Exclusive: United States Fast Tracks Proposal to Change WHO Rules on International Health Emergency Response

International Health Regulations 23/02/2022 • Elaine Ruth Fletcher

Loyce Pace, Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs, US Department of Health and Human Services, addresses the WHO Executive Board meeting, 24-29 February, 2022.

In the wake of the chaotic, and often failed, global response to the COVID pandemic, the United States is not waiting for an elaborate international treaty or convention on future pandemics, which will take years to negotiate.

Instead, Washington wants to fast track a series of nitty-gritty, but far- reaching changes in the existing International Health Regulations that govern WHO and member state emergency alert and response – for consideration at this year’s World Health Assembly, 22-28 May.

The US proposal for major IHR rule changes, obtained by Health Policy Watch, has been a topic of discussion in a series of closed-door meetings of WHO member states, which are considering ways to reform the existing IHR, as well as advancing a whole new WHO convention or other international instrument on pandemic prevention and response.

The US proposal, delivered to WHO’s Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in late January, is also featuring in the agenda of US Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs, Loyce Pace, currently on a visit to Geneva. See related Health Policy Watch story.

The US is expected to lead a parallel track of tightly-paced “informal” member state negotiations to reach consensus on an IHR reform resolution for approval at this year’s 75th WHA, which is only three months away.

The US proposals are presented as a detailed series of text additions and deletions in the 2005 IHR rules. The amendments set out more defined criteria, terms and timelines for alerts, notification, and response to emerging disease threats or outbreaks. The proposed rule revisions clearly aim to “incentivise” countries to collaborate more closely with expert WHO pathogen SWAP teams in the event of an emerging threat – while avoiding an outright requirement.

The proposed rules also specifically ask member states to share the “genetic sequence data” of suspect pathogens right away.

And they call for WHO to develop new “early warning criteria for assessing and progressively updating the national, regional or global risk posed by an event of unknown costs or sources.” Such criteria, would in turn, better define, member state’s responsibilities for both monitoring and rapidly reporting on threats.

US initiative breaks taboo about reforming IHR

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General speaking at the WHA special session in November 2021, where member states agreed to develop a new multilateral pandemic accord

It’s unclear how the top WHO echelon will react to the changes – which have not yet been posted by WHO in the online agenda for the 75th WHA meeting, 22-28 May.

Notably, Tedros has been personally identified with advancing negotiations on a much broader multilateral instrument, such as a new pandemic convention or treaty. That approach also ahs been backed by a large bloc of European states, and it received conditional approval in a special WHA session last year, including lukewarm US support.

So In contrast to the grand political vision and extended timeline of a new accord, digging into a set of very prescriptive revisions to the IHR, may, in fact prove to be more politically difficult for WHO’s leadership.

That is particularly the case since major member states, notably Russia and China, are already at odds with the US over geopolitical issues ranging from the Ukraine to Taiwan. And even in normal times, they and other more authoritarian regimes would likely balk at any US initiative that creates stronger compliance mechanisms – perceived as an infringement on sovereignty.

Quiet welcome from WHO insiders

But as a set of practical proposals to address the real problems that the pandemic has laid bare, the US move may be quietly welcomed by many WHO insiders – as well as European and other allies. Civil society groups have also been cynical about the ambitions around a new multilateral treaty instrument – worrying about the excessive time and energy such negotiations might entail.

“Overall, I am happy that the US has proposed these amendments because it breaks this surreal dogma that has been in WHO for the past ten years, that the IHR should never be amended,” said one former WHO official, speaking to Health Policy Watch on condition of anonymity.

“The US took the initiative, and said there are flaws in the design, let’s change the design,” the former official added.

By submitting it to WHO formally in January, the US has ensured that the reform proposals must be put on the WHA agenda already in May, and be publicly debated there: “So clearly the US wants to put pressure. It wants to go quickly to get some kind of agreed package.

“I think there will be push back on this ‘draconian’ timeline for alert and notification,” the former official added. “But the purpose is good. It’s a way to increase transparency.

