General Assembly Resolution #566 “Epidemic Investigation Act” (Category: Health; Area of Effect: Research) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.
The General Assembly finds the following.
- Article 1 of GA#566 "Epidemic Investigation Act" allows the World Health Authority (WHA) to send "inspectors to investigate and report publicly on the origins of, response to, and make recommendations on [an] outbreak" of a disease, where that outbreak is reported by a member state to the WHA, and requires members to "permit the entrance and exit of WHA inspectors."
- While the aforementioned goals of GA#566's first Article may ordinarily be sensible, it also requires members to:
- allow WHA inspectors "access... to medical personnel" and not to punish such personnel for divulging information to WHA inspectors, and to
- "fully cooperate with such requests for access or information which Inspectors may deliver to member nation authorities" unless the Independent Adjudicative Office (IAO) is satisfied that "the likely harm of release" of "sensitive areas or information" to WHA inspectors is greater "than the likely harm to international public health interests."
- As a consequence of Article 1:
- "medical personnel" can disclose any information they want to WHA inspectors without state punishment, regardless of whether (for example) telling any other person that same information would leave them liable to prosecution, and
- member states could be coerced into handing WHA inspectors not only whatever non-sensitive information they want, but also whatever sensitive information they have withheld if their choice to withhold it poses sufficient "likely harm to international public health interests" - whether or not those "interests" have anything to do with the disease that they are supposed to be investigating,
- even if that information involves the disclosure of trade secrets (see also GA#396 "Repeal "Open Internet Order""); endangers individual privacy, including doctor-patient confidentiality (i.e. revealing the home address of a third party); or would constitute the commission of an illegal or potentially fatal act if followed.
- In addition, while Article 3 of GA#566 allows non-member states to invite WHA inspectors to discharge their duties under Article 1 within their jurisdiction, it requires those non-members to "comply with Section 1... as if it were a member" and allows the IAO to "declare appropriate sanctions to be enforced by member nations against the nation [...]." Non-members should not be punished for failing to follow resolutions they are not bound by; certainly no other resolution (including those which forbid terrorism, slavery, torture, enforced disappearance, and war crimes) authorises the WA or member states to impose such sanctions on non-members.
- Article 2's second half demands that members "collect statistics on transmission of pathogens in healthcare settings and report such statistics to the WHA in a timely manner." Yet there is no requirement that member states disaggregate such statistics by pathogen, explain any mitigations (such as the wearing of personal protective equipment and regular handwashing) that could have affected them, or take any action to actually reduce such transmission. If any benefit is to be gained from this clause, what it is meant to be is not obvious.
- GA#566's assertation that "even with the provisions of GA 53 "Epidemic Response Act", many governments still will downplay epidemics" is also baffling. Whether or not member states believe that complying with its provisions will make them look good, GA#53 still requires them to:
- let WHA inspectors "travel to the affected area to... conduct research... or report the latest developments to the international community" (similarly to Article 1 of GA#566),
- inform the Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response Center (EPARC) of the WHA about a disease outbreak "if [its] incidence rate... in any localized area reaches a level of more than twice that of the same calendar month in the previous year," even if that disease is not apparently communicable (thus improving on the standards of the first half of GA#566's Article 2), and to
- share disease-causing "pathogens samples" with EPARC.
- GA#566 allows WHA inspectors to collect almost any information they like, however private, with few checks and balances and without any requirement that such information be used for or of use to Article 1 investigations; may occasionally require member states to sanction non-members for disobeying its provisions; binds members into sending data to the WHA for no good reason whatsoever; and, where it does do good, does nothing that GA#53 does not do. It should be repealed.
The GA therefore repeals GA#566 "Epidemic Investigation Act."
