WHO Pandemic Treaty hits a snag

The World Health Organization (WHO) admitted Friday that negotiations for the WHO Pandemic Treaty have broken down.

No WHO Pandemic Treaty draft

On Friday evening (May 24), Voice of America News announced that after two years of negotiations, no draft of the WHO Pandemic Treaty yet exists. Despite this missed deadline, the organization insisted that a week-long session of the World Health Assembly would run as scheduled. That session begins today.

Countries today ended their resumed 9^th meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) comprising WHO’s 194 Member States. Initial agreement was reached by the INB on multiple elements of the draft agreement, and convergence on others. There were also areas of non-convergence and divergent views.

Translation: the member States were not able to reach full agreement. Without an advance draft, a perhaps “messier” debate will now ensue in the World Health Assembly, WHO’s built-in legislature.

According to ABC, Roland Driece, co-chair of the IHB, ruefully admitted, “We are not where we hoped we would be.”

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of WHO, tried to put his best face on the matter:

This is not a failure. We will try everything — believing that anything is possible — and make this happen because the world still needs a pandemic treaty. Because many of the challenges that caused a serious impact during COVID-19 still exist.

Ghebreyesus’ use of the word treaty is telling. The entire Senate Republican Conference has put the Biden administration on notice that:

1. The Pandemic Treaty as drafted is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States and other “Member States.” As such the administration should withdraw all support from it. Failing that, the Biden administration should remember that:
2. This is a treaty, within the meaning of Article II Section 2 of the Constitution. As such it requires the advice, consent, and concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators present to take U.S. domestic effect.

And, needless to say, the Biden administration would never have had the votes. CNAV has discussed this letter here, in the context of retractions in the coronavirus narrative.

Negotiating out in the open

The larger point here is that the WHO itself is admitting that the WHO Pandemic Treaty will be a treaty. Of even larger significance, the United Kingdom previously indicated they would not sign any such treaty. National sovereignty was the issue, the same as for those Republican U.S. Senators.

More than that, the negotiators were trying to write their draft largely in secret, to present the WHA with a fait accompli. Exactly what blew up the negotiating sessions in the INB, no one will admit.