WHO empowered to share information about risks within 48 hours

The US proposal creates a series of clear timelines and trigger points regarding the responsibilities of a member state with a suspected disease threat to notify WHO – and WHO to notify other member states – both within a framework of two days each.

Significantly, member states would be required to inform WHO about emerging threats identified by its national IHR focal point within 48 hours, and then accept any WHO offer to “collaborate” on further assessment.

US proposal for more specific text on member state responsbilities to notify WHO within 48 hours about an outbreak risk – including genetic sequence data.

WHO, in turn, would be mandated to make widely available within 48 hours the information it has about a significant emerging – if the member state rejects the collaboration.

“If the State Party does not accept the offer of collaboration within 48 hours, WHO shall, when justified by the magnitude of the public health risk, immediately share with other States Parties the information available to it, whilst encouraging the State Party to accept the offer of collaboration by WHO,” states the proposed amendment to Article10-4.

This, in contrast to existing language, which does not explicitly mandate collaboration with WHO on threats, and requires open-ended WHO “consultations” before the Agency even makes available information about emerging threats to other member states or the public- something that currently delays notifications for weeks and months.

Underlined text represents additions, mandating WHO to immediately share information about disease risks to other member states ,within 48 hours, if the member state experiencing the disease threat or outbreak, refuses to collaborate: US proposal for revisions in IHR 2005

‘Yellow light’ – Regional and intermediate public health emergency warnings

The rules also would give WHO the authority to declare a public health emergency threat at the intermediate and regional level – rather than only globally – as it does now.

Creation of a kind of “yellow” warning light before declaration of a full-scale global emergency has long been discussed in connection with the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, as a measure that could have alerted countries earlier about risks of the fast-spreading coronavirus infection in the first weeks – even when the epidemic remained geographically confined to Asia.

And in the case of other emergencies, such as the West African 2014 Ebola outbreak, and prior coronavirus outbreaks of MERS in the Middle East as well as the first 2003 SARS outbreak in Asia – a much more regional spread of pathogens was more immediately obvious than the dynamics of global transmission.

Finally, the amendments would create an IHR “compliance” committee for monitoring member states’ adherence to the IHR rules, which are legally binding. A compliance mechanism, a standard feature of most international treaties, has been a gaping omission in the existing IHR system, observers say.

Proposal on table of WHO talks this week

While Washington has provided support, in principle, to a new pandemic convention or other multilateral accord, it has never been as enthusiastic about the proposal as Europe, noting that it will take years to negotiate. Preliminary deliberations by a a new Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, which begn Thursday (February 24) are set to continue through June 2023 – and would only come before the WHA in 2024.

In contrast, the US proposal on IHR reform would already go before the World Health Assembly at its upcoming May session, as per the letter from the US Mission in Geneva to the WHO Director General 20 January 2022 – noting that its submission to the WHA agenda was made within the four-month deadline. .

The US message to the WHO DG underlined, “the critical importance of strengthening the IHR (2005) along with other efforts to strengthen the ability of the WHO and Member States to prevent, detect and respond to future public health emergencies of international concern.”

Pace, when asked for her take on the IHR reform proposal, at a media briefing Wednesday at the US Mission in Geneva, said:

“We really tried to skim off what we thought would be the most critical enhancements that could be made. In terms of what they entail, whether we are talking about improved alert systems or other components, some of the issues are maybe tougher to tackle than others.

“I think what is encouraging for us is that we had close to 50 member states signing onto this approach. We are really quite hopeful that we will see success in this effort, sooner rather than later.”

But Pace acknowledged that the first real litmus test of the US initiative will be Thursday, at the initial formal session of a new “Intergovernmental Negotiating Body” on pandemic response reform: “When it comes to the instruments of this process, we are really mindful of the process kicking off tomorrow.”

An open letter to the American people, as Russia celebrates its WW2 victory over the Nazis

To those who have forgotten the sacrifices the ‘Greatest Generation’ made to defeat Hitler

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.

