WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump\u2019s administration said Friday the United States was rejecting changes agreed last year for the World Health Organization on its pandemic response, saying they violated the country\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
Trump on returning to office on January 20 immediately began his nation\u2019s withdrawal from the UN body, but the State Department said the language from last year would still have been binding on the United States.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is a longtime critic of vaccines, said the changes \u201crisk unwarranted interference with our national sovereign right to make health policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will put Americans first in all our actions and we will not tolerate international policies that infringe on Americans\u2019 speech, privacy or personal liberties,\u201d they said in a joint statement.<\/p>\n
Rubio and Kennedy disassociated the United States from a series of amendments to the International Health Regulations, which provide a legal framework for combatting diseases, agreed last year at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe regret the US decision to reject the amendments,\u201d WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement posted on X.<\/p>\n
He stressed the amendments \u201care clear about member states sovereignty,\u201d adding that the WHO cannot mandate lockdowns or similar measures.<\/p>\n
The changes included a stated \u201ccommitment to solidarity and equity\u201d in which a new group would study the needs of developing countries in future emergencies.<\/p>\n
Countries have until Saturday to lodge reservations about the amendments. Conservative activists and vaccine skeptics in Britain and Australia, which both have left-leaning governments, have waged public campaigns against the changes.<\/p>\n
The amendments came about when the Assembly failed at a more ambitious goal of sealing a new global agreement on pandemics.<\/p>\n
Most of the world finally secured a treaty this May, but the United States did not participate as it was in the process of withdrawing from the WHO.<\/p>\n
The United States, then under president Joe Biden, took part in the May-June 2024 negotiations, but said it could not support consensus as it demanded protections for US intellectual property rights on vaccine development.<\/p>\n
Rubio\u2019s predecessor Antony Blinken had welcomed the amendments as progress.<\/p>\n
In their rejection of the amendments, Rubio and Kennedy said the changes \u201cfail to adequately address the WHO\u2019s susceptibility to the political influence and censorship \u2013 most notably from China \u2013 during outbreaks.\u201d<\/p>\n
WHO\u2019s Ghebreyesus said the body is \u201cimpartial and works with all countries to improve people\u2019s health.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump\u2019s administration said Friday the United States was rejecting changes agreed last year for the World Health Organization on its pandemic response, saying they violated the country\u2019s sovereignty. Trump on returning to office on January 20 immediately began his nation\u2019s withdrawal from the UN body, but the State Department said the language …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84003,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83984\/revisions\/84003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}