Explainer: WHO’s Pandemic Agreement Threatens National Sovereignty, Free Speech, and Life

WHO negotiated a revised “Proposal for negotiating text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement” on February 8-15, 2024. This explainer has been updated to reflect the latest text.

The Biden administration plans to adopt a dangerous international accord that gives the World Health Organization (WHO) greater control over the way the U.S. responds to global health pandemics like COVID-19 — and to do so without Senate approval. To make matters worse, the current text does not even define the term “pandemic.”

As this article will demonstrate, the WHO Pandemic Agreement:

• Threatens national sovereignty;
• Equates the health of humans with animals and plants;
• Calls on nations to “combat” any “misinformation” that reduces “trust” in the government or its measures, such as social distancing;
• Would empower private-sector forces such as social media companies to ramp up censorship of disfavored viewpoints;
• Worries citizens will have “too much information” about pandemics;
• Supports quotas and “gender diversity”;
• Aims to create equity-driven national health care systems around the globe; and
• Does not yet define what constitutes a “pandemic.”

To make matters worse, the Biden administration lobbied WHO to rename the Pandemic Treaty, so it can adopt the measure without the Senate’s ratification (which a treaty requires).

Background

The United States joined the World Health Organization in 1948. In March 2021, WHO members called for a new international pandemic “treaty” and began writing the first draft of the “legally binding treaty” on December 7, 2022. When the Biden administration signaled that it could not win Senate ratification as required by the Constitution, WHO transformed the “treaty” into the “WHO Pandemic Agreement” and released the negotiating text of the document last October. All 194 WHO member nations will vote on the agreement at the 77th World Health Assembly from May 27-June 1.

Eroding National Sovereignty

In its own words, the World Health Organization exists “to dispel the temptations of isolationism and nationalism.” The Pandemic Agreement naturally follows from its globalist mindset.

Under the WHO Pandemic Agreement, nations would retain their sovereignty only “in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the general principles of international law” (Article 3:4). “Public health decisions for preventing, preparing for and responding to pandemics should” also be “consistent with Article 2 of the International Health Regulations” (Article 3:14). International bodies also control how health bodies handle your private health data. Nations will respect their citizens’ “right to privacy” — including their “confidentiality, privacy and data protection” — as “established under international law” and “consistent with each [nation’s] national laws and international obligations” (Article 3:15).

The WHO Pandemic Agreement places a number of restrictions and demands on U.S. sovereignty:

• WHO takes a double tithe of U.S. vaccines, medicines, and equipment. “In the event of a pandemic,” the United States must give WHO “a minimum of 20%” of all “pandemic-related products,” such as vaccines or personal protective equipment, for global redistribution: “10% as a donation and 10% at affordable prices” (Article 12:4b(ii)(a)).
• Real decisions are made by nameless, unaccountable bureaucrats from around the globe. The agreement creates a “Governing Body” (formerly called the Conference of the Parties), headed by a secretary, which oversees and guides the agreement’s implementation (Article 21 through 23, Article 26). Once the agreement is adopted, the Governing Body may adopt amendments or protocols that alter its text by a three-quarters majority vote (Articles 31 and 33).
• The latest text creates an “Implementation and Compliance Committee,” which monitors each nation’s adherence to the WHO Pandemic Agreement’s terms “at the individual and systemic levels” (Article 25:3).
• The agreement will create a global medical force at WHO’s disposal. Member nations must create and fund “a skilled and trained multidisciplinary global public health emergency workforce that is deployable” to nations at their request to “prevent the escalation of a small-scale spread to global proportions” (Article 7:4).
• It gives The Hague jurisdiction over members’ disputes. If WHO is not able to solve disagreements between members, nations may agree to the “submission of the dispute to the International Court of Justice.” They may also settle things through arbitration by the Conference of the Parties (Article 34:2).
• Article 4 of the new proposed text significantly strengthens WHO’s power. The text says nations “shall” provide “financial and technical support to developing countries” and draw up guidelines “in collaboration with WHO and relevant international organizations” (Article 4:2a, c). Nations must also adopt “infection prevention and control measures” only “in line with relevant international standards and guidelines” (Article 4:3b, c).
• All “national plans” for pandemics “shall [be] consistent with the [WHO’s] International Health Regulations.” If they are not, four global institutions known as the “Quadripartite” — WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) — may “provide technical support as necessary” (Article 4:4a, c).
• The Governing Body will also “strengthen the implementation of the WHO Pandemic Agreement” via “the services and cooperation of … the United Nations system and other international and regional intergovernmental organizations and nongovernmental organizations” (Article 21:2f).
• No reservations are allowed, as Article 29 states simply, “No reservations may be made to the WHO Pandemic Agreement [unless permitted by other articles of the WHO Pandemic Agreement].”

