We Must Heed Hayek's Warning
If a proposed amendment to the third article of the International Health Regulations is accepted, the principle of respect for fundamental human rights will no longer be part of the Regulations.
If a proposed amendment to the third article of the International Health Regulations is accepted, the principle of respect for fundamental human rights will no longer be part of the regulations. Coupled with plans to grant the WHO de facto power over sovereign governments, we are facing a new and disturbing reality.
Below is Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Amendments to the International Health Regulations are now under review by the WHO. The third article of the regulations deals with the basic principles of their implementation. Below is the article as it currently stands:
1. The implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons.
2. The implementation of these Regulations shall be guided by the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution of the World Health Organization.
3. The implementation of these Regulations shall be guided by the goal of their universal application for the protection of all people of the world from the international spread of disease.
4. States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to legislate and to implement legislation in pursuance of their health policies. In doing so they should uphold the purpose of these Regulations.
As stated in the first paragraph, the first principle of implementation is respect for human rights, as laid out in Article 2 of the Declaration of Human Rights.
Among the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, found here, India proposes the following change to the first paragraph of the third article:
Para 1: The implementation of these Regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities of the States Parties, taking into consideration their social and economic development.
In other words, it is proposed to remove the basic requirement of respect for human rights and replace it with vague and undefined “principles”, or as Dr. David Bell puts it in a recent Brownstone article:
The underlying equality of individuals is removed and rights become subject to a status determined by others based on a set of criteria that they define. This entirely upends the prior understanding of the relationship of all individuals with authority, at least in non-totalitarian states.
If this amendment is agreed upon, the International Health Regulations will no longer reflect the principles of human rights as defined by the international community. It will not have to respect human rights any more.
Considering the supranational executive powers member states now plan to grant the WHO, we will have a new and unpredictable authority, with the power to make arbitrary and for that matter unjustified decisions, based on the whims of one person, just as we witnessed in 2022 when the WHO Secretary General decided to override his own scientific committee to declare monkeypox (now, what was that again?) a global emergency.
In the Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek warns how the most dangerous kind of totalitarianism is the one driven by international technocracies which could „easily exercise the most tyrannical and irresponsible power imaginable ... And as there is scarcely anything which could not be justified by „technical necessities“ which no outsider could effectively question – or even by humanitarian arguments about the needs of some specially ill-favoured group which could not be helped in any other way – there is little possibility of controlling that power“.
It is time we heed Hayek’s warning, before it is too late.
Aye, although it is in some respects already too late. Human rights agreements suffered a death of a thousand cuts between Emperor Bush II and Emperor Biden, with each new occupant of the throne throwing away some additional aspect of what was prohibited. With the US no longer supporting these statutes they are already gone in practice, so it is scarcely a surprise to see international legislators no longer caring about them. They did not even last a century - which is astonishing, because for half of that century they were expected to last in perpetuity.
This is why the voices of the resistance - such as yourself - are so important. But we cannot succeed without allying voices on both the left and the right, which is why I am trying to fight a rearguard action to rally whatever remains of the left that has not already sworn fealty to imperial technocracy. The line has been drawn... let us work together to defend it however we can. Please keep going!
The International Technocracy is now a readily accessible Glass Onion. Even we the great unwashed, useless eaters, can see it. An unintelligent attempt by a bunch of naked emperors to world. Just another Orwellian day at the office.