Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Chair of the House Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations Subcommittee, holds a draft of the World Health Organization pandemic treaty at a press conference outside the US Capitol on Wednesday, May 17, 2023.

            Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Chair of the House Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations Subcommittee, announced he will be chairing a congressional hearing on the Biden Administration’s push to enter an international pandemic treaty that could cede American sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO).

            “Under absolutely no circumstances should the Biden Administration surrender American sovereignty to the World Health Organization and allow the voice of the American people and consent of the governed to be subjugated to dictates of an agenda-driven global administrative bureaucracy,” said Smith, who first raised the issue last May when the Biden Administration offered its own proposal granting new unilateral authority to WHO Director-General Tedros.

            “The American people have a right to know exactly what the Biden Administration is negotiating at the WHO, especially as the President remains silent and fails to reassure us that he will protect our Constitution from bureaucrats at this troubled United Nations body,” said Smith.

            “As Chair of the House Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations Subcommittee, I will be chairing a hearing to help bring greater public scrutiny and much-needed transparency to the Biden Administration’s aggressive efforts to enter this new accord with the WHO, which took disastrous missteps during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Smith, who noted that top officials from the Biden Administration will be invited to testify.

            Smith said the hearing will be part of his ongoing full-court press for answers after Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not respond to specific concerns Smith raised at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on March 23rd.

            “The zero-draft WHO pandemic treaty starts off with very harsh criticism of the United States and the international community by calling it a ‘catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic,’” said Smith.

            “Article 4 of the treaty pays lip service to sovereignty and then completely overcomes that lip service by saying, ‘provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to their peoples and other countries,’ which empowers the WHO to step in and prescribe what each country would do,” Smith said.

            “Article 10 says that the United States would be obligated to provide 20 percent of our medical supplies—including tests, vaccines, medications and the like—to the WHO. They would say ‘we want it, you have to provide it,’” said Smith.

            “My colleagues and I look forward to having the Biden Administration address these grave concerns that have rightfully alarmed many American citizens including me,” said Smith.

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