WHO: Abortion Is ‘Essential’ during Pandemics

Although it is not mentioned in the pandemic agreement, it is vital to understand that WHO considers abortion an essential service. In March 2022, WHO released a new “Abortion care guideline” stating that both chemical and surgical abortion should continue even during global health crises. “In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic … WHO has included comprehensive abortion care in the list of essential health services,” said the document.

WHO opened 2024 with a bulletin calling on member states to “counteract conservative opposition” and “enact progressive laws and policies” on abortion, homosexuality, and prostitution. “Countries must repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality, sex work and HIV transmission,” titled “Advancing the ‘sexual’ in sexual and reproductive health and rights: a global health, gender equality and human rights imperative,” co-written by WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus.

It comes as little surprise WHO downgrades human life, considering its “One Health” proposal.

The Current Draft Does Not Define the Term ‘Pandemic’

Between Articles 3 and 4, the current proposal for the negotiating text says, “Definition of ‘pandemic’ to be determined, including issue of whether to use ‘pandemic emergencies’ or ‘pandemics.’” Given the powers this treaty triggers upon declaration of a pandemic, this is no small omission.

It also eliminates the requirement to establish “a global peer review mechanism to assess pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” by December 31, 2026 (formerly in Article 8:4).

‘One Health’ Lowers Human Health to the Level of Animal and Plant Life

The most concerning aspect of the WHO Pandemic Agreement from a Christian perspective is its “One Health approach,” which lowers the infinite dignity of human life to that of animals and plants. According to the agreement, One Health “aims to sustainably balance … the health of people, animals and ecosystems,” which includes “taking action on climate change.” (Emphasis added.) Treatments that preserve human life and policies that lead to human flourishing, but which WHO decrees violate the ever-changing theories of climate change, have no place under the pandemic agreement’s One Health ideology. The agreement states One Health decisions can be based on “social and behavioural sciences” and will include “community engagement” (Article 5:4c).

The new text of the agreement further dilutes national sovereignty by striking the requirement that nations enact the One Health approach “with the application of, and in accordance with, national law” (Article 5:1). Now, nations “shall … ensure that relevant national policies, strategies and measures adopt a One Health approach,” including “whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches to prevent, detect and respond to” outbreaks (Article 5:2a, c, emphasis added.). Ultimately, the proper “guidelines” for implementing all of Article 4 and 5, including the One Health policy, will be decided by the Governing Body (Article 5:3).

While One Health is a new concept to most Americans, it has won support from one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. “Modern attitudes to human health take a purely anthropocentric view — that the human being is the centre of medical attention and concern. One Health … thinking entail[s] a subtle but quite revolutionary shift of perspective: all life is equal, and of equal concern,” said a January 2023 editorial in The Lancet. “One Health will be delivered in countries, not by concordats between multilateral organisations, but by taking a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans. In its truest sense, One Health is a call for ecological, not merely health, equity.” (Its concern for “equity” and “decolonisation” led it to scold those “demanding that wet markets be closed to halt an emerging zoonosis.” One Health, WHO’s solution to global pandemics, would not halt evident pandemics.)

One Health’s concepts have been embraced by none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues. In such a transformation we will need to prioritize changes in those human behaviors that constitute risks,” Fauci wrote in September 2020 article for Cell. (Emphases added.) He highlighted “the extraordinary importance of human population growth and movement,” stating, “the more populous and crowded we as a species become, and the more we travel, the more we provide opportunities for emerging diseases.” Yet Fauci’s vision includes “minimizing environmental perturbations,” such as “intensive animal farming,” as well as “ending global poverty.”

