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Conservatives are warning about a power grab by the global body in which the proposed treaty would tell member states how to enforce lockdowns, quarantines, masking requirements, and immunization programs.
To stem a potential global backlash, the WHO is downplaying the talks and saying the treaty is only conjectural at the stage. But past experience indicates that such conjectural notions have a way of making it into international law without anyone noticing or being able to object.
Defenders of a treaty like to reassure us. Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said that “even if the text for a treaty on pandemic preparedness is reached, it would have to be signed, ratified, and enforced by the member states themselves. Any treaty will have to pass muster eventually with domestic audiences.’
Wrong!
In recent years, UN global organizations have treated as decided international law agreements that have neither been ratified nor, in many cases even been submitted to national legislatures for approval. Examples include the Global Covenant to Limit Clutter in space, the human rights laws embodied in the International Criminal Court treaty, certain provisions of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
The body of international law that is binding on nations, is not limited by legislative approvals and actions. A kind of common law has evolved which codifies and respects agency decisions on matters not in any treaty.
Under the terms of the Vienna Convention — ratified by the U.S. — when a nation signs a treaty but has not yet ratified it, that nation may not take any action that would violate the treaty until the signature is either rescinded or the treaty is ratified.
The Small Arms Treaty, which would regulate sales of handguns and the like, has never been even submitted to the U.S. Senate, but many judges feel bound by its terms and the National Rifle Association warns that its requirements for gun registration and the potential for firearms confiscation are seeping into regulatory and judicial decisions in many states.
So be on the lookout for a Pandemic Preparedness Treaty to supersede U.S. state and federal law that might be enforced through the Vienna Convention.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.