The phenomenon of failing upward is only too familiar among the ranks of Australian politicians. People from other countries also come readily to mind as examples, including former US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and European Union President Ursula von der Leyen. Lately we’ve also witnessed this with an international organisation.

The World Health Assembly is the governing body of the World Health Organisation (WHO). It’s been meeting in Geneva this week (19–27 May) to adopt a new pandemic treaty that will reward the WHO for its gross mismanagement of the Covid pandemic by strengthening the framework for global health cooperation under WHO auspices. The accord’s focus is on building a global surveillance system to detect emerging pathogens and respond swiftly with coordinated measures, including the development and equitable distribution of medical countermeasures.

Yet, the premise of the accords is an inflated account of pandemic risk that is simply not supported by historical evidence. As a result, its effect will be to badly distort health priorities away from the real health needs and other social and economic goals of many countries. Only 11 countries abstained with 124 countries voting in support of adopting the new accords. The treaty will enter into force when 60 countries have ratified it.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to give any bureaucracy and its head the power to declare a pandemic emergency that will expand its reach, authority, budget, and personnel and shift the balance of decision-making away from states to an unelected globalist bureaucrat? Or to adopt a One Health approach when the empirical reality is of sharply differentiated health vulnerabilities and disease burdens between regions? We need devolution, not more centralisation, with the principle of subsidiarity linking the distribution of authority and resources at the different levels.

Before empowering the WHO to cause even more harm, we should first investigate its Covid failings and decide if major reform can overcome the accumulated vested interests or if we need a new international health organisation. Any organisation that has been around for 80 years has either succeeded in its core mission, in which case it should be wound down out of existence. Or else it has failed, in which case it should be abolished and replaced by a new one that is more fit for purpose in today’s world. …

Since inception, the WHO has accomplished important work, including the eradication of smallpox. More recently, however, its ‘priorities have increasingly reflected the biases and interests of corporate medicine.’ ‘Too often it has allowed political agendas, like pushing harmful gender ideology, to hijack its core mission.’ In an echo of my earlier lament above, Kennedy said that ‘The WHO has not even come to terms with its failures during Covid, let alone made significant reforms.’ Instead it has doubled down with the pandemic agreement ‘which will lock in all of the dysfunctions of the WHO pandemic response.’

‘Global cooperation on health is still critically important,’ but ‘not working very well under the WHO,’ Kennedy said. Countries like China have been allowed to exert a malign influence on WHO operations in pursuit of their own interests rather than in service of the people of the world. When it comes to democratic countries, actions of the WHO suggest a failure to acknowledge that its members are and must remain accountable to their citizens and neither to transnational nor to corporate interests. ‘We want to free international health cooperation from the straitjacket of political interference by corrupting influences of the pharmaceutical companies, of adversarial nations, and their NGO proxies.’

‘We need to reboot the whole system,’ he concluded, and shift our focus to the prevalence of chronic diseases that are sickening peoples and bankrupting health systems. This will better serve the needs of people instead of maximising industry profit. ‘Let’s create new institutions or revisit existing institutions that are lean, efficient, transparent, and accountable. Whether it’s an emergency outbreak of an infectious disease or the pervasive rot of chronic conditions,’ the US is ready to work with others.

That is a clear and compelling rationale put forward by Kennedy for the US withdrawal from the WHO. The international elite will circle the wagons to defend the expansion of the international administrative state. The political leaders in thrall to the expert class will genuflect to their advice. Those seduced by the idealism of international solidarity and others corrupted by the lucre of pharmaceutical lobbyists will not be persuaded by Kennedy. Competent leaders of self-confident countries, however, should take up his offer to nest the ethic of global health cooperation in a new specialised international organisation that better respects the health sovereignty of member states and the health needs of people.