Are procedures in negotiations for the WHO's international public health legal instruments being violated?

Mail & Guardian

4 days ago

The World Health Organisation must recommit to the democratic principles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Reuters)
According to a World Health Organisation
But health freedom advocates are deeply concerned that in one or both instances, the WHO has broken its own rules for negotiating and voting for its legal instruments. As I explained
However, as
In the run-up to the
Furthermore, the authors of the
had been shown to be contradicted by the data and citations on which WHO and other agencies had relied.
The authors were alluding to the WHO's contention that shortening the four-month statutory window for countries to review proposed amendments to the IHRs was justifiable on the grounds that due to 'climate change' and other drivers of zoonotic spillover, the risk of another spillover from animals to humans was very high. In other words, the WHO was using under-substantiated assumptions of an imminent 'existential threat' to justify sidestepping official procedures.
Thus some health freedom advocates hold that the WHO's assumption of increased risk of pandemics relies on a weak evidence-base, demonstrated by a University of Leeds
Moreover, analysis of the evidence used by WHO and others gave much longer outbreak risk profiles, highlighting inconsistencies between WHO estimates and the research estimates in their cited evidence. All this undermines the WHO's justifications for side-stepping its own procedures.
Furthermore, according to
th
WHA in 2024], the WHO moved the Coordinating Financing Mechanism (CFM) from Article 20 of the
Thus the hasty adoption of the amendments to the
Furthermore, some health freedom advocates hold that the negotiations for the
In early 2024, the WHO released a
April 2025, which was the last day of negotiations for the Pandemic Agreement, the European Union (EU)
Furthermore,
According to
Nevertheless, on the first day of the
I am not adequately acquainted with the role of Committee A as distinct from that of the full assembly, but Article 19 of the WHO
Yet while all the health freedom advocates I know agree that the
The WHO has
In essence, the PABS system is to be designed to facilitate the sharing of pathogens with 'pandemic potential', purportedly to enable pharmaceutical companies to develop 'vaccines' in good time while 'equitably' sharing the profits or products derived with the states that shared the pathogens with them. Yet, health freedom advocates are pointing out that since the Annex must be negotiated before the
In view of the foregoing reflections, there is an urgent need for WHO to renew its commitment to the democratic principles that had set it apart from other United Nations bodies. Unlike the UN, the WHO does not have a provision of veto power for any nation, and thus is meant to uphold the doctrine of the equality of sovereign states. After all, the UN, of which the WHO is a specialised body, claims to be committed to democratic principles in line with the
Reginald MJ Oduor is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Nairobi and a member of the Pan-African Epidemic and Pandemic Working Group and of the International Health Reform Project, as well as the co-founder of the Society of Professionals with Visual Disabilities.