An Analysis of the World Health Organization Revisions to the International Health Regulations, By Brian Simpson
I had been waiting for the expected detailed analysis by Children's Health Defense of the World health organization International Health Regulations. As is known, the pandemic treaty has been postponed for a year or so, and that will be dealt with in another article. But did they sneak in any nasties? Are there any pressing matters of concern?
The analysis below indicates that we have been given some time, as the amendments at present do not undermine national health sovereignty. Missing from the final signed agreement was "pathogen access and benefit sharing system, provisions incorporating the One Health concept, medical mandates, a proposal for the WHO to order countries to pass laws it demands, the ability to declare emergencies for non-health reasons, and proposals to provide liability shields to unlicensed vaccines and treatments or to demand their rollout."
This is another substantial victory, but the pressure of resistance must be kept up, as the WHO has maintained that it will get all of these oppressive measures in next round. So, the fight continues.
"The World Health Organization (WHO) passed a set of revisions to the International Health Regulations (IHR) just before its June 1 deadline, in an outcome the agency described as "historic."
But some critics of the amendments called it a pyrrhic victory for the WHO, noting that the approved amendments lack most of the proposals opposed by health freedom activists, who cited risks to national sovereignty and personal liberties and said the original proposals promoted a digital ID scheme.
In its announcement following the conclusion of the World Health Assembly, held last week in Geneva, Switzerland, the WHO said that the amendments "ensure comprehensive, robust systems are in place in all countries to protect the health and safety of all people everywhere from the risk of future outbreaks and pandemics."
Negotiators did not agree on a final draft of the "pandemic agreement" — or "pandemic treaty" — but made "concrete commitments to completing negotiations on a global pandemic agreement within a year, at the latest," the WHO stated.
According to the Geneva Health Files, the adoption of the IHR amendments is a "momentous" outcome and "a testimony to multilateralism" — though this result was also described as "a big win for the United States, among others, who spearheaded the amendments' process in 2021."
But for health freedom activist Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and founder of Door to Freedom, an organization that lobbied against the WHO proposals, the outcome of this year's World Health Assembly "was a huge win."
"The globalists got essentially nothing that was important to them," Nass wrote on Substack. "They will keep trying. We will keep stopping them. The meeting just ended. The Pandemic Treaty is to be negotiated for another year. So we can't let up but we won the first round."
Noting that many of the most restrictive proposals did not make the final set of amendments, Nass wrote the World Health Assembly "had to adopt something to save face, and it had become apparent to the globalists that they would not do any better if they delayed a decision."
"The pandemic treaty will continue to be negotiated, but it has been mostly defanged too," Nass added. "We will remain vigilant. We will continue to educate about pandemic preparedness."
Speaking at a press conference in Geneva on Saturday, Swiss attorney Philipp Kruse said that the IHR amendments, even in their watered-down form, were the product of pressure from the U.S.
"There were intense negotiations going on late into this night under the tremendous pressure of the representatives of the United States to come to a conclusion," Kruse said.
During the same press conference, Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, executive director of Children's Health Defense (CHD) Africa and founder of Transformative Health Justice, said many WHO member states complained about "being rushed" or "being threatened that they have to come out of this process with the IHR amendments being signed."
But experts also noted that despite adopting a diluted version of the IHR amendments, further negotiations don't appear to be in the cards.
Speaking to The Defender after Saturday's press conference, Kruse said, "The mandate for providing these two legal instruments for a vote to the World Health Assembly has been terminated."
For Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, the outcome resulted from grassroots pressure on a global scale, which led some nations to balk at the full set of proposals in the two documents.
Maria Hubmer Mogg, a candidate from Austria in this week's European parliamentary elections, agreed. She told The Defender that "people are waking up" worldwide. As a result, WHO negotiators and proponents of the two proposals are "pulling back and then they're trying again."
"This is part of the pushback that I believe will ultimately result in the failure of this WHO assault on sovereignty and freedom more generally," Frank Gaffney, founder and executive chairman of the Center for Security Policy, told The Defender.