While preserving the environment will likely require a radically lower standard of living for human beings, “probably very many, of the living improvements achieved over recent centuries come at a high cost.” He concludes that he would like “to bend modernity in a safer direction.”

Theorists at the global level have already formulated the next revolution after One Health: granting human rights to animals. “Not long ago, the very notion of human rights for nonhuman animals was easily dismissed as nonsensical,” but “each extension of rights to some new group has been ‘a bit unthinkable,’” wrote Saskia Stucki of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Germany. “The novel term ‘One Rights’ is proposed here as a normative companion to the scientific One Health approach. One Rights encapsulates the union of (old) human rights and (new) animal rights … The One Rights approach asserts that in a conceptual sense, human rights are animal rights and animal rights are human rights.” In that conceptual framework, “the treatment of animals in factory farms may be comparable to concentration camps.” (Emphasis in original.) Of course, “[S]ome old human rights would be incompatible with fundamental animal rights and would need to be retired, such as the right to injure and kill animals for culinary pleasure,” which she compared to “slave-owners’ rights.”

While the Bible forbids all unnatural cruelty, the Scriptures teach that God created only human beings in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:27) and that Jesus declared that humans are “much better than” the animals (Matthew 6:26). The WHO Pandemic Agreement’s “One Health” doctrine obliterates that two-millennia-old understanding.

Combatting ‘Misinformation’ and ‘Infodemics’

WHO’s controversial leader announced his desire to curtail dissent at the height of the pandemic. In February 2020, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus and is just as dangerous.”

Yet WHO defines an “‘infodemic’ as too much information,” as well as “false or misleading information” which “leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines public health and social measures.” (Article 1f. Emphasis added.) To assure citizens do not receive too much information, nations “shall” engage in “infodemic management” (Article 9:2d). Article 18 states this shall consist of “effective international collaboration” with “the aim of countering and combatting false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation.” They must engage in “infodemic management” and study messages that “hinder adherence to public health and social measures in a pandemic and trust in science and public health institutions” (Article 18:2, 5).

The primary cause of public “mistrust” in public health institutions is those institutions’ self-contradictory spread of misinformation and disinformation about such “social measures” as masking, social distancing, quarantines, and the COVID-19 shot. WHO officials are not inoculated against this malady. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who gained his position with China’s patronage, began the pandemic by opposing President Donald Trump’s flight restrictions from Wuhan and claiming the Chinese Communist Party’s handling of the coronavirus set “a new standard for outbreak control.”

Perhaps nothing unmasks the double-minded advice of public health “experts” than their gyroscopic changes on whether mask work at all. In April 2020, WHO released a guidance that discouraged universal mask wearing, which correctly noted, “One study that evaluated the use of cloth masks in a health care facility found that health care workers using cotton cloth masks were at increased risk of infection compared with those who wore medical masks.” In fact, a 2015 BMJ study found that cloth masks provide “almost 0%” filtration of viruses, and that “[m]oisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.” Yet WHO subsequently authorized masks for all God’s children ages six and up.

The most significant U.S. government official of the pandemic not only admitted to spreading misinformation but did so willfully, intentionally, and to advance a personal agenda. Dr. Anthony Fauci engaged in multiple flip-flops about wearing masks, initially deriding mask use, then mandating masks for toddlers at age two, then conceding that cloth masks provide little protection against COVID. Fauci explained that he changed his rhetoric to assure Americans did not snap up so many N95 ventilators as to create a shortage for health care workers. In time, then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky lifted the mask mandate after a significant change in public polling but no underlying change in the science.

Fauci also admitted continually changing the percentage of Americans who would have to have the COVID shot before achieving herd immunity. “I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’” Fauci said. 

The Biden administration repeatedly spread disinformation about the efficacy of the COVID-19 shot:

• Joe Biden promised, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
• In May 2021, Fauci said those who took the shot become “dead ends” for the virus. “When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community.”
• Walensky told MSNBC, “Vaccinated people do not carry the virus — they don’t get sick.”

Despite this track record, Biden tried to establish a Disinformation Governance Board headed by a millennial with a penchant for bawdy show tunes. Then again, the pandemic agreement says nations “shall” create “evidence-based communication tools” for “infodemic management” (Article 9:2d).

