Travis Weber, Vice President for Policy and Government Affairs at the Family Research Council (FRC) and Policy Editor for The Washington Stand, will attend the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland from May 27 to June 1. The Assembly serves as the main decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) and this year marks its 77th session. The central theme for 2024 is “All for Health, Health for All.” Delegates are expected to discuss a pandemic agreement that has been drafted in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Weber explained the purpose of his trip as representing FRC’s concerns regarding the proposed WHO pandemic agreement and its negotiation process. He stated:
“While it is understandable that the world wants to prevent another pandemic, many seem to be carelessly rushing to embrace the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Agreement, which will seriously undermine the freedom and decision-making autonomy of every sovereign nation that agrees to it. Ceding national authority in this process will also set a dangerous precedent for future international arrangements. The free people of the world expect their elected leaders to stand up to those who would infringe upon their national sovereignty. We should not be surrendering public health policy to the WHO–a murky, unelected, international organization that is quite distant and removed from the concerns and lives of most people.”
The FRC has previously communicated its objections through a public comment submitted to the Biden administration. In this submission, FRC outlined its opposition based on principles related to human dignity and national sovereignty:
“FRC believes, as do all orthodox Christian believers, that human beings alone among the creatures of the Earth were created in the image and likeness of God. Accordingly, we are opposed to any constitution, treaty, statute, or policy that diminishes or erases the inherent right of humans to life, from conception (i.e., fertilization) to natural death. We believe this vision for human flourishing is facilitated best by more localized political structures of representative, constitutional nation-states and their subsidiary government layers (e.g., provinces, counties, and municipalities). FRC rejects any analytical framework wherein the best responses to any future pandemic could be promulgated by an amalgamation of world government structures. Although FRC recognizes that there are benefits from international cooperation between nations, international organizations, and NGOs, the Draft Agreement only pays lip service to state sovereignty as it seeks to create new political arrangements that transfer power from individual member states to global institutions and sub-structures, most notably the WHO. Finally, the most important check on political, intellectual, scientific, and medical tyranny is having the ability to seek the truth and disseminate one’s understanding of scientific fact without fear of punishment. As Christians, we seek to learn, understand, and proclaim the Truth of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. For many of those who founded the American republic, that same desire lay at the core of the need for the enactment of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees Americans the right to worship freely, to express and promulgate those beliefs, to make arguments, to assert facts and theories, and to engage in all manner of debate.”
The full text of FRC’s public comment on this issue can be found at https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF24A66.pdf.
