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Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaks at a groundbreaking ceremony on June 23, 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda. BioNTech starts construction of its first mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility in Africa. Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images

GENEVA (LifeSiteNews) — The member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) will next week negotiate the “zero draft” of an international “pandemic accord” that would highlight “global coordination” and “equity” and give the unelected global organization broader authority to dictate the pandemic policies of its 194 member states, including the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. 

The move will follow this week’s discussions on amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR). Critics of the amendments proposed in recent months have raised serious concerns about protecting the sovereignty of member nations amid more globalized public health controls.

On Tuesday, The Epoch Times reported that the initial draft of the “pandemic accord” came after discussions between U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to “maximize the longstanding U.S.–WHO partnership, and to protect and promote the health of all people around the globe, including the American people.”

After these and other meetings, the WHO published its February 1, 2023, “zero draft” of the “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response,” also known as “WHO CA+.”

Consideration of the draft pandemic accord is slated to take place during the WHO Intergovernmental Negotiating Body’s fourth meeting on February 27.

If signed, it will grant the WHO pride of place in setting central standards for future pandemic responses in each of the organization’s member states.

Agenda items laid out in the 32-page document include “Global coordination, collaboration and cooperation,” “Whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches at the national level,” and “One Health,” under which signatories would agree to mitigate “the drivers of pandemics, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and increased risks at the human-animal-environment interface due to human activities.”

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The WHO CA+ also seeks to achieve “universal health coverage,” which it flagged “as a fundamental aspect of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through promoting health and well-being for all at all ages.”

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)s call for the global implementation of a spate of leftist agenda items ranging from “universal access” to “sexual and reproductive health,” to the “reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions” by the year 2030.

The WHO’s pandemic document states that its initiative was begun in December 2021 in response to the “catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.”

The new “pandemic accord” allegedly “aims to achieve greater equity and effectiveness for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response through the fullest national and international cooperation.”

The February 1 document appears to reaffirm national sovereignty during pandemics, but makes a clear exception for countries whose policies are allegedly harmful.

According to the document, “in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law,” WHO member states retain “the sovereign right to determine and manage their approach to public health, notably pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems, pursuant to their own policies and legislation, provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to their peoples and other countries.”

It remains to be seen how the WHO would in practice determine whether member states’ activities did or did not “cause damage to their peoples and other countries.”

During the COVID-19 outbreak, countries and states that bucked national and international guidelines by refusing to mandate masks, jabs, lockdown rules, etc., received widespread condemnation by left-wing media outlets and pundits who suggested those states and countries were perpetuating the spread of the virus by failing to conform to controversial and often harmful public health recommendations.

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Public health physician and former WHO staff-member specializing in epidemic policy David Bell told The Epoch Times that, with its new pandemic accord, the WHO wants “to see a centralized, vaccine-and-medication-based response, and a very restrictive response in terms of controlling populations.” 

“They get to decide what is a health emergency, and they are putting in place a surveillance mechanism that will ensure that there are potential emergencies to declare,” he said.

Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law shared with The Epoch Times his concern that the WHO CA+ would be “fatally dangerous” to its signatories.

According to Boyle, the writers of the accord “deliberately drafted it to circumvent the power of the Senate to give its advice and consent to treaties, to provisionally bring it into force immediately upon signature.”

He argued that the Biden administration will treat the document, which will impact all U.S. officials from governors to health officials, as “an international executive agreement” that requires only his go-ahead without the input of the Congress. 

The WHO CA+ corresponds with the organization’s rule-making arm (the World Health Assembly)’s simultaneous initiative to implement global pandemic policies.

Boyle said “[e]ither one or both would set up a worldwide medical police state under the control of the WHO, and in particular WHO Director-General Tedros,” adding that WHO control of public health could extend “all the way down the pipe to your primary care physicians.”

Physician Meryl Nass backed up Boyle’s assessment and told the outlet that the WHO’s vaccination emphasis would bleed over into globalized jab requirements.

“What they’re also saying is they believe in equity, which means everybody in the world gets vaccinated, whether or not you need it, whether or not you’re already immune,” she said.

The WHO, HHS, and the World Bank didn’t immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who is sponsoring a measure to once again strip American taxpayer dollars from the WHO, argued in a press release that “[f]unneling millions of taxpayer dollars to the corrupt World Health Organization that serves the Chinese Communist Party is a slap in the face to hardworking American families,” The Epoch Times pointed out,

“The WHO not only regularly promotes abortion and radical gender ideology but also praised China for their ‘leadership’ at the beginning of COVID-19 and has done nothing to hold the CCP accountable for the spread of COVID-19,” Roy said. “It is far past time for Congress to use its power of the purse to cut off US funding to this corrupt international body just like the Trump Administration did.”

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