@RealScottRitter

An open letter to the American people, as Russia celebrates its WW2 victory over the Nazis

In his 1998 classic, ‘The Greatest Generation’, famed NBC journalist Tom Brokow examined the lives and experiences of some of the millions of American men and women who fought in the Second World War.

“At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world,” Brokow observed, “they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world.” Brokow had “come to understand what this generation of Americans meant to history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.”

I was born in 1961, some two decades after the United States entered the Second World War. By this time, the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had receded into the history books, replaced by a new and even more menacing foe, the Soviet Union. My father was a US Air Force officer whose career path up to 1977 looked like a Cold War-era tourist map, with service in Vietnam, Korea, and Turkey. I grew up with the mantra “better dead than red” drilled into my head, convinced that the service my father was providing to our nation was essential for the survival of the free world.

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In 1977, my family moved to West Germany. My father had been reassigned to the 17th Air Force, headquartered at Sembach Air Force Base. We opted to live off base, in “the economy” as we called it, eventually settling into a magnificent house in the village of Marnheim owned by a German family who had been renting it out to US servicemen for decades. The house had a history, too. In 1945, it had served as a temporary headquarters for General George S. Patton as his 3rd Army advanced through the Rhein Pfaltz region of Germany during the Second World War.

We were three decades removed from that war when we moved to Germany, but reminders of that conflict were all around us. I spent the summer of 1978 working in a meat inspection facility staffed by what we euphemistically called “DPs,” for “displaced persons.” When the Second World War ended, millions of Europeans who had been enslaved by Nazi Germany found themselves liberated from their prison-like existence, but with no home to return to. This population included many children. The United States provided many of these permanently displaced persons with jobs and a place to live. For thousands this existence became a way of life, and they were employed in service of America’s expansive military presence in West Germany. By the time I became acquainted with the “DP” community, some 33 years later, these children had grown into adults who were deeply grateful for the opportunities provided by the United States.

They were also deeply resentful of the German people for having imprisoned them and destroying the Europe of their childhood.

The experience of the “DPs” was a wake-up call for an American teenager who, by living among the Germans, had grown to view them as simply a foreign-speaking mirror image of myself and my family. But it wasn’t that simple.

In January 1979 West German television broadcast, over four consecutive nights, the ABC miniseries ‘The Holocaust’. After each episode, the Germans ran a live panel of historians who would take questions from the audience (it is estimated that over half of Germany watched the series.) Like most Americans living in Germany, I had missed out on the series when it was originally aired in the United States the previous year. My family tuned in and, out of curiosity, remained tuned in during the panels. We were shocked by what we heard – the children of Germans who had been alive during the Second World War were calling the panel, in hysterics, denouncing their parents and their nation for allowing such a thing to happen. The distinguished academics and psychologists that had been assembled for these panels were stunned into silence by the outrage and anger – they simply had no answer to the question of not only how such a thing had been allowed to happen, but why they had not been taught about it growing up. Germany, it seemed, had tried to erase the criminality of its Nazi past from its present reality.

As focused as my family was on living less than one hour’s drive from the border between East and West Germany where, on the other side, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were stationed, poised (in our minds, at least) to launch an attack at any moment which would bring our idyllic life to a sudden and horrific halt, we could not escape the constant reminder of what had transpired on the European continent a scant three-and-a-half decades past.

One of the most poignant reminders lay across another border, this one to the west, where, near the Luxembourgish town of Hamm, the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial was located. The final resting place for more than 5,000 Americans who died fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, Hamm was also where General Patton was laid to rest following his accidental death in December 1945 (his widow believed he “would want to lie beside the men of his army who have fallen.”)

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My parents made it a point to take us to Hamm on several occasions while we lived in Germany; it was a short, scenic drive, and the cemetery itself was beautiful, a fitting memorial for those who had made the ultimate sacrifice. We would always visit the nearby Sandweiler German Cemetery, also in Luxembourg, where the remains of more than 10,000 German soldiers who died fighting the Americans were interned. Both cemeteries were a somber, sobering experience.

