Republican Governors Raise Concerns Over WHO ‘Pandemic Treaty

A group of 24 Republican governors are urging the Biden administration to reject a proposed World Health Organization (WHO) global “pandemic treaty,” warning that it would endanger the rights of American citizens.

The governors wrote on Wednesday that the WHO’s proposal would encroach on the sovereignty of American states and put the civil liberties of Americans in the hands of a group of unelected global officials. The WHO has been widely criticized over its investigation of COVID’s emergence, especially as it pushed out a report that declared the COVID lab leak theory as “extremely unlikely.”

“The objective of these instruments is to empower the WHO, particularly its uncontrollable Director-General, with the authority to restrict the rights of U.S. citizens, including freedoms such as speech, privacy, travel, choice of medical care, and informed consent, thus violating our Constitution’s core principles,” the governors wrote.

According to a draft of the WHO proposal, participating countries “shall cooperate with one another, in bilateral, regional and multilateral settings, to progressively strengthen pandemic prevention and public health surveillance capacities.”

The agreeing countries are also told to “recognize that environmental, climatic, social, anthropogenic and economic factors increase the risk of pandemics and endeavour to identify these factors and take them into consideration in the development and implementation of relevant policies, strategies and measures at the international, regional and national levels.”

Legacy media fact-checkers have downplayed concerns about the pandemic agreement, but the governors argued that joining the agreement would pose risks for the United States.

“If adopted, these agreements would seek to elevate the WHO from an advisory body to a global authority in public health,” they wrote. “Under the proposed amendments and treaty, the WHO’s Director-General would supposedly gain unilateral power to declare a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ (PHEIC) in member nations, extending beyond pandemics to include a range of perceived emergencies.”

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“Additional concerns arise regarding the establishment of a global surveillance infrastructure and requirements for member states to censor speech related to public health, potentially facilitating the proliferation of biological weapons,” the governors added.

The governors of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming signed the letter.

Negotiators are still working on coming up with the final “pandemic agreement” guidelines after a missed deadline for wrapping up talks.