Akshayjha at 19:08, 7 October 2024

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	This is Part 2 ~~or 2 in a~~ piece which makes a case for the rejection of the global accord on pandemic prevention by India, which has been drafted by World Health Organization, and will be put to vote come May 2024.		This is Part 2 of [[Implications of the Pandemic, Part 1\|the piece]] which makes a case for the rejection of the global accord on pandemic prevention by India, which has been drafted by World Health Organization, and will be put to vote come May 2024.

	==== Health Policy ====		==== Health Policy ====
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	Authored by Sai Priya Chodavarapu.		Authored by Sai Priya Chodavarapu.
	Published by Brhat.[[Category:Health and Wellness Sciences]]		Published by Brhat.[[index.php?title=Category:Health and Wellness Sciences]]

Akshayjha at 13:35, 14 July 2024

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← Older revision		Revision as of 19:05, 14 July 2024
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	Authored by Sai Priya Chodavarapu.		Authored by Sai Priya Chodavarapu.
	Published by Brhat.		Published by Brhat.[[Category:Health and Wellness Sciences]]

Akshayjha: Created page with "This is Part 2 or 2 in a piece which makes a case for the rejection of the global accord on pandemic prevention by India, which has been drafted by World Health Organization, and will be put to vote come May 2024. ==== Health Policy ==== When it comes to health policy, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, certainly not any generic or universal methodology. As observed at the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries must employ differing measures to control..."

2024-07-14T13:35:16Z

Created page with "This is Part 2 or 2 in a piece which makes a case for the rejection of the global accord on pandemic prevention by India, which has been drafted by World Health Organization, and will be put to vote come May 2024. ==== Health Policy ==== When it comes to health policy, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, certainly not any generic or universal methodology. As observed at the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries must employ differing measures to control..."

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This is Part 2 or 2 in a piece which makes a case for the rejection of the global accord on pandemic prevention by India, which has been drafted by World Health Organization, and will be put to vote come May 2024.

==== Health Policy ====
When it comes to health policy, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, certainly not any generic or universal methodology. As observed at the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries must employ differing measures to control the spread of disease, prevent new cases, and treat existing cases using existing healthcare infrastructure. Important considerations are, for instance, the ratio of doctors/healthcare workers in comparison with the population, the median age of the population, the prevalence and communicability of the particular disease, accessibility to healthcare, economic status of the government, etc. These metrics vary extremely widely from country to country, and therefore, any health policy framed cannot be universal. Certainly, when it came to India, though over a billion strong, mortality rates were relatively low during the COVID pandemic, due to various regional factors. Thus, governments must preserve their flexibility to act in accordance with the specific crisis at hand in order to assure effectiveness, and any treaty being framed with respect to health policy must necessarily reflect the same. Handing over the powers to make health-related decisions to an international organization does not appear to be in the best interest of sovereign nations, especially given that the treaty shall effectively confer powers onto the WHO to self-authorize to not only declare health emergencies of international concern but also sustain the state of crisis for as long as deemed necessary, and importantly, to make legally binding recommendations and monitor and survey the states and the populace alike during the period. Rules framed by the WHO under the newly conferred powers could take the form of mandatory screening, medical procedures, vaccine/treatment mandates, forced isolation and quarantine. While recommendations are generally considered “soft law”, non-compliance can often invite a host of consequences, including, presumably sanctions of various sorts, disruptions in supply chains, and the cutting off of financial and/or other types of aid. Citizens are left with no recourse once this irreversible tide has been brought on.

