Some are claiming the Biden administration is about to put the United States under the authority of the World Health Organization.
But is the concern warranted?
The World Health Organization’s 75th World Health Assembly meets in Geneva, Switzerland May 22-28 to vote on amendments from the Biden administration to the WHO’s International Health Regulations that some say will hand over U.S. national sovereignty on matters of health to the WHO.
The 13 pages of amendments certainly look as if they grant the WHO the right to tell the U.S. what to do in a pandemic.
They appear to allow the WHO to declare a pandemic emergency in the United States, require the US to report to an international “Compliance Committee” on whether it was obeying WHO directives, and would create an enforcement mechanism to essentially punish nations that don’t do what the WHO says.
Mat Staver, founder, and chairman of the Liberty Counsel said, “And that would mean whether it’s social distancing, whether businesses are essential or not, whether churches are essential, lockdowns, different kinds of treatment, all of that would be under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of an international body and no longer under the United States of America.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the ranking member of the House Global Health subcommittee, called it “an egregious breach of constitutional principle that will lead to less accountability and more misconduct by this problematic U.N. agency.”
Adding to suspicion about the amendments is that they were sent to the WHO in January, apparently without a public announcement, and were only discovered online last month.
The amendments are certainly worded in a way that would seem to give the WHO authority over the U.S. government, but how much teeth would they actually have?
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has branded claims that the amendments are a power grab, distortions, and disinformation, saying the WHO could not override the sovereignty of member nations.
“WHO is an expression of member states’ own sovereignty and WHO is entirely what the sovereign 194 member states want WHO to be,” Tedros said.
Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor who helped write the International Health Regulations that the Bush White House signed in 2005, said that the WHO only has the power to make recommendations.
“It could not force a country to allow WHO staff to interfere with its public health decision making,” Gostin said.
Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at the Family Research Council says even if the International Health Regulations had the force of a treaty, the U.S. Constitution would have the final say and not the WHO.
“That means even with a treaty that we are party to that the Senate has given advice and consent to, it does not trump the constitution, even in the case of a treaty. It’s similar to a statute to passed by Congress in its level of authority,” Weber told CBN News, “The constitution still trumps that.”
If the amendments are approved in Geneva next week, individual governments would then have to agree to them.
On a separate track is a WHO drive for a new global health treaty, and some worry that the Biden amendments are setting the stage for that treaty.
It’s clear from several of the WHO’s own statements that it wants more global authority to fight future pandemics.
What’s not clear is if these proposed amendments would grant it the power that some say it will.
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN