UN: A strategic vote for a global power grab?

The second day of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly (19‑22 September) will be devoted to a high-level meeting with a view to adopting a political declaration that could overturn the management of epidemics on a global scale. The aim is to learn the lessons of the COVID crisis and to prepare to face future pandemics through international coordination under the aegis of the WHO. The 14-page document opens with an observation, “the devastation caused by the COVID‑19 pandemic” (PPI)^[1]. However, it carefully avoids analysing the causes of this devastation, or checking whether the political response, steered by the WHO, was appropriate. It warns of “the impact of pandemics on the mental health and well-being of all” (PP26), but fails to question the role of lockdowns in this negative impact. This declaration, studded with good intentions, must nevertheless be analysed in the light of the record of the WHO, the UN’s health arm, in managing the SARS‑CoV‑2 epidemic.

Yet the UN’s first concerns are “the emergence or re-emergence of epidemic-prone diseases that continue to accelerate” (PP3), and unequal access to COVID‑19 vaccines. The declaration indeed deplores vaccination coverage of only 20% in developing countries, compared with 75% in rich countries, without weighing these figures against the COVID infection and mortality rates observed in those regions respectively. Did Africa, for example, really suffer from a lack of Pfizer and Moderna doses?

Capitalising on the COVID‑19 crisis

The aim of the text is to “capitalise on the momentum of the COVID‑19 response by transforming temporarily increased capacities into permanent capacities” (PP8). Among the innovations that emerged during the COVID crisis are, of course, technological tools such as the ‘health pass’. A digital technology whose usefulness the UN claims for “strengthening secure communications during health emergencies”, but of course “while ensuring the protection of personal data, in particular through the implementation of the global strategy on digital health 2020‑2025” (PP18). The WHO is indeed working on a Global Digital Health Certification Network project that would make it possible to check health certificates or ‘vaccine passes’^[2], as part of the forthcoming update of its International Health Regulations. Those who feared that the ‘health pass’ would not disappear with the end of the COVID emergency may not have been entirely wrong! One may also question the sincerity of the intentions of this declaration which, a few lines further on, claims to want to “protect health workers from all forms of harm, violence, attacks, harassment” (PP20) “and discriminatory practices, while recognising that the safety of health workers and the safety of patients are inextricably linked” (OP29). Yet we do not recall the WHO protesting against the suspension without pay of French health workers who refused an injection that did not seem to them to offer sufficient guarantees of safety. Nor did it relay the encouraging results observed in countries that prescribed Ivermectin to fight COVID‑19. Yet the declaration recognises “the need to strengthen the prevention of epidemics by sharing experiences and best practices” (PP24).

Global governance for ‘One Health’

But for the UN, “having the fastest and most appropriate response to any epidemic that may arise”, on the contrary requires a single health project, called ‘One Health’, or ‘Une seule santé’ in its French translation. This global project aims to promote “cooperation between human health, animal health and plant health, as well as the environment and other relevant sectors” (PP24). Nothing, then, must escape the control of the WHO and the United Nations. Obviously, a single health policy calls for global governance. The heads of state must therefore commit to supporting the World Health Organization by granting it “the authority, independence and funding necessary to help countries minimise the risks of health emergencies and mitigate their consequences”, that is, to “recognise the leadership and centrality of the WHO on global health issues” (OP21). The leaders of the United Nations member states are therefore voting today for or against the adoption, from 2024 (by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body in Geneva), of an “ambitious and legally binding convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” (OP44). If this instrument is finally endorsed by the delegates to the World Health Assembly next May, this new agreement (initiated in 2021) will be anchored in the WHO constitution. It will complement the amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005), the negotiations on which are also due to be concluded in 2024. In the meantime, the aim of this summit of 20 September is to have the heads of state endorse the principle of a pandemic agreement that will be binding under international law, allowing the WHO, in the event of a health emergency, to dictate, and no longer merely recommend, measures to its 194 member states^[3].

Vaccination and the fight against disinformation

Among the priorities of the UN and the WHO is vaccination, which “plays a crucial role in preventing epidemics and future pandemics”. The declaration stresses the importance of investing in immunisation, particularly of children, “one of the most effective and cost-effective health interventions with the greatest impact and proven results” (PP27). The United Nations therefore commits to countering vaccine hesitancy and extending vaccination coverage (OP38). Wagging tongues might see a conflict of interest here, noting that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the GAVI vaccine alliance are among the largest private contributors to the WHO budget, to the tune of 1,183 million dollars for 2020‑21^[4][5]. For is wanting ‘One Health’ not tantamount to imposing a single point of view, favouring a single source of official recommendations? Does the censorship of dissenting medical opinions not become inevitable? Unsurprisingly, paragraph OP32 provides for the need to combat false information about public health measures and to “counter disinformation, particularly on social media platforms, in the context of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and to foster trust in health systems and vaccines” (OP32).

The sinews of war

This declaration of intent naturally comes with a commitment by heads of state to fund the WHO to implement this project. Funding which, as paragraph OP39 points out, will be provided by “domestic public resources as the main source of financing for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response”. As for the Pandemic Fund, created in November 2022 to help low-income countries cope with health emergencies, it will be maintained and “will require around 30 billion dollars a year” (OP39).

Granting full powers to a consul, promoted to dictator in a situation of grave crisis, was the solution devised by the Roman Republic in Antiquity. However, these dictators remained under the control of the Senate, which appointed them for six months and made sure they gave up their prerogatives as soon as the crisis was under control. And yet the Roman Republic was ultimately supplanted by an emperor. Today, who will control the power of the WHO, once the IHR have been amended and a binding pandemic agreement reached? This extension of its powers threatens to call into question individual freedoms rather than national sovereignties. The revision of the IHR indeed proposes replacing its commitment to “full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons” with the far less reassuring one of equity, coherence and inclusion^[6]. Need we recall that the prerogative of declaring a public health emergency of international concern already lies with the WHO Director-General. Yet it was by removing the morbidity criterion from its original definition of a pandemic that the WHO justified a global state of emergency over the H1N1 flu in 2009, and then over the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus in 2020. Another ‘update’ of its own definitions also allowed it to classify injections using mRNA technology as vaccines. The WHO has, however, never called into question its strategy for responding to the SARS‑CoV‑2 pandemic, which nonetheless resulted in millions of victims. A strategy that is hard to justify in view of the socio-economic damage of the lockdowns, the decline in mental and physical health, and the absence of any investigation into the extent of the side effects attributed to the vaccines. It is this anxiety-inducing health policy, built around a vaccine technology not yet mastered, that the UN nevertheless takes as its reference, without questioning the influence and conflicts of interest of the WHO’s private funders, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (2nd largest contributor) or the GAVI Alliance. If the World Health Organization obtains global governance powers in times of health crisis, is there not a risk that it will play on an ‘elastic’ definition of emergency situations in order to retain its power?

KAro for BAM!

Illustration and standfirst by BAM!

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[1] Semaine de haut niveau de l’Assemblée générale 2023 | Nations Unies

[2] Creating a Digital Prison’: WHO Rushes Ahead on Global Digital Health Certificates • Children’s Health Defense

[3] L’accord mondial sur les pandémies en bref - Consilium

[4] Our contributors

[5] The Gates Foundation

[6] ‘Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide ⋆ Brownstone Institute

Quotations from English-language sources are translated back here from the French.