand who the hidden puppet masters are.

Fake news and disinformation continue to undermine public health and trust in vaccines, with consequences such as outbreaks measles in middle-class areas in the US and Europe where vaccination rates have dropped.

These occurences are likely to become more widespread and harder to manage unless global health organisations and governments take far bolder steps to address the infodemic.

WHO are about to make examples of so many fucking people this time next month.

 

[Male Idiot]

Just info, the Ugandan bill says "kill homos in certain situations."

That certain situation was that if one of the honos was a child, and his "older partner" would be the one executed.

Just in case you were wondering why the journoscum didn't explain.

 

[Dude Snakes]

Just info, the Ugandan bill says "kill homos in certain situations."

That certain situation was that if one of the honos was a child, and his "older partner" would be the one executed.

Just in case you were wondering why the journoscum didn't explain.

They have blood on their hands Total Journo Death! I support this bill. Uganda is based and Christpilled!

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Good news. We Won!

For now. Remember when they tried to do away with Net Neutrality, failed, and later succeeded?