#StopTheTreaty Update with Shabnam Palesa Mohamed

Shabnam Palesa Mohamed is an award-winning activist, journalist, mediation lawyer, and arts education advocate from South Africa.

She is the founder-CEO of Transformative Health Justice, an NPC focused on safe, affordable and effective health care, as well as SA VAERS – which is an alternative and independent vaccine adverse effects reporting system. Shabnam is also on the steering committee of WCH.

WCH reached 415 million people on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram because of our amazing partners and others spreading the message. It shows how impactful it is to give voice to issues together. We only wonder how many submissions WHO may have right now!

This is an edited segment from the weekly live General Assembly meeting on April 18, 2022. This presentation is also available on Rumble and on Odysee. The full General Assembly Meeting is available in the Newsroom. A transcript of this presentation can be found below.

Here’s what WCH members, staff, and coalition partners are saying about this presentation: 

“Great work Law and Activism Committee!” – Devyn Brugge

“Thank You Tess, Shabnam, and Dustin for representing our well-being, human rights, and the rule of law.” – Dr Mark Trozzi

“Great work LAC!” – Feisal Mansoor

“Great work Tess, Dustin, and Shabnam!!” – Devyn Brugge

“We are very grateful to the LAC.” – Dr Tess Lawrie

“This is the right time to step up the pressure with a call to #DisbandWHO and prepare to step in with ‘parallel structures’. Grim reminder of this quote by Martin Luther King on being ‘too late’. “
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there “is” such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. Time is running out.” – Chandra Vikash I Gaia