But it wasn’t until my Uncle Mel visited us that the reality of what those cemeteries represented hit home. Mel was the living embodiment of Tom Brokow’s ‘The Greatest Generation’, having served in the European theater during World War II, coming across the Normandy beaches a week or so after D-Day. His unit – a transportation company tasked with driving trucks along the famous “red ball express,” had enjoyed a relatively easy time of it in France. Part of Patton’s 3rd Army, they participated in the liberation of France, and by the time they rolled up to the Benelux (Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg) border with Germany, had suffered no major casualties.

Mel had asked to visit some of the areas he had passed through during the war. Most brought back good memories, but at one location he stopped talking. Here his unit had been bracketed by German artillery, and in an instant more than 200 of his comrades were killed or wounded; many of those who died were buried at Hamm.

The crosses and Stars of David that were so beautifully laid out on the manicured grass suddenly had faces, names and personalities that could not be ignored. What had been a peaceful haven transformed instantly into a horrible reminder of the awful cost of war. To this day, I can’t pass a military cemetery without visualizing the circumstances of the events that took the lives of those buried there. All the hopes, dreams, and aspirations that I and others have been able to act out during our lives were denied these young men, usually under circumstances that the average person cannot imagine.

And the persons responsible for their deaths were the same Germans with whom I so peaceably co-existed back across the border. The same ones whose children became infuriated at their parent’s forgetfulness about the nature of the regime which killed so many millions in pursuit of the ambitions of one of the most odious ideologies of all humanity – Nazism.

In college, I studied Russian history; indeed, my honors thesis discussed the historical links between the Tsarist and Soviet militaries. I was intimately familiar with the campaigns and battles fought between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and the horrific toll paid by the Soviet nation, whose casualties numbered in the tens of millions.

But it wasn’t until I had the opportunity to live and work in the Soviet Union, as part of a US inspection team stationed outside a Soviet missile factory in Votkinsk, tasked with implementing the provisions of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, that I realized the extent to which this sacrifice marked the daily reality of the Soviet people. In downtown Votkinsk, there was a monument to the citizens who lost their lives during the war, as well as those who had been awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union” for their wartime service. Everywhere one traveled in the Soviet Union there were similar monuments constructed in communities that had made it an essential reality of their being never to forget the sacrifices made by their version of the “Greatest Generation” in saving not only their fellow citizens, but much of Europe as well, from the scourge of Nazi Germany.

US training Ukrainians at ex-Nazi Wehrmacht base

This remembrance continued even after the Soviet Union collapsed; the heritage of the Soviet Union was passed to the new Russian Federation, which sustained the duty of honoring those who had served. Russia celebrates this service on May 9 – “Victory Day” – marking the defeat of Nazi Germany. One of the great traditions of this celebration was the image of those aged veterans of that conflict, bedecked in their campaign medals, parading before a grateful nation. Even as time and old age removed the Russian “Greatest Generation” from the society and nation they had served, the Russian people continued to honor them, with the children and grandchildren of the departed veterans marching in their stead, holding aloft a photograph of the veteran, part of what is called “The Immortal Regiment.”

Unlike the Germans, the Russian people don’t forget.

Sadly, I cannot say the same thing about the American people. There will be no Victory in Europe celebration in the United States this year, just as there hasn’t been for years past. We have forgotten our “Greatest Generation” and the sacrifices they made for our future. There is no American “Immortal Regiment” of family members marching proudly down the main streets of US towns and cities honoring the cause for which these young men and women served.

We have forgotten what they even fought for.

There was a time when the United States and Soviet Union fought together to overcome the scourge of Nazi Germany and the ideology it espoused. Today, when Russia is locked in a struggle with the progeny of Hitler’s Germany, in the form of the ideological descendants of the Ukrainian nationalist, Stepan Bandera – one would logically expect that the United States to be on Moscow's side.