==== The WHO’s Failures: Influence of Global Governance on Domestic Institutions and Policy ====
Global governance refers to the network of institutions, mostly non-governmental and multilateral, that coordinate with transnational actors, facilitate cooperation, and resolve disputes. It involves governance, without sovereign authority, of relationships that transcend national frontier (Finkelstein, 1995). There are more NGOs than ever before, playing the role of powerful actors, involved in shaping policy, negotiating agreements, and monitoring rates of compliance by states with those agreements. According to Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri in Explaining the failure of global health governance during COVID-19, global governance is key to state transformation, and state authority is outsourced to “diverse, fragmented actors with enhanced autonomy from domestic democratic constraints, allowing many to engage, and increasingly develop joint policies with, their overseas counterparts”. Then, “these networks develop rules, standards, guidelines and other forms of ‘soft’ international law, which national agencies are then directed to embed domestically. Implementation is typically monitored and encouraged through benchmarking against internationally agreed standards, rather than coercion”. Importantly, these networks are directly linked to powerful states’ ostensibly domestic institutions through their acquisition of international functions. In this manner, international organizations such as the WHO are used for meta-governance. Rather than governing from the outside, through the direct imposition of global rules on member states, they chiefly operate through cultivating changes within states to harmonize domestic policies, institutions and procedures. In this manner, global governance circumvents negotiations, and roadblocks in agreements and multilateral cooperation between states. Delinking policy-making from domestic political processes tends to weaken the effect and intent of the policy. This is where the failures of the WHO can be arrived at. Jones and Hameiri state that since the WHO has come under donor control, its agenda has given way to pro-market meta-governance, compromised the WHO’s independence and its pandemic response capacity, leaving it unable to do much beyond regulating and evaluating national arrangements.<blockquote>“In 1982 the WHO budget was frozen and in 1985 the United States withheld 80 per cent of its financial commitment in protest at the WHO’s Essential Drugs Program, which American pharmaceutical companies opposed. Wealthy states increasingly rerouted support for health-care development through the World Bank, thus subordinating it to the structural adjustment agenda, leading to a wave of privatizations and cost-cutting, followed by a push for public–private partner- ships.. The WHO’s operational budget was slashed, leaving it dependent on voluntary donations. By the 2000s, discretionary donor funding comprised around 80 per cent of WHO expenditure, making it subservient to wealthy countries’ demands.”</blockquote>At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hollowing out of the WHO left it subservient to major donors, which now included China, where the outbreak originated, further attenuating its response. The WHO’s most disastrous act was to endorse China’s lockdown policy, which fuelled mounting panic and calls for extraordinary measures across the world, and created intense media and public pressure on other governments to follow suit. The WHO disastrously continued supporting lockdowns long after it became clear that eradication was impossible.

==== Hurtling towards a global Surveillance State? ====
Article 1 defined “WHO coordinated laboratory network” as “the international network of laboratories, coordinated by WHO, that conduct year-round surveillance of pathogens with pandemic potential, assessing the risk of an emerging pathogen with pandemic potential and assisting in pandemic preparedness measures”. Article 4, “Pandemic prevention and public health surveillance” recommends cooperation for monitoring and surveillance, both among member states and with the WHO Secretariat. In addition, surveillance finds mention in Article 5, relating to One Health, as well as Article 6 and Article 8, setting off alarm bells. Article 12 states that a WHO PABS system must be established: “The Parties hereby establish a multilateral system for access and benefit sharing, on an equal footing, the WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (WHO PABS System), to ensure rapid and timely risk assessment and facilitate rapid and timely development of, and equitable access to, pandemic-related products for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” What is the extent to which information relating to public health and pathogen data must be made available to unaccountable international organizations? Are there data privacy concerns? Can the provision of such information be considered a breach of national security? Can we be assured that states are held more accountable for their actions, just as China and the United States were for the COVID-19 pandemic?

==== Prolonging the Pandemic? ====
Article 9(4) imposes upon the signatory states the obligation to fund and publish research and development on pandemic-related products; and reads as follows:

“Each Party shall, in accordance with national laws and considering the extent of public funding provided, publish the terms of government-funded research and development agreements for pandemic- related products, including information on: (a) research inputs, processes and outputs, including scientific publications and data repositories, with data shared and stored securely in alignment with findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability principles; (b) the pricing of end-products, or pricing policies for end-products; (c) licensing to enable the development, manufacturing and distribution of pandemic-related products, especially in developing countries; and (d) terms regarding affordable, equitable and timely access to pandemic-related products during a pandemic.”

==== Financial Burden ====
Article 20 (1) imposes additional financial responsibility on member states to commit to strengthening pandemic preparedness and response, supporting other parties, and the responsibility to mobilize resources as necessary. Article 20 (2)(a) and (b) read as follows: “2. A sustainable funding mechanism shall be established by the Conference of the Parties no later than 31 December 2026. The mechanism shall ensure the provision of adequate, accessible, new and additional and predictable financial resources, and shall include the following: (a) A capacity development fund that shall be resourced, inter alia, through the following: (i) annual monetary contributions from Parties to the WHO Pandemic Agreement; (ii) monetary contributions from recipients pursuant to Article 12 herein; and (iii) voluntary monetary contributions from Parties to the WHO Pandemic Agreement. (b) An endowment for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, resourced, inter alia, through the following: (i) voluntary monetary contributions from all relevant sectors that benefit from international work to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response; and (ii) donations from philanthropic organizations and foundations, and other voluntary monetary contributions.”

As may be garnered from the terms of the treaty, there are no efforts at full disclosure or transparency when it comes to the expansion of the powers and the role of the WHO, currently being held hostage to the interests of wealthy donor nations and private organizations, violating the principle of informed consent while being signatory to a contract. The mention of philanthropic organizations, undoubtedly including the Gates Foundation, among others, leave little to the imagination.