Americans have witnessed government attempts to “combat” narratives it brands false. When 15,000 public health experts led by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued against closing schools and businesses, Fauci and National Institute of Health leader Dr. Francis Collins coordinated (in Collins’s words) “a quick and devastating published takedown” of the document. Yet America continues to suffer the ill effects of COVID lockdowns — including learning loss, a teen suicide spike stemming from an isolation-fueled mental health crisis, increased risk of myocarditis in young men, and the needless deaths of elderly nursing home residents in blue states  — years after Fauci’s quarantines ended. Collins, who identifies as a Christian, has since admitted taking a “narrow view” of COVID-19 mitigation.

Yet if the U.S. adopts the new accord, censorship will become a permanent, public-private partnership.

More Social Media Surveillance and Censorship

Article 17 of the Who Pandemic Agreement calls on nations to adopt “whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches” to promoting their message and policies. They should see that “communities, civil society and other relevant stakeholders, including the private sector” engage in the “implementation [and] monitoring” of government policies (Article 17:1, 3).

The government set up a portal flagging accounts for Facebook and Twitter to censor. The Twitter Files reveal how the government secretly blacklisted or outright banned thousands of accounts; Twitter boasted about impacting 1.5 million accounts in a little over one month. The Biden White House’s (taxpayer-funded) Office of Digital Strategy employed at least two dozen people to “monitor and, if needed, combat disinformation, including encouraging different sites to fact-check” stories, reported Natasha Korecki for Politico.

Twitter was not an outlier on social media:

• In 2020, Facebook promised “to remove content with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities that could cause harm to people who believe them.”
• YouTube’s then-CEO, Susan Wojcicki, committed to begin “removing information that is problematic. … Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy.”
• Medium vowed to remove posts denying the “effectiveness of social distancing or quarantine for COVID-19, or calls encouraging people to suspend these practices,” or that “masks don’t help prevent the spread of COVID-19” or make it harder to breathe.

WHO Chief Tells Nations: ‘Counter’ Anyone Saying the Agreement Threatens National Sovereignty

Ghebreyesus denounced any claim that “this agreement will undermine a country’s sovereignty by giving power to the World Health Organization (WHO)” as “fake news, lies, conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation.” “I strongly urge all countries involved in the pandemic negotiations to actively counter these false narratives,” he said. “There should be no room for confusion or doubt in this matter.” As noted, had he wished to dispel any doubt, he could have removed the sovereignty-destroying provisions from the agreement.

The heart of any government effort to suppress “misinformation” is that the government defines truth and rightly has the power to stifle any other viewpoint. In reality, the evidence rarely bares out the contention that the government knows, or even cares about, truth. Attempts to suppress the free exchange of ideas violate the First Amendment and this nation’s most-cherished principles. Thomas Jefferson best expressed the American ideal when he said, “We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” Most importantly, censorship vitiates the Christian view that God gave human beings a rational mind capable of understanding and reasoning. The WHO Pandemic Agreement would significantly escalate government censorship, suppression of information, and interference in our right to think and reason together.

No Condemnation of Foreign Nations’ Draconian Anti-COVID policies

Alas, U.S. policies seemed mild compared to foreign nations’ repressive anti-COVID measures:

• China’s “zero COVID” policy saw police weld people inside their apartments, often unable to get food.
• Australia locked up anyone who tested positive or was in close contact with someone who had COVID in camps surrounded by barbed wire.
• Greece forced pensioners over 60 to take the shot or be fined one-sixth of their fixed monthly income.
• Latvia barred unvaccinated lawmakers from voting on laws, even remotely. Yet the defenders of “Our Democracy” uttered not a word.
• Italy restricted “most social activities” to those who had a Super Green Pass, which proved they had taken the shot.
• India’s lockdowns stranded migrant workers with no way to support themselves: “96% of them didn’t receive rations from the government, 70% didn’t receive any cooked aliment and as many as 89% didn’t receive any payment from their employers during the lockdown.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi also targeted journalists and “relied on an army of online trolls who … attack[ed] them in the most personal and vile ways,” write Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney in their book, “The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free.”

