CONTACT: J.P. Duffy or Alice Chao, (866) FRC-NEWS or (866)-372-6397
GENEVA, Switzerland -- Family Research Council's Vice President for Policy and Government Affairs and Policy Editor for The Washington Stand, Travis Weber, is attending the World Health Assembly that will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, May 27-June 1. The Assembly is the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO). This gathering will mark the 77th World Health Assembly. This year's theme will be "All for Health, Health for All." The meeting will also consider adopting a pandemic agreement, drafted as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The purpose of FRC's presence in Geneva is to represent and communicate numerous concerns about the WHO pandemic agreement and its process.
Weber commented on his trip:
"While it is understandable that the world wants to prevent another pandemic, many seem to be carelessly rushing to embrace the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Agreement, which will seriously undermine the freedom and decision-making autonomy of every sovereign nation that agrees to it. Ceding national authority in this process will also set a dangerous precedent for future international arrangements. The free people of the world expect their elected leaders to stand up to those who would infringe upon their national sovereignty. We should not be surrendering public health policy to the WHO--a murky, unelected, international organization that is quite distant and removed from the concerns and lives of most people."
FRC also previously submitted a public comment to the Biden administration regarding the organization's concerns with the pandemic agreement.
The FRC comment read in part:
"FRC believes, as do all orthodox Christian believers, that human beings alone among the creatures of the Earth were created in the image and likeness of God. Accordingly, we are opposed to any constitution, treaty, statute, or policy that diminishes or erases the inherent right of humans to life, from conception (i.e., fertilization) to natural death. We believe this vision for human flourishing is facilitated best by more localized political structures of representative, constitutional nation-states and their subsidiary government layers (e.g., provinces, counties, and municipalities). FRC rejects any analytical framework wherein the best responses to any future pandemic could be promulgated by an amalgamation of world government structures. Although FRC recognizes that there are benefits from international cooperation between nations, international organizations, and NGOs, the Draft Agreement only pays lip service to state sovereignty as it seeks to create new political arrangements that transfer power from individual member states to global institutions and sub-structures, most notably the WHO. Finally, the most important check on political, intellectual, scientific, and medical tyranny is having the ability to seek the truth and disseminate one's understanding of scientific fact without fear of punishment. As Christians, we seek to learn, understand, and proclaim the Truth of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. For many of those who founded the American republic, that same desire lay at the core of the need for the enactment of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees Americans the right to worship freely, to express and promulgate those beliefs, to make arguments, to assert facts and theories, and to engage in all manner of debate."
To read FRC's public comment on the WHO pandemic agreement, please see: https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF24A66.pdf
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