(LifeSiteNews) — Barring the express opposition of a United Nations (U.N.) member state, a pandemic declaration calling for global vaccine access, digital health documents, and socialized, universal health coverage will be signed Wednesday, September 20.
The “Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response” is being circulated among U.N. member states via a silence procedure, in which silence is interpreted as acceptance of the document by a member state.
If a member state sends a letter or email to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) president objecting to the document, the president “may choose to” refer the draft resolution to certain U.N. representatives for revision, to be followed by “another round of the silence procedure.”
However, if there are no objections within 72 hours from the time the document is circulated, it will be officially adopted by all member states.
The Political Declaration heavily emphasizes the importance of global access to vaccines not only to address actual pandemics but as a preventive measure. The document expresses the U.N.’s aspiration to a globally coordinated effort to provide such vaccines, stating that its first actionable goal is to:
Strengthen regional and international cooperation, multilateralism, global solidarity, coordination and governance at the highest political levels and across all relevant sectors, with the determination to [ensure] the efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures including vaccines… to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics and other health emergencies…
The Declaration considers vaccine uptake such a high priority that it deems any messages encouraging “vaccine hesitancy” a problem to be combatted. One of the document’s stated goals, accordingly, is to counter the “negative impacts” of so-called “health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization, especially on social media platforms, on people’s physical and mental health, including countering vaccine hesitancy in the context of pandemic prevention…”
In the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, “vaccine hesitancy” was generally expressed due to concerns over the extraordinarily short timeframe for developing and testing COVID “vaccines;” novel mRNA technology that, until the COVID shots, was often abandoned by pharma companies because of toxicity concerns; and skyrocketing reports of death and injury after the rollout of the COVID jabs.
The document also calls for the recognition of the potential of digital health technologies in strengthening secure communications in health emergencies, implementing and supporting public health measures and bolstering national response efforts to pandemics” as well as the importance of “digitalized health documents.”
While the Declaration doesn’t specify exactly what such “digital health technologies” would entail, they could theoretically include digital vaccine passports, which are being developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and European Union. If implemented, such passports could be linked with digital IDs being proposed by the U.N.
Digital contact tracing could also be more widely used during the next disease outbreak, considering that the U.N. has shared WHO guidance on the use of contact tracing during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Declaration further advocates for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services” by 2030, which the U.N. has traditionally defined as including abortion.
It also appears to promote socialized health care, advocating for “a whole- of-government and whole-of-society approach to achieve universal health coverage,” as well as the “expan[sion]” of “pooling of resources allocated to health” and the “equitable allocation of health spending.”
The Political Pandemic Declaration also calls for promotion of the “fair, equitable and timely sharing of benefits arising from the use of pathogens, sequences or any other materials, with pandemic potential through a multilateral system,” but does not specify the nature of such benefits.