A coalition of U.S. senators is demanding the Biden administration withdraw its support of two international agreements that would grant greater authority to the World Health Organization (WHO) and potentially weaken America's sovereignty.
As CBN News reported, the White House submitted 13 amendments for a pandemic-related treaty last May that essentially give the WHO the right to tell the U.S. what to do in a pandemic. Opponents warn the treaty essentially gives up control of the country's health care system.
The treaty, which includes 300 proposals to increase the WHO's emergency powers, is being considered later this month during the World Health Assembly (WHA).
The treaty would allow the W.H.O. to declare a health emergency in the United States, require the U.S. to report to an international "Compliance Committee" on whether it was obeying W.H.O. directives, and would create an enforcement mechanism to essentially punish nations that don't follow the W.H.O.'s directives.
U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) joined Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and a host of other Republican senators and pointed out the organization's response to the pandemic was "abysmal."
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"The WHO's failure during the COVID-19 pandemic was as total as it was predictable and did lasting harm to our country," the letter reads.
"The United States cannot afford to ignore the latest WHO inability to perform its most basic function and must insist on comprehensive WHO reforms before even considering amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) or any pandemic-related treaty that would increase WHO authority," the group warns.
Idaho Senator Jim Risch outlined in another letter the specific missteps taken by the WHO.
"(Their) track record over the last three years is nothing short of abysmal. When the Chinese government lied to the world in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO parroted and praised China's officials," he explained.
"When it became clear China was covering up truths about the deadliest health emergency in a century, the WHO did nothing to hold it responsible," he added. "The WHO has failed in its core mission to protect global health time and again."
The senators concluded, "Should you ignore this advice, we state in the strongest possible terms that we consider any such agreement to be a treaty requiring the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate under Article II Section 2 of the Constitution."
The W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has denied the arguments that the organization is trying to gain power, adding that the W.H.O. could not override the sovereignty of member nations.
"W.H.O. is an expression of member states' own sovereignty and W.H.O. is entirely what the sovereign 194 member states want W.H.O. to be," Tedros said.
Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at the Family Research Council, told CBN News that even if the International Health Regulations had a treaty to enforce their rule, the U.S. Constitution should have the final say in how America responds in another pandemic and not the W.H.O.
"That means even with a treaty that we are party to that the Senate has given advise and consent to, it does not trump the Constitution, even in the case of a treaty. It's similar to a statute passed by Congress in its level of authority," Weber told CBN News. "The Constitution still trumps that."
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