The World Health Organization is still not doing enough to stop another pandemic. Last month, the UN body adopted a new pandemic treaty by consensus at its annual meeting, but the accord merely doubles down on the WHO’s previous failed policies. President Trump has rightly pledged to oppose this treaty, but he must now take further steps to protect Americans from the WHO’s counterproductive approach.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a seminal era for the world, and the WHO was created for such crises. It should have rallied the international community to respond aggressively and discover the pandemic’s cause. Instead, the organization allowed the Chinese Communist Party to conceal China’s role in the outbreak, partnering with Beijing to release a now widely discredited report that labeled a lab-leak origin as “extremely unlikely.”
On Trump’s Inauguration Day in January, he rightly issued an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO. He had started this process in his first term, but President Joe Biden reversed it immediately upon taking office.
The WHO did not respond with reforms or distance itself from China in the intervening four years. Instead, at China’s behest, the organization continued to deny Taiwan a seat at its annual meeting. The WHO also welcomed Russia and Syria to its Executive Board in 2020 and 2021, respectively, for three-year terms, even though the regimes of both countries at that time had a history of bombing hospitals and indiscriminately killing civilians.
North Korea also joined the board in 2023, where it will remain until 2026, even as it continues to starve its population to pay for its illegal nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
Rather than push for new WHO leadership, the Biden administration voted to allow Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to serve a second five-year term, which ends in 2027. These developments, and now the pandemic treaty, showed that the WHO had lost its way.
An effective pandemic treaty would focus on China’s two core mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, Beijing lied about the emerging outbreak and pressured the WHO to mute its response. Second, the Chinese Communist Party refused to cooperate with a full investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
However, the 30-page treaty fails even to mention China or its response to the COVID-19 pandemic and merely expands the WHO’s bureaucracy in a way that does not address the problem.
The agreement creates a new Conference of Parties that will meet at least annually with additional subsidiary meetings. But public health officials do not need more glitzy meetings in Geneva. They should instead be streamlining their organization and sending money back to countries that can use it to prevent and detect the next disease outbreak.
The treaty also mandates that vaccine, therapeutics, and diagnostics manufacturers conclude legally binding contracts with the WHO to provide rapid access to 20 percent of their real-time production. Half of the allotment will be a donation, while the other half must be made available at affordable prices. But given the WHO’s ineffective leadership and Beijing’s control over the organization, American companies should not be forced to send public health materials funded by U.S. taxpayers.
The treaty’s inadequate provisions fail to recognize that it was America that saved the world from the pandemic. Operation Warp Speed, a World War II-style engineering and production effort, was one of the greatest achievements of Trump’s first term. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense pledged $13 billion toward the development and manufacturing of a vaccine. In just seven months, vaccines were created for a novel disease.
By the end of 2020, the U.S. was distributing 14 million doses of the vaccine to Americans. But a U.S. president should decide whether any of the production should be exported moving forward. Under the pandemic treaty, however, the WHO would have been entitled to almost 3 million doses from the United States with no input from America’s elected leaders, who would be unable to determine whether the organization will use them responsibly.
Trump should go further than simply withdrawing from the WHO and pledging not to sign the pandemic treaty. He should amend his current executive order or issue a new one mandating that federally funded or supported vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics cannot be provided, sold, or transferred to the WHO unless it allows Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly, bars Russia and North Korea from seats on the Executive Board, holds China accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic, and ensures the reliable distribution of vaccines.
Congress should support the administration by codifying such executive actions into law, thereby ensuring that a new Democratic administration cannot reverse them in the future.
The WHO said the pandemic treaty is a victory for public health. But it’s not. Trump must act to protect Americans from the WHO’s power grab.
Anthony Ruggiero is an adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former White House National Security Council senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense.
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