By Andreas Wailzer
Lifesite News
April 18, 2025
Representatives of WHO member states have agreed on a draft of the "pandemic accord" that is scheduled to be voted on next month.
"The nations of the world made history in Geneva today," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, said after the member states agreed on the draft of the pandemic treaty on Wednesday.
"In reaching consensus on the Pandemic Agreement, not only did they put in place a generational accord to make the world safer, they have also demonstrated that multilateralism is alive and well, and that in our divided world, nations can still work together to find common ground, and a shared response to shared threats. I thank WHO's Member States, and their negotiating teams, for their foresight, commitment and tireless work. We look forward to the World Health Assembly's consideration of the agreement and - we hope - its adoption," the WHO leader continued.
The agreement was reached by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), the committee set up by the WHO to negotiate the treaty, after more than three years of negotiations.
According to the WHO's press release, the core pandemic treaty draft includes the establishment of "a pathogen access and benefit sharing system," allowing the sharing of data between governments and pharmaceutical companies aimed at quickly developing and supplying "pandemic-related health products" during a pandemic. These "health products" could be dangerous mRNA injections, similar to those rolled out and imposed on large parts of the world population during the COVID-19 crisis.
The WHO claims that the "proposal affirms the sovereignty of countries to address public health matters within their borders, and provides that nothing in the draft agreement shall be interpreted as providing WHO any authority to direct, order, alter or prescribe national laws or policies, or mandate States to take specific actions, such as ban or accept travellers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures or implement lockdowns."
The WHO seems to be responding to critics of the treaty, who have criticized it as a power grab by the WHO. It would give the global organization unchecked power whenever it declares that any health risk is a "pandemic." However, the new draft has not yet been made public, making a thorough assessment impossible.
WHO Director-general Ghebreyesus engaged in his typical fear-mongering, stating, "Virus is the worst enemy. (It) could be worse than a war."
While the WHO pandemic treaty and the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) failed to pass last year, the new version of the agreement could be passed by a two-thirds majority at the annual World Health Assembly (May 19-27, 2025) next month.
However, the U.S. was not part of the negotiations and would not be bound by the agreement since President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the international body in January 2025 after taking office for his second term. Argentine President Javier Milei announced in February that his country will also leave the WHO, following Trump's example. If more countries were to leave the WHO, the pandemic agreement could be ineffective in practice, even if it were to pass in May.
This originally appeared on Lifesite News.