[00:00:00] [00:00:37] Karen McKenna: Okay next, we have an internal update from our Law and Activism Team. They’re going to give an update on what’s happening with the stop the treaty initiative. [00:00:48] Shabnam Palesa Mohamed: Thanks. Thank you so much, Karen. [00:00:50] Um, thank you for the opportunity for the LAC to present our work. It was in collaboration with the steering committee, our partners, and our allies around the world. This is truly being a brilliant general assembly and so I’m very happy to be at the tail end of it and I hope that everyone stays through it and the important information to be shared inspiring, informative, and empowering. [00:01:13] I want to start off with a quote first or a line of poetry. [00:01:17] ‘You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop spring from coming’. Those are the words of Pablo Neruda. And I think they’re very relevant. I see my colleague, Maria, smiling there as well. They’re very relevant to two things in my mind right now. The one is massive flooding in South Africa and also the people coming together to support each other at this time. [00:01:38] And simultaneously the people coming together around the WHO and their moves towards power grab, whether that’s through the treaty, the new pandemic treaty, or the amendments to the international health regulations, which I’m going to highlight very shortly, very important. These amendments are intended to happen in May at the World Health Assembly, number 75. So let’s pay attention. [00:02:03] The Stop the Treaty Campaign, as you know, began in November last year with the World Council for Health hosting a town hall, on the subject of this treaty followed by an open letter to the people of the world, the WHO the UN, the World Economic Forum and of course, a campaign encouraging people to participate actively in the hearing process the WHO launched a couple of days before the 12th and 13th of April. Uh, essentially public participation is a process that is integrally the pillar of any democracy, and I want to just highlight going forward that each of us and all of us must always demand the right to public participation in any decision that’s been made, regarding us or our health. Without a public participation process, decisions that are made are undemocratic and could be extrapolated to be invalid, unconstitutional and unlawful. [00:03:02] A lot of legislation doesn’t necessarily call for public participation and that is either deliberate or it is an oversight from the legislators. Regardless of that, if you’re living in a constitutional democracy, or better yet, living according to the principles of natural law, you have a right to participate in decision-making. [00:03:23] So make that a part of our daily existence. This experience with the Stop the Treaty campaign has also showed us the importance of being aware of international law legislation, principles, et cetera, that affect our right to health and our right to freedom. Many of us may not have been aware of the framework of the WHO it’s a very complex framework, if you go away to the website to understand that, but it is more important than ever to familiarize ourselves how the, WHO as one unelected body operate, as we start to build, and we continue to build the better way together. And so you might’ve seen the amazing work being done by the committees that I’ve highlighted the LAC, the SC, and of course, a marketing and comms team on raising awareness about the public participation process. [00:04:13] If you go to our website, you will see there was a guide which went viral actually. And I think at this point we ask our marketing and comms team to just bring up the stats on our website and some of the comments that were submitted or represented to the WHO. [00:04:29] So I’ll reach in the last 70 days, 90,000 users to the campaign post and 415,000 reach on social media. That’s quite an enormous amount of reach. And all of that is due to the commitment of people working within committees, our partners, and our allies. And we just want to say, thank you for doing this again. [00:04:49] It’s an illustration of how much we can do as human beings when you rally around the cause that is important to us. Some of the comments get more reaches and mentions and of course, comments to the WHO, so what we encourage people to do very clever is to screen-grab the written representation before submitting it via the WHO platform. [00:05:11] As you can see ‘Please stop the treaty. The WHO has no right to overrule the sovereignty of a country and its people. They were not elected by a country. It is well-proven that lockdowns imposed had only worsened the situation’. Another two comments there on the right. And of course, you’ll be able to see some of those on our campaign page on the World Council for Health website. [00:05:32] Also, if you search the hashtag Stop The Treaty on Twitter, you will be able to find enormous amounts of support for our campaign. And we want to say, thank you for that. Reaches and mentions on social media, that peak is an astronomical number, but you’re looking at 300 million – absolutely incredible. Reach on the website, 205,000+ in seven days. And those are some of the words on the right in green for most popularly used. Congratulations to everybody who got involved. [00:06:04] Of course what was very interesting, something that we found out during this campaigning is someone that tweeted that the WHO website had actually crashed. Now, we don’t know if that is true. [00:06:16] Did it crash because of the number of comments that were being submitted? Was it temporarily paused, because people were not happy about the number of comments submitted? Either way, no one’s going to tell us that, but I like to stick to the former and more positive view that it was so many comments submitted that perhaps the system was overloaded. [00:06:35] And