Sign the Petition by the Pan-Africa Epidemic and Pandemic Working Group to The World Health Organization from
The Peoples of Africa, and their Allies Around the World.
 

Withdraw the Draft WHO Pandemic Treaty and Amendments to the International Health Regulations
 

It has come to our notice that The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently finalising negotiations on a Draft Pandemic Agreement (formerly called “Pandemic Treaty”) and Amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR). These instruments are designed to provide the WHO with new and greater powers. More specifically, they would give the WHO Director General (DG) authority to personally declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), and thereafter to exercise unprecedented sweeping powers over all WHO member states. Both instruments are particularly aimed at disease outbreaks, claimed by WHO to be a rapidly growing threat in the African context of Low-Income Countries, but also globally.

The listed DG’s directives that African countries will “undertake” to follow if the said instruments are enacted by WHO member states include:

• Border closures, travel restrictions and other restrictions now known as ‘lockdowns’.
• Isolation of individuals (as happened with COVID-19).
• Mandated medical examinations and vaccination, against the principle of informed consent, contrary to medical ethics (as happened with COVID-19).
• Suppression of information and opinion contrary to WHO’s advice in the guise of countering “misinformation” and “disinformation”.
• Submission to inspections to ensure compliance with WHO’s directives.
• Financial contributions to support WHO’s “pandemic preparedness” proposals, along with the wealthy countries of the so-called Global North, proposed by WHO and the World Bank to a total in excess of $30 billion annually. This would divert resources from major health needs in Africa such as malaria, TB and malnutrition.
   

Grave Concerns & Consequences

• WHO is significantly privately funded by corporations and individuals based in wealthy countries who directly benefit from the pharmaceutical and digital health aspects of these proposals.
• Much of WHO’s program is now determined by its largest funders – wealthy countries with strong Pharma sectors (US and Germany), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
• WHO’s track record in the COVID-19 response is poor, including:
  • (a)   Policies such as lockdowns that have been previously acknowledged by WHO itself to cause significant collateral harm, and having disproportionately negative impacts on low-income populations and countries in Africa;
  • (b)  Discouraging the use of re-purposed drugs and promoting new drugs under Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA);
  • (c)  Mandatory mass vaccination against COVID-19 of African populations known to be very low risk due to young age and already having immunity, thereby diverting resources from malaria, TB, HIV and other urgent health challenges on the continent, and violating the right to informed consent;
  • (d)  Inaction and lack of accountability regarding vaccine injuries and deaths;
  • (e)   Disruption of economies and education, entrenching future poverty and multi-generational inequality, and expanding national debt directly correlated to the debt crisis in Africa today.

Thus, the COVID-19 response has already centralized control, and further concentrated wealth in high income countries while impoverishing low-income populations. It has expanded an increasingly colonialist agenda in Africa with substantial negative economic, human rights, socio-cultural and political consequences. The lockdown regulations were a class-based and unscientific instrument, disproportionately harmful to lower-income people and useless for crowded informal settings as in urban parts of Africa. At the same time, African governments were subjected to intense pressure to merely adhere to protocols formulated outside the continent and in total disregard of their demographic, economic and climatic contexts. This rendered them powerless on public health matters within their own jurisdictions, which was tantamount to the eroding of their health sovereignty with fully predictable and harmful consequences.

It is therefore evident that the WHO Pandemic Agreement and Amendments to the International Health Regulations, if signed by the requisite number of WHO member states in May/June 2024, will entrench all the measures above in international law, institutionalising the withdrawal of health sovereignty and economic sovereignty from African states.

Procedural Injustice, Democratic Illegitimacy, and Inequitable Outcomes
The adoption of any amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) at the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2024 are being processed in an unlawful manner. Article 55(2) of the IHR sets out the procedure to be followed for amending the IHR:      

"The text of any proposed amendment shall be communicated to all States Parties by the Director-General at least four months before the Health Assembly at which it is proposed for consideration."

The deadline for the Director-General to circulate the package of proposed amendments to the IHR to States Parties lawfully in advance of the 77th WHA in May 2024 expired on 27th January 2024. As such, the agenda of passing the amendments to the IHR cannot be legitimately tabled at the WHA 2024, as tabling them without complying with the requisite four-months rule would jeopardise procedural justice, democratic legitimacy, and equitable outcomes for all. The review time is essential for each state party to assess national health, financial, legal and human rights implications, and the abrogation of this rule by WHO disproportionately discriminates against lower-income countries with fewer resources to rapidly assess such consequences.

Markedly Exaggerated Urgency for the Pandemic Agreement
Some have argued that urgency in developing new pandemic management instruments such as an amended IHR and the draft Pandemic Agreement is justified by a rising risk and burden of infectious disease outbreaks from pathogens transferred from animals to human beings. However, a report from the University of Leeds[1] released in early 2024 has demonstrated this to be a markedly exaggerated claim. According to that report, the evidence bases on which the WHO and partner agencies including the World Bank and G20 have relied actually demonstrate that the risk of naturally-derived outbreaks is not currently increasing, and the overall burden is probably declining. This suggests that current mechanisms are indeed working relatively effectively, and changes must be viewed carefully, without undue urgency.

Besides, flexibility and careful public health planning are crucial due to the highly diverse economic, demographic and environmental factors that render the current WHO one-size-fits-all approach grossly inadequate. In particular, African societies continue to heave under the burden of preventable diseases such as malaria, cholera and tuberculosis that require immediate, concerted attention. As such, burdening these societies with non-priority globalised pandemic preparedness initiatives is an instance of misplaced priorities and intrinsically inequitable.

Furthermore, the WHO is laying inordinate emphasis on pandemic preparedness in terms of the framework it used at the height of COVID-19. As such, it does not address the manner in which the most vulnerable in societies were dragged deeper into poverty from this centralised approach with an emphasis on costly pharmaceutical interventions. It is noteworthy that a tiny minority became markedly wealthier from the centralized approach, thus entrenching global inequity. In this regard, an article in CNBC titled “The Wealth of the 1% just Hit a Record $44 Trillion”[2] is highly relevant.

The Way out

We call on the WHO to halt the process of enacting its draft Pandemic Agreement and Amendments to the International Health Regulations until the following measures have been put in place:

1. Affirm and respect the right of African states to freely prepare their own context-sensitive approaches to public health crises.
2. Facilitate a transparent and accountable review of the role of Western- based international governmental and non-governmental health entities in WHO’s operations and policies. Such a review must be driven and managed primarily by African countries themselves, as they are the bearers of the major health burdens.
3. Facilitate a re-orientation of international public health to a population-based and disease burden-based approach in line with the WHO’s own stated commitment to community-based health care.
    

 
[1] https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/download/228/rational-policy-over-panic
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/28/wealth-of-the-1percent-hits-a-record-44-trillion.html