The WHO offered only muted criticism of the worst of these policies. Dr. Ghebreyesus called the Chinese Communists’ policy of starvation-by-blowtorch “irresponsible” and “not sustainable.” The revised text instructs that nations “shall” promote “social interventions used to control pandemics and their effect on spread of disease and the burden imposed by these measures on society, including its economic cost” (Article 9:2i).

More Emergency Vaccines, More Malpractice Lawsuits

Despite the trail of false and misleading government statements about the COVID-19 shot, the WHO Pandemic Agreement clearly forecasts a long future of additional emergency vaccine authorizations — and serious injuries, possibly free from liability. It states, “Each Party shall take steps to ensure that it has the legal, administrative and financial frameworks in place to support emergency regulatory approvals” of “pandemic-related products during a pandemic” (Article 14:5).

It also states nations “shall develop national strategies for managing liability risks … regarding the manufacturing, distribution, administration and use of novel vaccines” (Article 15:1). These may range anywhere from holding the manufacturers responsible to entirely acquitting them of any liability, as was the case for the COVID shot. The potential for corporate price-gouging earned criticism from some on the Left. Public Citizen, a progressive organization founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and which believes the treaty does not grant WHO enough compulsory power over private industries, noted in its written comments that the “U.S. government was a full partner in development of the NIH-Moderna vaccine, yet the absence of contractual access conditions meant Moderna was free to charge high prices from the outset and then quadruple those prices this year, harming the U.S. and global vaccination efforts.”

The accord sets up “no-fault vaccine injury compensation mechanism(s)” to provide a “financial remedy for individuals experiencing serious adverse events resulting from a pandemic vaccine.” Somehow, WHO believes advertising potentially serious adverse reactions will “promot[e] pandemic vaccine acceptance” (Article 15:2).

Crony Capitalism, Debt Cancellation, and Wealth Redistribution

The revised text explicitly adds that research can include both “public and private sector” (Article 9:2b). It also adds that governments “shall” begin “promoting and incentivizing public and private investment aimed at creating or expanding economically viable manufacturing facilities of relevant health products.” Nations shall use “grants, loans, blended finance, taxation and other incentives and promotion measures” to “generate predictable demand for product placeholder produced by local and regional manufacturers” (Article 10:1b, c, emphases added).

The revised text states that members “shall” commit to the “transfer of technical, scientific and legal expertise and technology,” as well as “financial assistance and support” for nations that sign the agreement and “lack the means and resources to implement [its] provisions” (Article 19:1). To do this, nations must “mobilize financial resources through all sources, including existing and new bilateral, subregional, regional and multilateral funding mechanisms” (Article 20:1b). This may also include transferring their debt to U.S. taxpayers via “debt relief, including suspension of debt servicing and/or debt cancellation, based on transparent financial reprogramming plans” to implement the agreement’s provisions (Article 20:1c).

The newest revision calls on the Governing Body of the WHO Pandemic Agreement to establish a financial “mechanism” to fund this research, which “shall operate in accordance with the principles of equity.” This global governance body will draw up new financial plans every five years thereafter (Article 20:2).

Censoring Information about ‘Substandard’ Medical Treatments

Despite foreseeing a future of experimental vaccinations harming people worldwide, governments could use the WHO Pandemic Agreement to prevent doctors from exploring or sharing information about alternative treatments. The WHO Pandemic Agreement says nations “shall … strengthen rapid alert systems against substandard and falsified pandemic-related products” (Article 14:3). While the innocuous-sounding provision should encourage governments to thwart health care scams, it could also be used to shut down information about approaches the government does not favor. For instance, the FDA belittled the use of ivermectin, despite an Israeli study stating “ivermectin should be a viable option” and a WHO decision backing clinical trials of ivermectin.

Dr. Mary Nass of Maine had her medical license suspended in January 2022 for dispensing ivermectin to COVID patients. Last December, the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine extended her suspension through next April 30 and imposed a $10,000 fine. Dr. Nass has since become an outspoken critic of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. “We’re undergoing a soft coup, and the idea is to create a whole new set of laws and ignore the existing human rights laws and others laws under the pretext of pandemic preparedness and the biosecurity agenda,” said Nass. “Embedded in this concept is a peculiar notion that humans are no longer of greater value than animals.”

In fact, with this agreement’s single-minded focus on quotas, some animals are more equal than others.

