Stefano Gennarini
(ZENIT News– Center for Family and Human Rights / New York, 06.18.2024).- The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially adopted social control rules pioneered by Western governments during COVID, most alarmingly censorship of critics. These new rules come as amendments to an agreement known as the International Health Regulations.
The new international rules, originally proposed by the Biden administration to strengthen cooperation and information sharing during future pandemics, closely reflect Biden’s policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. They give the international health agency broad new powers not only to declare and manage future pandemics, but also the power to ban speech and impose digital health passports.
The amendments list “addressing misinformation and disinformation” among the essential “core capacities” that countries need in order to prepare for future pandemics. The amendments give the WHO the authority to coordinate and guide how countries develop such a censorship regime.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration and other Western countries ordered the suppression of health information that may have been at odds with World Health Organization bulletins.
Officials in the administration directed hundreds of federal employees to scour the internet and communicate with traditional and social media organizations to suppress any information that contradicted official COVID-19 health policies. Specific suppression included the efficacy of vaccines, vaccine mandate, masking, and information about alternative treatments for COVID-19.
The Biden administration also promoted mandatory vaccination and ordered the suppression of criticism of such policies. While the administration could not impose vaccine mandates on State governments, they did force vaccines on federal employees, and told traditional and social media companies to pull down any health information critical of such mandates.
While these abuses received political attention in recent years, including through the Twitter Files, the international aspect of the scandal had not received political and media attention until the pandemic treaty negotiations in recent months.
It was international officials in the office of the UN Secretary General and the Director- General of the WHO who first called on governments as well as traditional and social media companies to control the flow of health information at the outset of the pandemic. This included censoring any messages opposing vaccine mandates, questioning the efficacy of new experimental vaccines, and raising the specter of negative side effects from such vaccines. It also included promoting only approved health propaganda.
The International Health Regulations also raise the possibility of the World Health Organization developing system of international vaccination passports, including digital health passports.
The Biden administration’s amendments direct the WHO to “develop and update, as necessary, technical guidance, including specifications or standards related to the issuance and ascertainment of authenticity of health documents, both in digital format and non-digital format.”
International Health Regulations are a set of standard rules to harmonize global public health policies. Though the international agency and many countries consider them binding, the Bush administration joined the regulations in 2005 without asking advice and consent from the U.S. Senate.
The amendments adopted last week were supposed to be agreed in tandem with an international pandemic treaty to help provide economic assistance to poor countries to prepare for future pandemics. The pandemic treaty however could not be adopted last week and negotiations on that agreement are expected to continue into 2025.
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