Bander's followers fought alongside German Nazis as members of the Waffen SS, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, many of them Jewish. By rights, Washington should be ensuring that the hateful cause so many had given their lives and livelihoods to eradicate from Europe never again raised its evil banners on European soil.

Instead, the United States is providing succor to the present-day adherents of Bandera, and by extension, Hitler; their hateful ideology disguised as Ukrainian nationalism. American military personnel, whose traditions are born from the heroic sacrifices made by hundreds of thousands of their fellow soldiers, sailors, and airmen who gave their lives to defeat Nazi Germany, are today providing weapons and training to Ukrainians whose bodies and banners bear the markings of Hitler’s Third Reich.

On May 9, Russia will celebrate Victory Day, marking the 77th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, the struggle against Nazi ideology continues to this day and, sadly, the United States finds itself on the wrong side of history, supporting those whom we once were sworn to defeat, while fighting against those whom we once called allies.

I can’t help but think that Tom Brokow’s “Greatest Generation” would be ashamed by the actions of those for whom they sacrificed everything, and who have still proven insufficient for the task of honoring their memory in action and in deed.

AFTER THE ELECTIONS: MARTIAL LAW IN THE PHILIPPINES

DIE HERRENRASSE

GLI USA HANNNO PERSO IL MONOPOLIO DELLA GUERRA IMPERIALISTICA: ORA E' LA LORO VOLTA AD ESSERE INVASI DAL "RESTO" DEL MONDO.

Gen. Milley Warns Congress: Chances Of War Among Great Powers “Increasing, Not Decreasing”

by Zero Hedge

May 4th 2022, 4:34 am

Image Credit:

Patrick McDermott/NHLI via Getty Images

LIVE

With NATO-Russia tensions boiling, the enduring fog of war on the ground in Ukraine, and constantly ratcheting rhetoric which has even of late dangerously included nuclear threats – this seems almost like an invitation for yet more escalation… not to mention the competing information war which has seen all sides consistently allege false flags in the works… Foreign Policy’s Pentagon correspondent reports the following on Tuesday:

Russian use of chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine would likely trigger a “reaction from the international community”: U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Russia could also escalate the Ukraine conflict with a cyber attack, Austin said.

The warning came as Pentagon leaders briefed lawmakers at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the Defense Budget.

Austin had issued a similar warning of a “significant reaction” from the West if Russia were to use chemical weapons or WMD in Ukraine a month ago during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation”.

In the early part of April, there had actually been attempts of Ukrainian Azov militants to claim they were victims of a Russian chemical gas attack – but this was met by general skepticism among many war analysts and media pundits – despite UK government attempts to give it credibility.

Austin this week repeating the chemical attack possibility, despite there being no evidence of Russia’s intent, keeps the door wide open for Ukrainian fighters who are no doubt desperate for direct Western intervention in the war to float the claims again.

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley also gave his assessment of how Russia’s war is going in the Congressional testimony. He said we are now witnessing “the greatest threat to peace and security of Europe and perhaps the world” in decades.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is threatening to undermine not only European peace and stability, but global peace and stability that my parents and generations of Americans fought so hard to defend,” Milley said.

On the question of whether a broader war could break out, he said:

“The potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing.”

He described that the US is “at a very critical and historic geo-strategic inflection point,” meaning the US military ust “maintain readiness and modernize for the future” at the same time. And more via Reuters wire:

U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHINA AND RUSSIA IS THAT THE FIRST IS A CHALLENGE AND THE SECOND HAS BECOME A REAL-TIME THREAT
U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: WAR IN UKRAINE CHANGES AND COMING WEEKS WILL BE CRUCIAL

Meanwhile, at China’s Foreign Ministry…

“Not an inch of #NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”
—Memorandum of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker in Moscow, 9 Feb 9 1990 pic.twitter.com/2dNqJkN2gs
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) May 3, 2022

“If we do not do that, then we are risking security of future generations,” Milley stressed. The top general had also in the testimony said that while China poses a “challenge” for the United States, the Ukraine invasion has now made Russia “a real-time threat”.

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