of course, we’ve got to bear in mind that we do have the second round of public comments coming up on the 16th and 17th of June. That’s what the WHO tells us. And so of course we’ll have to keep an eye on their website. And any information that comes through regarding how to proceed with your representation, of course, the WCH will certainly share that with you. You have a right to know, we have a right to participate and there’s two methods thus far, there’s a two-minute video, perhaps that’ll extend, and there’s also a 240 to 250 word written representation. We’re also looking at working with partners who can develop platforms to co-share your representations with, so that they, you don’t only submit it by the WHO website, but the public has access to what it is you submitted, whether it’s the written comment or it’s a video, and that is absolutely open for the public record. [00:07:30] From there, what I’d like to do is is read and also screen some of the representations that were made, last week. And I’m going to ask my colleague, Dustin Bryce, you will notice an article on TrialSiteNews.com that highlights the inter governmental negotiating body process and specifically mentions three people, three organizations from the World Council for Health. And there is of course the World Council for Health itself, interests of justice from Costa Rica and Transformative Health Justice from South Africa. We’ll begin with Dustin Bryce from Costa Rica. Dustin, if you’re with us, we’re asking you to do a live reading of your representation at today’s General Assembly. [00:08:12] Dustin Byce: I’ll just get right into it. Obviously two minutes is not enough for anybody to get across what they need to get across or for the full, meaningful participation is how they say, obviously we could have done a lot more than just two minutes and in that case Interest of Justice, we’ll be posting more of what we should have said on our website too, so later on keeping an eye out for that. [00:08:33] So right off the bat, um, I’ll, I’ll start going through. We request the following, and that would be number one: All technical recommendations and limitations to rights in an emergency shall conform to the requirements set in the Siracusa Principles. [00:08:49] And if you don’t know what the Siracusa Principles are, they are the limitations on the government’s limitations on limiting our rights. So the governments have limitations when they decide to limit the citizens’ rights and the Siracusa Principle explains all of that. And the Siracusa Principles is the covenant on the treaty of civil and political rights. [00:09:11] So number two: No treaty can be binding, which confers upon the WHO, the power to issue or enforce pandemic guidance, which may supplant the nation’s constitution, written definitions and sovereign legislation. That’s pretty spelled out. We don’t want any of that, we’d like to keep our national constitution in place, including written definitions from the legislator without a usurping them, because they could be different. [00:09:35] Okay. Number three: Persecution and censorship of diversity of opinion regarding the WHO’s evolving science is especially prohibited. Free and open discourse shall be protected and encouraged in the public interest to prevent imbalance of power and systematic violations of human rights. That’s very important. [00:09:56] 4. The centralization of national health data, gene and biotechnology, AI with big tech. Misinformation, backed by science without due process, basically it’s prohibited by law and should be punishable. If we leave it into the hands of them, you know, that’s the ultimate boot on man’s throat for everybody. [00:10:16] 5. The WHO shall not exaggerate the seriousness of the diagnosis, complicate the treatment or artificially create alarm situations in response to spurious interests. If found guilty, the member states should agree to permanently stop all funding and relationships with the WHO in the public interest. [00:10:32] 6. And also the WHO must immediately declare all yearly funders with full transparency and allow for independent oversight with the ability to immediately remove all conflicts of interest. The member states require that WHO agrees to be liable in the event that damages arise from the usages of these guidances that they’re giving. [00:10:51] The final decision on a truly democratic process should be made by the people rather than an inter-governmental negotiating body, which may be widely perceived as biased and a serving individual and national sovereignty. [00:11:05] 7. Procedures for meaningful participation by all people in the enforcement of human rights, enshrined in the Siracusa Principles shall be made readily available in all future WHO pandemic guidance. That is the last but not least. And these are the things that we require in the case that they do come up with this treaty. Although we really don’t need a new treaty as announced previously. [00:11:30] Thank you so much for listening. These are, I believe are very important quotes and they encompass a lot of things that a lot of people would have liked to say also, so, thank you for listening to that. [00:11:44] Shabnam Palesa Mohamed: Thank you, Dustin. We’re very grateful for your participation. You and Ziley are doing some amazing work in Costa Rica, and we’re very proud to have you as members of the LAC, but also partners of the World Council for Health. [00:11:57] I will just share the representation from Transformative Health Justice in South Africa. And then we’ll be screening The World Council for Health representation made by Dr. Tess Lawrie, after which we’ll tell you about the international health regulations coming up. This May 22nd to 28th. [00:12:17] So here’s the representation by Transformative Health Justice. Transformative Health Justice is a health advocacy nonprofit organization in