Telegram.ee: Dangers of the pandemic agreement: Estonia’s vote in the WHO violates the rules and endangers our freedoms

On March 14, the World Council for Health Estonia NGO sent a new appeal to the Riigikogu, the Chancellor of Justice, and the government regarding the World Health Organization’s pandemic agreement, which will be voted on at the 78th World Health Assembly in Geneva from May 19 to 27. WCH Estonia points out that Estonia’s vote may contradict international rules and constitutional principles and asks whether Estonia is really giving up sovereignty without the people’s knowledge?

PS: Signatures against the agreement are being collected  on the CitizenGo page.

We publish the address in full:

Estonia’s vote in favor of the pandemic agreement at the 78th World Health Assembly is contrary to Rule 15 of the WHO Basic Documents;

Pandemic agreement on worrying content

Dear Member of the Riigikogu, Chancellor of Justice and Government of the Republic of Estonia

The vote on the World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic agreement by member states is scheduled for the 78th World Health Assembly, which will take place next week, 19–27 May 2025.

Estonia should not vote in favour of the Pandemic Agreement ¹ at the 78th World Health Assembly, as WHO has violated Rule 15 of the WHO Basic Documents ^2. According to this rule, copies of all reports and other documents related to the original agenda for each session should be made available online no less than six weeks before the start of the regular session of the Health Assembly.

The Director-General of the WHO has not made the requested documents public by the deadline. As a result, Member States are unable to formulate their position on the pandemic agreement ¹.

As of May 12, 2025, the final version of the proposed pandemic agreement has not been made publicly available. The last public version of Pandemic Agreement ^{1 was published on May 27, 2024, but the leaked version of Pandemic Agreement 3}  is from April 16, 2025 and has not been officially published. Despite the information being kept secret from member states, Pandemic Agreement ³ is planned to be put to a vote as early as next week, i.e. in May 2025.

The Pandemic Agreement ³ has not been translated into Estonian and there has been no public debate about it in Estonia, and its impact on citizens’ daily lives, rights and obligations has not been discussed with the population.

Pandemic agreement on worrying content

The World Health Organization (WHO) updated draft of the pandemic agreement ³ of April 16, 2025 is deeply concerning. A thorough analysis of the text reveals numerous provisions that seriously threaten state sovereignty, democratic governance, fundamental human rights, and evidence-based public health policies.

The vaguely worded text is full of undefined terms and loopholes that provide an opportunity to ignore basic human rights and criminally implement supranational cumulative control mechanisms, taking away the future right of states to self-determination.

The main objective of the Pandemic Pact ³ is to radically expand WHO’s leadership role over member states and make it essentially permanent, without being constrained by the requirements of declaring an international emergency:

1. Declaring indefinite “public health emergencies of international concern” and issuing mandatory “recommendations” that are virtually impossible for countries to challenge (Articles 4, 6, 19).
2. Require governments to adopt “whole-of-society” approaches that subject all policies in every sector to top-down, supranational regulations with no significant limitations (Article 5).
3. Manage the distribution of health supplies and resources worldwide through opaque coordination mechanisms  (Art. 13-13bis).
4. Expropriate genetic resources and confidential research data from countries and companies in order to share them with developing countries on a seemingly equal basis (Article 12).
5. Abolish democratically adopted national laws regulating intellectual property and medical products to give full authorization to WHO-favored prescriptions of dubious transparency (Articles 9-10).

The treaty only gives  superficial recognition to human rights, but systematically ignores the following points:

1. Does not specifically distinguish mandatory dictates from voluntary guidelines and does not affirm the inalienable right of countries to reject WHO orders based on local democratic will (Article 3).
2. Not all forms of compulsory vaccination and discrimination carried out by governments or companies based on WHO recommendations are explicitly prohibited (Article 14).
3. No sunset clause is established for emergency powers, and citizens are not guaranteed the right to challenge disproportionate restrictions on freedoms justified by the WHO (Article 19).
4. The censorship and suppression of scientific dissent will not end, and dissent will be equated with “misinformation” (Article 18).

The silence on such foundational civil liberties treaties as the ICCPR (The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) and the Siracusa Principles, which severely limit action in “emergency situations”, unmistakably signals that the treaty’s primary purpose is to permanently dismantle human rights protections, not to uphold them. ⁴

The “pathogen sharing” system set out in Article 12, which aims to encourage countries to transfer dangerous microbes, is a Pandora’s box, lacking even the most basic biosafety and control protocols needed to prevent catastrophic releases. ⁵ Instead of further closing the loophole for “enhancement of function” research exposed in the Covid origins investigation, this risk is multiplied by transferring deadly bacteria to companies on an “equitable access” basis. ⁶

It is incomprehensible that there are no specific requirements to track the movement of hazardous biomaterial, restrict access, report accidents, or hold companies accountable for spills that are devastating the world. ⁷

Articles 9–11 and 14 of the Pandemic Treaty ³, which lump together all pandemic “measures”  for fast-track approval, without distinguishing between proven and experimental interventions, essentially dismantle the informed consent requirements for unapproved drugs and vaccines. These were the most significant medical ethics breakthrough of the 20th century since the Nazi atrocities of Nuremberg, set out in the Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report to stop human experimentation without voluntary consent. ^8,9

The “provisional application” of the agreement and the rapid start-up time for the implementation of a binding agreement create a dangerous path for governments to subject their entire populations to overarching conditions without any meaningful legislative input, let alone a referendum.

Global public health cooperation should be based on maximum transparency, authentic deliberation, strong national sovereignty, and individual freedom, in diametrically opposed to the prevailing “philanthro-capitalist” paradigm that has taken over the field. ¹⁰

World Council for Health Estonia NGO Board of Directors

May 14, 2025, Tallinn info@wchestonia.ee

Materials:

1. https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA77/A77_10-en.pdf
2. https://apps.who.int/gb/bd/pdf_files/BD_49th-en.pdf#page=177
3. https://www.keionline.org/wp-content/uploads/Proposal_for_WHO_Pandemic_Agreement_E- Onscreen-16-April-2025-at-01_57-CEST.docx.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Spadaro, A. COVID-19: Testing the Limits of Human Rights. Eur. J. Risk Regul. 11, 317–325 (2020) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-risk-regulation/article/covid19- testing-the-limits-of-human-rights/DCC8EFF2B3F1438A87C7BAE230FF82B1
4. Gronvall, Gigi, The Interfaces Between Security and Science for Biosecurity and Biotechnology, Committee on Dual Use Research of Concern (2022), https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/26600/chapter/11
5. Muller, , “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” Revisited, Environmental Chemistry Letters (2022), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-022-01509-7
6. Lewis, Dyani, The Shifting Sands of ‘Gain-of-Function’ Research, Nature (2021), https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x
7. World Medical Association, Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (2013), https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki- ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/
8. The Belmont Report, Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research (1979), https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the- belmont-report/index.html
9. Youde, Jeremy, Globalization and Health (2007), https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315682648/globalization-health-jeremy- youde

Source:  WCH Estonia