Washington: President Donald Trump’s administration said Friday that the United States rejected changes that were agreed last year for the World Health Organization about its pandemic reaction and said they violated the sovereignty of the country.
Trump, by returning to the office on January 20, immediately began its country’s withdrawal from the UN’s body, but the Ministry of State said the language of last year would still have been binding on the United States.
State Secretary Marco Rubio and Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F Kennedy JR, a long-term critic of vaccines, said the changes “The risk unjustly interference with our national sovereign right to make health policy.”
“We will first put Americans in all our actions, and we will not tolerate international policies that violate Americans’ speech, privacy or personal freedoms,” they said in a joint statement.
Rubio and Kennedy separate the United States from a number of changes to the international health regulations that provide a legal framework for the fight against diseases agreed last year at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
“We regret the US decision to reject the changes,” said WHO’s boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement sent on X.
He emphasized the amendments “are aware of the member states of sovereignty,” adding that WHO cannot mandate for lockdowns or similar measures.
The changes included a specified “obligation to solidarity and equity”, where a new group would investigate the needs of developing countries in future emergencies.
Countries have until Saturday to submit reservations about the changes. Conservative activists and vaccine skeptics in the UK and Australia, both of whom have left-wing governments, have led public campaigns against the changes.
The changes happened as the assembly failed with a more ambitious goal of sealing a new global agreement on pandemics.
Most of the world finally secured a treaty in May, but the United States did not attend as it was retiring from the WHO.
The United States, then under President Joe Biden, participated in the negotiations in May-June 2024, but said it could not support consensus as it required protection of US intellectual property rights on vaccine development.
Rubio’s predecessor Antony Blink had welcomed the changes as progress.
In their rejection of the amendments, Rubio and Kennedy said the changes “fail to adequately tackle the who receptiveness of the political influence and censorship – especially from China – during outbreaks.”
Who is ghebreyesus said the body is “impartial and works with all countries to improve people’s health.”
