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On Monday, a group of lawyers from ten countries released a statement voicing their opposition to the World Health Organisation’s (“WHO’s”) proposed Pandemic Treaty, officially known as WHO CA+, and the amendments to the International Health Regulations (“IHRs”). 

Over the weekend of 30 June to 2 July, the first international lawyers’ congress of Anwälte für Aufklärung e.V. (English translation Lawyers for Enlightenment e.V.) was held in Cologne, Germany. The congress focused on the IHRs and the Pandemic Treaty.

A strong alliance of lawyers from all over Europe, supported by lawyers worldwide, is forming against the WHO Pandemic Treaty. “We, the lawyers say: No to totalitarianism. Clear statements by the lawyers about the plans to make the WHO a kind of ‘health world government’: We say NO!,” tweeted Dr. Alexander Christ on Sunday.

Below is their press statement both the images tweeted as tweeted by Markus Haintz and the text as extracted from the images.

Further reading from Anwälte für Aufklärung e.V. (“AfA”):

• Loss of sovereignty or system failure?
• WHO

Press release of the Lawyers for Enlightenment e.V. Cologne, July 3, 2023

Lawyers from ten countries addressed the issues of the WHO pandemic treaty and the planned amendment of the International Health Regulations at an international lawyers’ congress this weekend in Cologne. As hosts of the congress, we, the Anwalte fur Aufklarung e.V. (Lawyers for Enlightenment) from Germany invited to a press conference today, in which lawyers from Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, France, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Israel and Germany, among others, took part.

The main results of the meeting: We lawyers reject the plan to draft a pandemic treaty of the World Health Organization WHO and to amend the health regulations IHR. In particular, we call on the states of Europe not to participate in the plans to give the WHO far-reaching rights in the future to declare future pandemics as well as to establish regulations to combat such pandemics, which the member states would then have to comply with mandatorily and without any further possibility of national intervention or review.

In order to be able to react more effectively and more clearly in the future to violations of fundamental human rights and to restrictions of freedom and basic rights against populations by democratic states, the lawyers gathered in Cologne have joined together to form an International Lawyers Association, the International Association of Lawyers for Human Rights (IAL). 27 signatures of the first signatories are on the founding document of the lawyers’ association, which will grow decisively in the coming weeks. Behind the foundation are, among others, the Lawyers for Fundamental Rights/Attorneys for Enlightenment Austria, the Lawyers for Enlightenment e.V. Germany, members of the Lawyers Committee from Switzerland, lawyers from the Spanish association Units per la Veritat, to name just a few as examples.

The conference serves to expand the international cooperation of lawyers who have already critically addressed the illegality of state measures and the fragility of national rule of law during the Corona period. These undesirable developments are being raised to the level of supranational organisations such as, in particular, the World Health Organisation (WHO), which, with the help of the so-called Pandemic Treaty, is to be enabled to circumvent national as well as European sovereignty rights in the event of a future pandemic.

This is opposed by the lawyers gathered in Cologne, who, on the other hand, are committed to strict compliance with human rights, fundamental rights and freedoms. The core principle here is: human dignity is inviolable. The UN Charter, from which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights derives, the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic and Social Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights all claim indispensable validity. Under no circumstances may these be actually or de facto invalidated by a WHO pandemic treaty, not even and especially not in times of pandemics or other health crises.

We lawyers stand for: the protection of fundamental principles of democratic rule of law, for a strict separation of powers in the sense of the principle of “checks and balances”, for the principle of legality, for the right of self-determination of peoples, for the principle according to which all power must emanate from the people, for freedom of information and above all for a comprehensive ban on censorship in all states.

All these principles are contradicted by the contents of the so-called “WHO Pandemic Treaty”, which is currently being drafted, and the expected changes to the “International Health Regulations” (IHR), which are to be submitted for decision at the WHO General Assembly in 2024. According to the current state of knowledge, which can be found on the European Council’s website, among others, the pandemic treaty and amendments to the IHR are aimed at bringing the World Health Organisation into the role of a de facto “world health government” as a supranational and global super organisation. In the future, the WHO is to be charged with the following tasks, among others:

• Early detection and prevention of pandemics, which required the establishment of a cause-free global early warning and surveillance system,
• Establishment and strengthening of the WHO as the coordinating authority for global health issues, which would effectively disempower national and local health authorities and thus fundamentally contradict the principle of subsidiarity,
• Strengthening international cooperation in areas such as surveillance, alerts, and response, which would be tantamount to establishing a global surveillance system of citizens by states, enforced by WHO; and
• combating “misinformation” worldwide, which would be equivalent to the introduction of censorship.

From the point of view of us lawyers, all four goals would lead to a global surveillance and paternalism system of the WHO in an intolerable way that fundamentally contradicts the principles of the rule of law. Among the principles claiming unbreakable validity, the first to be mentioned is individual self-determination, which, especially in a crisis such as a real pandemic, must always be given priority over state or even supranational paternalism. Secondly, there is the principle of subsidiarity, according to which a higher state or social unit may only intervene to help and take over functions if the forces of the subordinate unit are not sufficient to perform the necessary function. Especially in a pandemic, priority must always be given to local decision-making on necessary measures.

In the past Corona pandemic, for example, the WHO showed through a global failure that it was at no time able to assess the situation correctly. The transfer of power to an anonymous, not democratically legitimated organisation with mafia-like structures, which is supplied from dubious sources of money and is close to the pharmaceutical lobby – to put it mildly – and which in the future is to be able to determine uncontrollably when a pandemic has broken out, when it is over and how people worldwide are then to behave, is to be decisively rejected.

We lawyers say: No to the WHO pandemic treaty and No to the amendment of the International Health Regulations!

Dr. Alexander Christ, Spokesman AnwSite fur Aufldarung e.V., Hohenzollerndamm 112, 14199 Berlin, kontaktaafaev.de vrww.afaev.de