The World Health Organisation (WHO) gained significant prominence through the covid pandemic.

As a result, WHO has become the debating arena for world affairs in the lead-up to the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) in May.

Dual Negotiations

Negotiations for pandemic preparedness are being undertaken by an Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) constituted of 194 member states including The Cook Islands and Nuie but not Tokelau and also Palestine and Taiwan making a total of 196.

The two separate legal instruments are the existing International Health Regulations (IHR) and some 300+ ammendments which NZ is party to alongside a ‘proposed’ Pandemic Treaty.

Both have been under negotiation over the past year.

Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFAT) is responsible for the Pandemic Treaty and Ministry of Health (MOH) the IHR.

It is coincidental that Ashley Bloomfield is the co-chair of the Working Group for the IHR (WGIHR) representating the Director-General of the Western Pacific Region which NZ is part of.

Mens Issues

It is only over the past month as the broader implications have gained attention that uncertainty has risen about how this might play out.

Situation

The negotiations, have not been totally secret but not transparent either, in the way they have been conducted over the past year.

At the end of January we should have been able to see, according to WHO articles what is being presented at the WHA four months beforehand. That didn’t happen and it’s now become clear this was planned several months ago.

Instead, to comply with established protocols what was made public was the initial proposals from February 2023 that were already public while Governments have been provided with what is called the WGIHR6 draft but that is not public.

A WHO secretariat should assist the WGIHR Bureau to complete the text but instead has created a Text Bureau to continue negotiating up to May behind closed doors while retaining the existing working group in an advisory capacity – in simple terms WHO has hijacked the proceedings and there is uncertainty about what is being negotiated. Whether the proposed treaty will be abandoned and instead the existing rules modified as an alternative.

To explain that in terms of a Power shift the concensus body of state member representatives, the INB, has lost its authority to the international body operating in a dictatorial fashion.

It’s taken NZ a few weeks to catch up compared to the UK. Before Christmas they very quickly raised a petition of over 100k signatures to trigger a debate in their parliament.

These are significant events while the UK can see across the Chanel a 1000 tractors and thousands of protests surrounding the EU parliament in Brussels. (On a side note while there are massive farmers’ protests across Europe they are not all about the same specific issue but relative to the area in which they occurred. They all reflect issues out of the European Parliament, though)

The WHO has undergone an organisational restructure over the pandemic period with a group of new academies based in Europe and a new management strategy that was confirmed only last week, February 15th after meetings in late January.

This has all come out in the open very quickly by international standards. The surprise now is what is called the ‘equity negotiations’ set down for the first 2 weeks of March. Financial equity in this case but equity in general further down the page.

This new structure also advances suspicions around the 4 year World Health Work Programme to be presented at the WHA for 2025-29 running alongside agenda 2030 and the funding of that.

WHO has broadened its areas of concern to ’emergencies’ climate change, sexual health, and reliable sustainable funding mechanisms which tap into state budgets and these new legally binding treaties may dictate international rules we are yet to see and far beyond what we have previously known from WHO.

Placed alongside the unprecedented shift in ignoring its on rules and procedures WHO is exhibiting traits of third world African politics – its Director General is an Ethiopian politician rather than a medical doctor.

The negotiations also cover digital travel and data capture.

What has become available for media distribution has come from a small group of Geneva based journalists.

While suspicions arose in the UK before Christmas and the petition to force a debate in parliament, US senators are now raising concerns about what they are seeing which is more than we are being told in our domestic media.

We have our own banana republic problems at the hands of a few wally judges and the loss of democratic journalism.

NZ held rather pointless submissions over the last month based on the public documentation and what should have been available but was withheld.

Recent NZ media has not disclosed that our country is one of several with objections while only informing us that we have withdrawn from the shortened time period to allow for a longer International Treaty process in our parliament but that aside compliance from a small country is easily obtained through political pressure.

Erin Kenney WHO HQ/GRE and your new Gender Rights and Equity – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion cabinet executive.

Kenney has a diverse range of social media accounts.

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Uncertainty is the word of the day, as to what we might see come out of this. The Director-General of WHO along with many world representatives met at the Munich Security Council over the past few days where Tedros has said, these issues where subjects of discussion.

Having read this you may see some recent events in a different light. Could be an interesting few months.