Plans for a new pandemic treaty have been in the works for several years, following the COVID-19 outbreak, which resulted in heavy-handed lockdown policies many argue did more harm than good. In December 2021, WHO member states decided at a special session of the World Health Assembly to establish an intergovernmental negotiating body to draft an agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. The target date for a legally binding agreement to be adopted by the United Nations’ Health agency’s 194 member countries is May 2024, according to a report from the Japan Times. The 13-day demonstration began on April 13 in Tokyo, with thousands of protestors voicing staunch oppostion to revising current global health agreements. Under the 2005 International Health Regulations, the WHO already has binding rules for countries’ obligations during public health events, including notifying the WHO immediately of health emercencies, as well as measures on trade and travel, the Times detailed. Speakers included Professor Masayasu Inoue and modern history researcher Chikatsu Hayash, who spoke on the links between pharmaceutical companies and global health authorities, according to Aussie 17. Hayashi delivered an address urging protestors to resist encroaching shadows of global totalitarianism that would emerge as a result of the new pandemic treaty, the news organization reported. “Upon investigation, over 85 percent of WHO’s budget turns out to be funded by pharmaceutical companies and stakeholders like Bill gates Foundation,” one speaker at a rally warned during the demonstrations. Under the new proposed pandemic treaty, nations will “commit to take measures to progressively strengthen pandemic prevention and coordinated multisectoral surveillance, taking into account national capacities and national and regional circumstances.” Many have shied away from centralized, global authority on health policy matters, following Covid-era policies like mask mandates and vaccine mandates, which were largely opposed and had, at best, negligible impact on limiting the spread of the virus.Thousands of protestors showed up for massive rallies in Japan over the weekend to protest plans for the World Health Organization’s (WHOs) pandemic treaty, which many argue could surrender national sovereignty to unelected individuals in other nations.
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