An international global governance group has launched “a global power grab” in its efforts to influence the way the world’s governments respond to global health emergencies — and suppress those who dare to dissent.
A coalition of pro-life, pro-security experts denounced the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Pandemic Agreement, originally proposed as a global treaty, which would require the United States to give 20% of all vaccines and supplies to WHO for global redistribution; calls on governments to “combat” any information that undermines trust in public health authorities; and promotes “equity,” “universal” government health care, and the “OneHealth” doctrine equating human life with animals. The current draft agreement does not allow nations to make reservations or amend the accord. But an unelected body of global bureaucrats can make legally binding changes to its terms once the agreement goes into force.
“Article 18 in the treaty says it wants to combat false, misleading misinformation or disinformation. And I would ask, let’s make that retroactive,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the conference’s organizer, on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Monday, just hours after the two men took part in a press conference opposing the accord. “The World Health Organization, just like our own government, put out such false and misleading information about COVID.”
“For example, the WHO denied that COVID-19 was spread via human-to-human transmission, based entirely upon the word of the Chinese government,” led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) at the press conference.
“Censorship is at the very heart of this entire document,” calling on nations to “combat” so-called “disinformation” and “shut down those who challenge the approved experts,” said Perkins at the press conference. Among the supposed maladies the WHO document calls on government to suppress are “infodemics,” defined not only as misinformation but “too much information” about the pandemic at hand. “I have a greater trust in the American people collectively than I do in the experts,” said Perkins.
WHO considers abortion an “essential service,” said Smith, and is likely to use its enhanced prestige to further a radical anti-life, anti-family agenda. A January 1 WHO bulletin, written by Secretary-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, said it is “imperative” that nations “counteract conservative opposition” to abortion, homosexuality, and legalized prostitution. WHO is considering partnering with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which Smith previously called “one of the most nefarious, aggressively pro-abortion groups on the face of the Earth.” Later this month, a group of transgender activists plan to draw up global guidance on how nations should treat transgender ideology.
Even confining oneself to the text of the draft agreement offers no benefits, said its critics. “There is no provision in this treaty that any supporter can point to that you can say, ‘If this provision had been in effect in 2019, it would have in any way made a substantive difference in preventing or ameliorating the COVID-19 pandemic,’” said Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He said the draft text ignores “the most important issue: the lack of accountability and transparency by the People’s Republic of China.”
“Another very important tell on what is going on here is that the Chinese Communist Party calls this agenda ‘global governance,’” which is “an instrument that is going to create an arrangement that is absolutely antithetical to our sovereignty, to our constitutional republic, to our freedoms,” said Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. “That is the whole point of the exercise.”
Critics warn the WHO Pandemic Agreement would salve both Chinese communists and crony capitalists, at the expense of U.S. citizens’ health and well-being. The draft agreement, as written, would “further indemnify” Big Pharma, “so that pharmaceutical companies don’t get sued” for developing faulty vaccines, Smith told Perkins. “Someone could be disfigured die, [or] get crippled” and have “no recourse.”
In addition, it could establish a backdoor vaccine passport through the creation of “international, interoperable digital IDs,” said Reggie Littlejohn of the Sovereignty Coalition. She called the treaty-cum-agreement “an instrument to introduce Chinese-style totalitarianism to the United States and worldwide.”
No one disputes that the treaty grants WHO greater influence and authority over pandemic outbreaks. “Instead of moving these decisions closer to the people, it’s moving them away from the people,” said Perkins, who interviewed Smith — a 22-term congressman who co-chairs the Congressional Pro-life Caucus — for an unprecedented three segments of “Washington Watch” on Monday.
“This is a global power grab using any future emergency as justification,” said Perkins at the press conference. “At risk is national sovereignty.” For example, “the term ‘shall’ appears over 175 times in the document. Now, in legal parlance, ‘shall’ is mandatory; it is a command. This is anything but a voluntary agreement.”
“This package of agreements … is the greatest single threat to the sovereignty of our constitutional republic in its history,” agreed Gaffney.
Perkins concluded with a biblical analogy: “It’s unlikely that archeologists will ever uncover the planning and zoning agreement for the Tower of Babel, but if they do, I would imagine that it does not differ much from the scope of this attempt at global governance.”
The press conference included Reps. Smith and Wenstrup, Perkins, Littlejohn, Gaffney, Bret Schaefer of The Heritage Foundation, Megan Meador of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst of the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
Yet opposition to the WHO Pandemic Agreement spans the political spectrum. Liberal independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said the WHO Pandemic Agreement “should be dead in the water.” His opposition centers mostly on its role in promoting disinformation and WHO’s reliance on private funding by billionaires such as Bill Gates.
Some believe turning down the text of the agreement does not go enough. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced the WHO Withdrawal Act (H.R. 79) to defund and end WHO membership. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced the DEFUND Act (H.R. 6645) to end U.S. participation in WHO.
Family Research Council proposed a formal public comment that highlighted many of its shortcomings. FRC’s grassroots engagement arm, FRC Action, has launched a petition to defund WHO.
