Biden Set to Give WHO Chief Broad Authority Over U.S. Policy

If Joe Biden has his way, the World Health Organization could soon have broad authority over United States public health policy – effectively usurping the right of the American people to choose their own leaders.

As part of the left’s latest scheme to usher in global governance, the Biden administration is quietly working to finalize a “pandemic treaty” (officially titled the WHO Convention on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response) and a series of amendments to the existing International Health Regulations (IHR), with a deadline set for the end of May.

If adopted, these changes would severely erode U.S. sovereignty and give the WHO Director-General – currently Ethiopian public health official Tedros Ghebreyesus – wide latitude to dictate America’s response to future “public health emergencies.”

During the last public health emergency – the COVID-19 pandemic – Ghebreyesus and the WHO infamously parroted the preferred narrative of the Chinese Communist Party, including claiming early on that the virus could not be transmitted from human to human and dismissing the lab leak theory. Ghebreyesus also praised China for its “openness” during the pandemic and pointed to China’s draconian lockdowns as a model for the world.

In spite of these glaring failures, the pandemic treaty and IHR amendments would specifically confer sweeping power on the WHO to direct public health policies in the event of a “public health emergency of international concern.” And just who gets to determine what constitutes a public health emergency? Ghebreyesus and his left-wing globalist advisors at the WHO.

The IHR amendments also expand WHO “emergency powers” to include situations of a “potential” or “intermediate” public health emergency – a definition so broad it would seem to include essentially any scenario.

In effect, under the pandemic treaty and IHR amendments, the WHO would be transformed from an advisory council into a governing body with legal power to determine domestic policies. The danger this prospect poses to American freedoms and values is difficult to overstate.

For instance, given the fact that the WHO itself says very plainly on its website that “equity” is “among the guiding principles of the draft text” of the IHR amendments, it is not difficult to imagine that the WHO will declare – as Biden’s CDC already has – that “systemic racism” is a “public health emergency.” The WHO would then have legal justification to demand Americans obey whatever radical DEI and “restorative justice” policies WHO bureaucrats can come up with.

The WHO has also already indicated that it considers climate change to be a “humanitarian emergency.” Unable to pass it democratically through Congress, Biden may now hope that the WHO will help him usher in his “green revolution.”

Mass migration, transgenderism, and “gun violence” are just a few more potential “public health emergencies” that could easily fall under the WHO’s purview if the proposed changes are adopted. Despite purporting to be a medical organization, the WHO could soon be involved in every aspect of American domestic policy.

On the individual level, the threat that the pandemic treaty and IHR amendments pose to civil liberties is equally severe.

As human rights champion Reggie Littlejohn has warned, the pandemic treaty facilitates the rollout of a “digital ID” system, which would allow the WHO and world governments to track everything citizens do online – including all travel and credit card transactions.

The IHR amendments also require WHO member countries to “collaborate” with each other and the WHO on “countering the dissemination of false and unreliable information about public health events, preventive and anti-epidemic measures and activities in the media, social networks and other ways of disseminating such information.” In other words, the WHO is explicitly demanding that governments allow it to censor their citizens and silence any dissent of WHO policies.

Moreover, every doctor and hospital would be forced to conform to the WHO Director-General’s mandates, including on approved medical treatments and vaccines.

Tellingly, the proposed IHR amendments remove a clause requiring that any WHO regulations be implemented “with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons.” In its place, the new requirement says that regulations shall be implemented “based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with the common but differentiated responsibilities of the States Parties, taking into consideration their social and economic development.”

Meanwhile, the pandemic treaty is so egregious that even the reliably globalist and left-wing Human Rights Watch has come out against it.

That’s not even to mention the threat that the pandemic treaty poses to America’s response to actual future pandemics. Under the terms of the draft document, the U.S. would have to allocate 20 percent of all “pandemic-related products,” including vaccines and personal protective equipment (PPE), for global redistribution. If this policy were in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, already severe shortages of PPE and medical equipment would’ve been even worse – likely leading to more American deaths.

Most alarmingly of all, neither the American people nor their representatives in Congress will get a say in whether the pandemic treaty or the IHR amendments are adopted. As Ben Johnson has reported for The Washington Stand, Biden explicitly lobbied to have the pandemic treaty officially reframed as an “agreement” so as to avoid the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that it be approved by the Senate.

The proponents of the pandemic treaty also seem to recognize that the American people would never approve such a blatant power grab by a global bureaucracy. As one “Western diplomat” involved in the negotiations told the Financial Times, “election pressures” in the United States are increasing the urgency to pass the new policies before November.

Former President Donald Trump, who just clinched the GOP nomination and is now favored to beat Biden in the general election this fall, started the process to withdraw from the WHO toward the end of his term – a decision which Biden reversed on day one.

“The specter [of Trump’s re-election] looms and it’s quite helpful in focusing minds,” another diplomat told the Times, adding “there’s a fairly good chance it’ll have to be shelved” if the May deadline is not met.

In other words, the Biden administration, the WHO, and their globalist allies are rushing to pass the changes before the American people have their say.

The pandemic treaty and IHR amendments have so far garnered few headlines relative to their potential to completely upend the American constitutional order. But with election season heating up, the story may soon burst into the mainstream.

Thanks to this development, Trump will notably have another opportunity to make a clear distinction between his America First agenda and Biden’s affinity for leftist global governance. With Biden already feeling the pressure from his horrid poll numbers, Trump might even succeed in forcing Biden to back down and kill the agreement before he returns to the White House.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.