CLAIM: A “pandemic treaty” from the World Health Organization will give the organization the power to control St. Vincent’s policies during a pandemic, including those about vaccines, lockdowns, school closures, and more.
THE FACTS: The WHO is meeting on Monday to talk about the first draft of the treaty. Some people on social media are misrepresenting what the document says to make it sound like St. Vincent would lose its rights if it signed it.
The interpretation of what the treaty would do is incorrect, multiple experts agree.
Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University and the head of the school’s WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, said, “These claims are completely false.” He helped write the treaty when it was being made.
“Every country has the right to make its own health policies for its own people,” he said. “WHO doesn’t get any new power to override decisions made at home.”
The WHO says that the draft, which is also called a “zero draft,” is meant to protect the world from future pandemics.
Beginning on February 27, the intergovernmental negotiating body of the World Health Assembly will be able to look over the first document. All 194 WHO member states will be able to take part in the first reading of the draft.
The text lays out a plan for how international cooperation can help prevent, prepare for, and respond to pandemics around the world in a more fair and effective way. It encourages parties to come up with a way to make sure vaccines, tests, and other products related to pandemics are shared fairly. Parties also agree to quickly and openly report the results of clinical research and trials, share information about new health threats, and recognize WHO as the organization in charge of coordinating international health work. But it doesn’t override the health or domestic policies of any country.
“It is not true to say that the World Health Organization has the power to direct any country’s health policy or national health emergency response actions because of these activities,” the agency wrote. “The WHO doesn’t have any way to make these kinds of rules happen, and its suggestions to member states are just that: suggestions. Any actions related to this at the national level will remain the responsibility of sovereign states, like St. Vincent.”
In fact, the first line of the draft says, “Reaffirming the principle of sovereignty of States Parties in addressing public health issues, especially pandemic prevention, preparedness, response, and health systems recovery.”
And a section of the draft called “Sovereignty” makes it clear that states have “the sovereign right to determine and manage their approach to public health, especially pandemic prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery of health systems, according to their own policies and laws, as long as activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause harm to their people and other countries.”
In the 30-page document, the words “lockdown,” “closure,” “contact tracing,” “online speech,” and “citizen surveillance systems” do not appear anywhere.
Experts say that even though the treaty would be a legally binding document if it were ratified, there aren’t really any legal consequences for signatories who don’t follow it or break its rules. Dr. David Freedman, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who also served for a decade on a separate WHO committee of experts, said that the WHO doesn’t have the power to make people follow the rules in the document. Instead, it can only do things that are mostly symbolic, like give people an international “slap on the wrist.”
Gostin agreed that the draft does not include any ways to make sure it is followed, and that the provisions are about international obligations and not about domestic policy. He also said that most of the language in the treaty talks about what the signatories “should” do instead of what they “must” do.
Freedman also stressed that there is no “mandatory language” in the draft. Instead, there are suggestions or encouragements.