South Africa. Our representation is summarized in six short points. [00:12:29] 1. Sovereignty of the African continent must be respected. This includes natural and indigenous medicine, the natural immunity we experience in South Africa and our experience as the African continent in dealing with disease. Point number 2: Conflicts of interest must be declared by the WHO, its funders, it’s public relations and media stakeholders, especially as Africa is highly contested and corrupt space for the pharmaceutical industry which has a history of experimenting on our children without informed consent. [00:13:04] 3. The WHO must insist that big pharma release all injection contracts, not be allowed to hold clinical or safety data back from the public and compensate people for jab and other medical injuries. Further, to be taken seriously, WHO should not be accepting funding from big pharma, conflicted philanthropy investors and related stakeholders. [00:13:30] 4. Censorship, the medical apartheid and discrimination must be strongly discouraged by the WHO as it violates natural law and democratic constitutions. This is particularly obvious in South Africa where previously protective constitution has been perverted to during COVID-19. [00:13:50] 5. No treaty can be held as legally binding without proper public participation and consent. Nor should sanctions be imposed against any country that decides it does not want to abide by certain or all articles in the proposed treaty, the international health regulations or any other agreement. [00:14:10] And finally, point number 6: Without a proper public participation process, any agreement is unconstitutional, unlawful and invalid. Therefore the WHO is ethically and legally obliged to create a proper and robust public participation process that reaches the poor, the illiterate, and those who are most critical of the WHO. [00:14:34] So that was the second representation we wanted to share with you today. [00:14:38] Last but certainly not least the World Council for Health representation presented by Dr. Tess Lawrie, the video, please. [00:14:46] WHO Geneva Z4: We now give the floor to the World Council for Health to be followed by the NCD Alliance. [00:14:53] Dr. Tess Lawrie: Thank you. The World Council for Health believes that good health, human rights, autonomy, national sovereignty, free speech and right to the association are central to any agreement in the interests of the people. [00:15:09] Simultaneously, conflicts of interest, corruption, and censorship are barriers to public trust. The World Council for Health does not believe a pandemic treaty is necessary, nor that it will truly benefit the people of our world. We are aware the World Health Organization intends to push through a Treaty and therefore share 16 recommendations. [00:15:32] On awareness, open debate and . Perspectives and opinions must be normalized. A return to traditional and scientific definition of pandemic is essential. [00:15:46] Transparency on models and tests is a basic tenant of any agreement and cost benefit analysis must be made public before any recommendations. On preparedness, all conflicts of interests must be immediately disclosed to the public. Documents and data relevant to decision-making must be disclosed. [00:16:10] Open and uncensored dialogue must include critical non-state actors and traditional. And natural health care must be respected by the World Health Organization. On response, unalienable human rights and civil liberties must be respected. Sovereignty of all people and nations must be unfailingly upheld. Public participation in decision-making must be robust and clear. The right to choose and refuse treatments, or medical interventions, including access to [inaudible] medicines must be respected. [00:16:50] Discrimination based on medical status or choice must be rejected. Mass experimentation, social engineering must be rejected. States of emergency, lockdown down and emergency use authorizations are the decisions of sovereign countries in a public participation process. And restoration for harms from medical interventions must be promoted. [00:17:15] The current public participation process by the World Health Organization – announced just last week – does not uphold access to information, the right to make decisions and other civil right democratic pillars. Nevertheless, all submissions are now part of the public record and any valid agreement must include terms that uphold Natural Law, Siracusa Principles and the Hippocratic oath. Thank you. [00:17:44] WHO Geneva Z4: Thank you to the World Council for Health. [00:17:47] Shabnam Palesa Mohamed: Thank you very much. That was of course, the World Council for Health representation at the WHO in the first round of public participation process hearings, and a special thank you to the law and activism committee for your work on drafting that representation and the work we’ll be doing in future. Not only in terms of the proposed New Pandemic Treaty, but also in terms of the international health regulation amendments, and any other legislation that has a far reaching consequence on our health, our wellbeing and our freedom. I’d like to just clarify, this is a very big number, that 415 million people saw the message Stop the Treaty by the World Council for Health on Twitter. 