‘Equity’ Means Quotas and Racial Discrimination in Health Care

The original text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, drafted in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter riots and released last October, mentions some variant of the word “equity” 34 times in 30 pages; the revised text, which lacks multiple articles, uses some variant of the word 26 times. Vice President Kamala Harris contrasted “equity” with “equality:” to create equal outcomes, nations must treat equal behavior unequally. Equity is the regnant term for government-sanctioned discrimination.

“Equity is at the centre of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” the agreement states (Article 3:5).

The new proposed text waters down the agreement’s stance on upholding human rights, conjoining it with “equity.” Article 3:3 states the agreement shall be implemented “with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons, and the attainment by all people of the highest level of health. Each Party shall protect and promote non-discrimination, the respect for diversity, the promotion of gender equality and the protection of persons in vulnerable situations.” (Emphasis added.) WHO bureaucrats could weaponize this language to support abortion-on-demand (“gender equality”) and transgender ideology (“non-discrimination.”). In fact, Ghebreyesus used just this language in a WHO bulletin officially released on January 1, 2024, which folded “sexual rights” into “gender equality” and which stated, “People with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities often face stigma and discrimination.”

The new proposed text binds all nations to “recognize that environmental, climatic, socio-economic and anthropogenic factors increase the risk of pandemics” and endeavor to “identify” and “take them into consideration” when developing policies, “including by strengthening synergies with other relevant international instruments and their implementation in accordance with Articles 17 and 25” (Article 4:5, emphasis added).

The new text on “Inclusiveness” (Article 3:12) adds that governments must “mobilize diverse and inclusive social participation.” It also inserts requirements for “equitable access to quality routine and essential health services” (Article 6:2a). Research and development must also be “effective and equitable” (Article 9:1).

“States are accountable to provide specific measures to protect persons in vulnerable situations” (Article 3:8) … and all minorities are privileged in health care. The accord stretches the term “persons in vulnerable situations” into an infinitely malleable collection containing everyone allegedly “vulnerab[le] due to discrimination on the basis of race, colour, age, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” (Article 1l). Rest assured, those suffering discrimination based on “political or other opinion” will not include the Romeike family, a homeschooling family who fled Germany and whom the Biden administration threatened to deport.

The accord requires nations to discriminate against their citizens on the basis of these characteristics. Governments “shall … collaborate to ensure equitable and affordable access to health technologies that promote the strengthening of national health systems and mitigate social inequalities” (Article 11:2d).

The agreement also apparently enacts workforce quotas. Nations must “address disparities and inequalities due to gender and age, within the health and care workforce, particularly in health emergencies, to support the meaningful representation, engagement, participation, empowerment and well-being of all health and care workers, while addressing discrimination, stigma and inequality and eliminating bias, including unequal remuneration and opportunities, and noting that women still often face significant barriers to reaching leadership and decision-making roles” (Article 7:1b).

Christianity rejects such discrimination against any group. As this author has written, God demands that: “all people stand on level ground at the foot of the Cross and when they approach the bench. Therefore, He decrees one law for all people, irrespective of their ethnicity (Exodus 12:49; Leviticus 19:15; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:16 and 29; and Proverbs 24:23). Uneven weights and measures are an ‘abomination to the Lord’ — the worst abomination is having uneven scales of justice based on race (Proverbs 20:10).”

WHO Pandemic Agreement Demands ‘Gender Diversity’

Equity sees the world based on gender, not sex, and so does WHO’s Pandemic Agreement. The medically accurate term “sex” occurs only once, in its definition of “persons in vulnerable situations.” The agreement states that each nation “shall” make sure clinical trials have “equitable representation, considering racial, ethnic and gender diversity” (Article 9:3di). Having doctors ask patients their gender identity during clinical trials would fulfill a goal of both the Biden administration’s CDC and the transgender movement.

The accord also says workforce quotas should “address gender and youth disparities and inequalities … while addressing discrimination, stigma and inequality and eliminating bias” (Article 7:1b). The ambiguity and fluidity of the word “gender” could allow governments to apply these articles based on transgender identity rather than sex. This should concern Christians at a time when the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled that using gendered language amounts to invidious discrimination, and the nation’s most prestigious newspapers claim “deadnaming” and misgendering “puts trans lives at risk.”