A group of prominent lawyers, doctors and concerned citizens have written to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Health and Family Welfare Shri Mansukh L Mandaviya urging them to reject the WHO’s global pandemic treaty, premised on the claim that the treaty is ultra vires the constitution of India. The 10-page letter can be accessed in full with all relevant links and references on the Awaken India website: [https://awakenindiamovement.com/who-pandemic-treaty-ultra-vires-of-the-constitution-16-12-23/ WHO Pandemic Treaty Ultra Vires of the Constitution].

Supporters of the treaty argue that a collective approach is the only solution to mitigate the effects of a future pandemic, however, the states championing the treaty are not the ones suffering the downstream effects of vaccine nationalism, inaccessible oxygen, lack of funds to support health system surge capacity, etc. Wenham, Eccleston-Turner, and Voss state that “global processes for health cooperation rooted in a globalist vision of the individual and health equity are fundamentally at odds with the Westphalian state-based system in which we live, which prioritizes state security and the health of a selected few at all other costs. Even something as big as a major global pandemic is not sufficient to get governments to think beyond national interests” — a sentiment that rings true. Talk of solidarity and global corporations appears to be the global north’s way of doing something without actually accounting for disparities and inequity. With countries such as Australia and Slovakia already primed to vote against the adoption of the treaty, and nations such as New Zealand showing hesitancy, it is prudent for India to reconsider its own position, and evaluate the terms of the treaty according to its effect on India’s national health policy rather than adhering unquestioningly to international law. If behaving as a powerful state would be to place national interest above globalist considerations, so be it. For once the ball gets rolling, it would be impossible to stop, not even by the signatory member states, and least of all by the common citizenry that are affected by the health mandates that will probably be effectuated by the organization.

==== References ====

# Soliman, A., Taguchi, K., Matsoso, P., Driece, R.A., da Silva Nunes, T. and Tangcharoensathien, V., 2023. WHO pandemic accord: full adherence to the principle of sovereignty. The Lancet, 402(10410), pp.1322-1323.
# Lee Jones, Shahar Hameiri, [https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac231 Explaining the failure of global health governance during COVID-19], International Affairs, Volume 98, Issue 6, November 2022, Pages 2057–2076.
# [https://apps.who.int/gb/inb/pdf_files/inb4/A_INB4_3-en.pdf Zero Draft]
# [https://www.ifpma.org/news/innovative-pharmaceutical-industry-statement-on-draft-who-pandemic-treaty-we-need-to-preserve-what-went-well-and-address-what-went-wrong Innovative pharmaceutical industry statement on draft WHO Pandemic Treaty: We need to preserve what went well and address what went wrong by IFPMA]
# [https://spectator.sme.sk/c/23254416/new-who-pandemic-treaty-is-targeted-by-slovak-disinformation-actors.html Čítajte viac]
# Clare Wenham, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Maike Voss, [https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac023 The futility of the pandemic treaty: caught between globalism and statism], International Affairs, Volume 98, Issue 3, May 2022, Pages 837–852
# Finkelstein, Lawrence S. “What is global governance.” Global governance 1 (1995): 367. Barnett, M. N., Pevehouse, J. C., & Raustiala, K. (2022). Global governance in a world of change. Cambridge University Press.
# LAWYERS, DOCTORS and CITIZENS ACROSS INDIA WRITE TO THE PRIME MINISTER & MINISTER, MOHFW: THE DRAFT ‘GLOBAL PANDEMIC ACCORD’ OF THE ‘WHO’ IS ULTRA VIRES OF THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA AND INDIA CANNOT BE A SIGNATORY TO IT The letter addresses the plans of the World Health Organisation (WHO) through its proposed Global Pandemic Accord and IHR Amendments to be in charge of World Health and the dire implications thereof for Countries’ Sovereignty. It highlights worries about the accord’s potential impact on India’s sovereignty and citizens’ rights. The accord suggests granting the WHO unprecedented powers that could infringe upon national autonomy and individual liberties. Concerns revolve around potential coercion in medical procedures, ethical violations, and the erosion of fundamental rights. Urgent attention and scrutiny of this matter are urged to safeguard constitutional values and citizen rights. [https://dissidentvoice.org/2023/12/letter-from-india-stop-world-health-organizations-pandemic-preparedness-tyranny/ Summarised] by Colin Todhunter, December 17th, 2023

Authored by Sai Priya Chodavarapu.
Published by Brhat.

Implications of the Pandemic, Part 2 - Revision history

Akshayjha at 19:08, 7 October 2024

Akshayjha at 13:35, 14 July 2024