World Health Organization's global health agenda faces backlash from concerned citizens

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been intent on “transforming” its mandate since 2017 and that has become increasingly apparent with proposals to amend legally binding International Health Regulations (IHR).

Independent researcher James Roguski has been following the happenings of the WHO, specifically as it pertains to proposed amendments to IHR – a set of rules and regulations that “define countries’ rights and obligations in handling public health events and emergencies that have the potential to cross borders.”

These amendments were born out of the International Sanitary Regulations of 1951. As those regulations worked and sanitation improved, effectively improving disease incidences and outcomes with it, in 1969 they were revamped and renamed with a broader scope as the IHR.

The deadline to reject the latest five amendments is December 1 and Roguski urges concerned citizens to do just that.

The main concern, he says, is that the health regulations are not actually talking about health negotiations or examining things of importance like the vast COVID-19 response failures, but are rather keen on building surveillance, control, and data collection. Roguski calls this a “pharmaceutical hospital emergency industrial complex.”

The Working Group on International Health Regulations (WGIHR) has been meeting this week to discuss items related to the proposed amendments.

Roguski notes that during their meeting, the WGIHR admitted that proposed amendments will not be ready for review by member states by the January 2024 deadline.

“All of the amendments are required to be submitted to the Director General,” explains Roguski, “and he would need time to forward it on to all of the member nations so that they would have time to consider it before they meet and vote on it.”

Roguski says that the WGIHR twisted the language of their own regulations in an attempt to justify subverting and violating their own due process.

“They don’t want comment on the final product – they want to ram it through at the last minute,” he says, noting that this is how the WHO is working to strengthen their mandate.

“In the WHO Constitution, Article 21, it lists the authorities that the World Health Assembly has to write regulations. If you see what they’re supposed to be doing, they’re clearly not [doing that]. They’re doing everything else under the sun to expand their power. They’re not writing regulations for things like labelling – like the blank [COVID-19 vaccine] inserts that we’ve all had to deal with for these injections. All of the many things that should be standardized, they’re ignoring their responsibility on that.”

This centralization of health-related power is exactly why Conservative member of Parliament Leslyn Lewis created a health petition calling on the federal government to allow for a debate and vote on the amendments to the IHR that would allow for parliamentary scrutiny of amendments that were already adopted at last year's World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.