The World Health Organization, led by its Department of Gender, Rights and Equity-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (GRE-DEI), is in the process of drafting guidelines for so-called “gender-affirming care.” WHO officials will flesh out global guidelines for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries at a meeting from February 19-21. Yet WHO tapped radical transgender activists, most of whom have no medical background, to draft the guideline. On January 15, WHO complained that too many health care settings “lack policies to facilitate access to inclusive and gender affirming care,” which includes “a number of social, psychological, behavioural or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions.”

‘Universal Health Care’

Part of the WHO Pandemic Agreement’s shortcomings is its plea for equity-based socialized medicine. The treaty states that each nation “shall continue to strengthen its health system, including primary health care … taking into account the need for equity and resilience, with a view to the progressive realization of universal health coverage” (Article 6:1). Socialized medicine inevitably leads to mandatory government rationing. The agreement clarifies that “‘universal health coverage’ means that all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. It covers the full continuum of essential health services, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care” (Article 1n).

The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) fared so poorly at providing its people’s health care needs that the British Red Cross called it “a humanitarian crisis.” That leaves aside concerns such as those posed by Canada’s single-payer health care system, where courts ruled Christian health care providers must refer patients to life-ending “Medical Assistance in Dying.”

The aforementioned WHO guidelines would say abortion and, likely, transgender procedures constitute “essential medical care” during pandemics.

In addition, pharmaceutical companies worry that multiple provisions in the agreement will cut into their profit margins, making it unprofitable to pursue vaccines or other treatments during the next pandemic, stifling innovation and prolonging the crisis. However, concerns over intellectual property rights may have receded somewhat, as the new draft states intellectual property transfers shall take place “on mutually agreeable terms” and “without prejudice to applicable national laws” (Article 11:1b, c).

Republicans Oppose Biden’s Bid to Implement a Treaty without Senate Ratification

As noted, the WHO initially referred to this pandemic agreement as a “treaty,” but Joe Biden asked that its status be changed: A treaty requires Senate ratification, while an agreement can be adopted without Senate consultation. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) called the ex-treaty “an egregious breach of constitutional principle.”

The substance of the WHO Pandemic Agreement remains the same, whatever its title. That has won the opposition of Republicans in both chambers of Congress:

• Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has introduced the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act.
• Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced the WHO Withdrawal Act (H.R. 79), which would immediately end U.S. membership, repeal the legislation authorizing our WHO membership in 1948, and banning all U.S. funds from WHO projects.
• The American Sovereignty Restoration Act would withdraw the United States from WHO and other international bodies such as the United Nations, and repeal the legislation that first authorized U.S. membership.
• Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced a narrower “bill to limit the authority of the World Health Organization on the United States and to oppose amendments to the WHO Constitution that have not been approved by Congress” ( 4305) in the last Congress.

All those bills were designed to protect the constitutional prerogatives of Congress and pare back executive overreach.

WHO Pandemic Agreement Could Create ‘Turnkey Totalitarianism’: FRC Comment

The Biden administration opened the public comment period just before Christmas, on December 22, 2023, and closed the 30-day comment period on January 22.The Family Research Council submitted a formal comment calling on “HHS to reject the Draft Agreement in its entirety and reconsider the need for a pandemic agreement. The Draft Agreement cannot be salvaged.”

“[T]he Draft Agreement is, first and foremost, a global political, economic, and social manifesto,” which promotes “yielding national sovereignty [and] centralizing international medical power in the WHO,” said the comment submitted by Chris Gacek, FRC’s senior fellow for Regulatory Affairs. The proposed agreement would create “a web of freedom-strangling entities, legal regulatory mandates, and relationships that, when needed, can be switched on to function as a ‘turnkey totalitarian state.’”

This article was first published on January 9, 2024. It was first updated on January 20, 2024, and updated a third time on February 22, 2024.

February 8-15, 2024 updates for:

Chapter I: Articles 1-3

Chapter II: Articles 4-6

Articles 7, 8, 16, 17, and 18

Article 9

Articles 10, 11, and 13

Articles 19-20

Chapter III: Articles 21 to 39

(Articles 12, 14, and 15 have not been released as of this writing.)

Read the October 30, 2023, proposed agreement text.