Speaking at a rally in Geneva on Saturday opposing the two documents, Joana Amaral Dias, a candidate from Portugal in the European parliamentary elections, told The Defender "The people that are here are the seeds of change. They've managed — we have managed — to stop the pandemic treaty."
"The political momentum against the WHO is crucial because we are fighting one of the most important wars. If you can defend our health and our children's health, we are accomplishing the main task and the main mission that every generation has to protect," she added.
'Major bullets' were 'dodged'
The amendments may be most notable not for what they contain — but for what was left out. According to Nass, numerous crucial proposals did not make their way into the final set of amendments, calling these excluded items "major bullets" that were "dodged."
These include the pathogen access and benefit sharing system, provisions incorporating the One Health concept, medical mandates, a proposal for the WHO to order countries to pass laws it demands, the ability to declare emergencies for non-health reasons, and proposals to provide liability shields to unlicensed vaccines and treatments or to demand their rollout.
Nass compared the final version of the amendments with those proposed in February 2023, noting that references to gene therapy have been removed, while language protecting human rights and dignity, and affirming the non-binding nature of the amendments, was reinstated.
"One bad thing remained in the IHR, and that was 'addressing' misinformation and disinformation, but the IHR did not tell nations how to address it," Nass said. She also noted that, with or without these amendments, most governments are proceeding with their own plans to combat "misinformation" and "disinformation."
In another Substack post, Nass wrote that "people are unhappy with various provisions of the document, without realizing that most of the issues they dislike are in the existing IHR and have been there for many years."
For example, Nass cited certificates of vaccination, which "have always been in the IHRs." Changes made to this provision in the new amendments "are minor, compared to what was proposed, and … are recommendations, not orders from the WHO."
"They will not need to be digital, which is a crucial point — as they were going to be the gateway to digital identity, digital money and massively increased surveillance. They need to be signed by a doctor, which was already true in many countries," Nass added.
Questions remain about the legality of the new IHR amendments, as the final version was proposed less than four months before the World Health Assembly, in contravention of Article 55, Section 2 of the existing IHR. Instead, the final text was released on June 1 and the vote took place one hour before the end of the assembly.
Nass told The Defender that while some countries, such as Slovakia, have already rejected the new IHR amendments or "distanced themselves" from them, most countries are likely to take no action, as "it did not turn into a governing document, as desired, and won't make much practical difference to the nations."
Nass also noted that most nations will have "at a minimum 10 months to avoid any provisions it does not like in the newly amended document," simply by notifying the WHO of its rejection.
For nations that rejected the 2022 IHR amendments which created a truncated 10-month review period, the previous 18-month period remains in effect, Kruse told The Defender. Those amendments came into effect on Saturday.
Thousands rallied in Geneva against the WHO's proposals
While the WHO deliberated the IHR amendments on Saturday, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the United Nations office in Geneva for the "We Are the Change" rally against the two WHO proposals. Many attendees had converged in Geneva as part of the "Road to Geneva" motorcade.
Andrea Nazarenko, Ph.D., of The Inspired Network, one of the organizers of the rally, told The Defender, "It's a collective effort where everybody played a role and created something far greater than we could have ever imagined … when 8 billion people come together and unite, the future is ours."
Dan Astin-Gregory of Free Humanity who co-organized the rally, said, "The Road to Geneva was a beautiful convoy … We're all here to make a very strong stand for freedom, independence and the right to self-determination. I'm really proud of what we've created."
"We are declaring our sovereignty and saying that the system is broken," said Dr. Kat Lindley, president of the Global Health Project and director of the Global Covid Summit. "We're not giving these supranational agencies power over us. Truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose and it'll defend itself."
Robyn Cosford, a professor and chair of the board of CHD Australia, told The Defender that she felt "very much empowered and encouraged" by the "wonderful sense of unity" at the rally."
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