The World Health Organization has accused Nigel Farage of spreading misinformation after he launched a campaign to block an international treaty aimed at improving global preparedness for pandemics.
WHO member states are negotiating a deal to strengthen cooperation against emerging pathogens. If adopted, the legally binding treaty would commit countries to helping each other in the event of a pandemic, increasing research and data sharing and promoting fair access to vaccines.
But populist figures including Farage and some Tory MPs are lobbying the British government to block the deal, claiming it will give the WHO the power to shut down countries, dictate policies on mask wearing and vaccine supplies to check.
Farage heads the campaign group Action on World Health (AWH), which was registered at Companies House last week.
The AWH website lists supporters including Tory MPs Henry Smith, Philip Davies and David Jones, as well as peers and others. Companies House documents show it has three directors, including lawyer Paul Diamond, whose work has included high-profile cases on behalf of socially conservative Christians and cases challenging the use of vaccines.
Visitors to the AWH site are helped to locate and lobby their MP using ‘suggested text’ emails claiming that the WHO treaty will ‘take away’ Britain’s decision-making powers.
The power of what some on the right see as a potential new ‘wedge issue’ was underlined in contributions from Tory backbenchers such as Philip Hollobone, who echoed populist language in describing the WHO as being under the influence of ‘the global elite’ and push against Britain, which supports the treaty.
For example, British Health Minister Andrew Stephenson this week urged MPs in Parliament to reject what he says are spreading myths about the treaty, which Britain is considering whether or not to support.
Lockdown mandates are not part of the deal and a claim by Farage that the treaty would require countries to give away 20% of their vaccines was “simply not true”, Stephenson said.
His comments were echoed directly by WHO. In response to AWH’s claims, a spokesperson said a draft of the treaty reaffirmed “the principle of sovereignty” of member states.
“Claims that the draft agreement will cede sovereignty to the WHO and give the WHO Secretariat the power to impose lockdowns or vaccination mandates on countries are false and have never been requested or proposed. This agreement does not and cannot grant sovereignty to the WHO.”
Farage, who denies the campaign is sharing misinformation, claimed the British government was “getting scared” and that Conservative MPs were “suddenly shouting” about the treaty on Wednesday.
“The governing party is very afraid of me and anything that could look like a surrender of sovereignty after Brexit. “I’m trying to bring something to the public’s attention that isn’t being debated – that’s what I’ve done throughout my career – and I think we’re already gaining traction,” he said.
“This may not be a campaign with mass populist appeal, but we can influence the government’s position when they arrive in Geneva in a few weeks.
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European ambassadors meeting at WHO headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday reportedly raised concerns about disinformation of the kind the AWH is accused of promoting.
A senior WHO envoy who has been the face of the organization in Britain during the pandemic said he feared public health workers and policymakers were working in an increasingly difficult environment.
“We are identified with certain behaviors as public health types and with doing things that we don’t actually do. It means that I fear that people who work in public health have become almost a despised community by certain groups and different organizations,” said David Nabarro, co-director and chair of global health at the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.
Nabarro said: “What we are mainly trying to do is help people avoid death and misery. None of us bother to take any of the political action we are accused of, and yet it seems we have become deeply disliked.”
Other online campaigns targeting the WHO are already underway in Britain. Two of them – Say No To WHO and Save My Vape – are linked to an anti-EU pressure group led by Brian Monteith, a PR consultant and former Brexit Party politician.
Negotiators from the WHO’s 194 member states had hoped to have a final draft agreement by Friday, ahead of the legally binding text being adopted at the World Health Assembly later this month.