415 million. [00:18:35] And that’s what we can do when we work together for the better way. Such a beautiful feeling, again, so much gratitude, love and solidarity to everyone who came together on the Stop The Treaty campaign. And everyone is going to continue working with the World Council for Health going forward. [00:18:53] As promised, I want to turn a little bit, talk about the international health regulations, colleagues, friends, and allies, the proposed amendments to the international health regulations 2000, are expected to be confirmed at the World Health Assembly 75, that’s hashtag WHA 75 in Geneva, 22nd to 28th May. This is of course, just after the Better Way conference, we were hoping to see many of you join us in co-creating the kind of world that we want. And so I have interviewed James Rugowski, you would have seen him at two weeks ago at our general assembly talking about the treaty, but also highlighting the international health regulation amendments. As soon as that interview is available, I will be sharing it of course, with our partners. And you’re welcome to share it with everyone you can. [00:19:46] But also part of the interview process was going through a summary that he created on his sub-stack, very quickly, a summary of these amendments, and there’s about 15 of them. 15 articles being amended, increase surveillance, headed towards the one health approach, a direct imposition of sovereignty. A 48 hour time period to respond to the WHO if they declare a public health emergency, and if you don’t respond, it is assumed that you agree to their involvement. [00:20:14] In other words, they WHO may make unilateral decisions about health and freedom in your country. Also regional directors can declare public health emergencies of regional concern as well as intermediate emergencies. There’ll be the deployment of expert teams, healthcare workers will be brought into your country, almost any country can claim to be an affected party. And also very interesting. They agreed to have an emergency committee and their deliberations on whether you have a public health emergency or not are going to be shared with members states. In other words, your purported representatives, but not with the public. [00:20:53] And again, public participation is key in any democracy and unless your representatives are pushing for you to have a say, you’ve got to question whether they represent your interests or not. There’s also a compliance committee, which will have investigatory powers within each country. Again impact on sovereignty. [00:21:12] And finally amendments are coming into effect much more quickly in six months, instead of 18. If you look at these amendments to the international health regulations, you also see that the director general makes these decisions. It used to say ‘in consultation with member states’, that part has been struck out. [00:21:32] So it is one person who is going to be able to make these decisions, unless we resist using all of the resilience, the creativity and the solidarity that we have among us. And so some of those multi-pronged approaches of course include an awareness campaign. [00:21:48] So get information out, translate as much as you can. We’ve been doing beautiful work on this. We’ve been seeing our partners translate content as well, so well done. Political pressure on your representatives in political parties, as well as representatives to the World Health Assembly and the WHO also important. Potential legal action; remember that these amendments are not going to go through the US Senate and they are being proposed by an individual within the US health department infrastructure. [00:22:18] And so this matter, this also needs to be challenged legally where the Senate needs to be able to stay. ‘We do not agree. We have not consented. We haven’t read these amendments. We don’t understand them’. This being a public participation process. [00:22:32] There are also calls for rallies in Geneva, some of our partners are talking about rallies, so we’ll have to see how that goes. [00:22:40] And of course, creative campaign. So creating memes, creating poetry, uh, creating films, talking about this international health regulations, but over and above that, that word sovereignty. So the hashtag for this particular campaign is stop the IHR. So that’s one hashtag. And the other is We Are Sovereign. So whether it’s the treaty or the IHR or any other regulatory framework, hashtag ‘we are sovereign’. [00:23:07] Finally, to mention that the Asian Sovereignty Coalition will be launching next week, Saturday on the 23rd. We’re very excited about that. We’ve been talking about the importance of continental and Intercontinental coalition. So the Asian sovereignty coalition launches next Saturday, the theme of the event is called Wake Up Asia, and they will be talking about five focal points, um, dealing with injection side effects, how to end no jab, no job, resisting WHO power grab, retaking sovereignty and waking up Asia. Some of the countries involved; India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and no doubt by the time we get to Saturday, there’ll be more countries involved as well. That will be followed by the official launch of the African Sovereignty Coalition. [00:23:55] And after that, the launch of the Afro Asian sovereignty coalition, so lots to look forward to. Um, and I know there’s a lot happening in Europe as well. So keep your eyes on Austria in particular. I think we’re going to see some beautiful resistance coming out of there as well. Um, then of course, finally, just to say that the world’s council for health law and activism committee, the steering committee, our partners, and our allies will continue to raise awareness and to campaign for our health and for our freedom. [00:24:25] One last comment I want to read for you. It was a comment on our open letter and on our way. The comment goes, I stand with World Council for Health, and I thank you for all you’re doing for humanity. I sincerely hope we can find a way maybe to donate a penny or a cent from every medicine sold to fund your future work, so the public has access to independent and trusted advice. Please continue to find the strength and time to persist with your fabulous work. [00:24:56] Thank you very much for this opportunity to share an update. I hope you’re inspired, informed, and empowered, and I know together freedom shall reign. Thank you very much, Karen. [00:25:05]