The World Health Organization can make recommendations after the declaration of a global emergency, but it has no control over any nation’s decisions. Yet conservatives in the U.S. falsely claim that amendments proposed by the Biden administration to existing global health regulations, and a new WHO pandemic treaty, will threaten U.S. sovereignty. 

The International Health Regulations make up a legally binding agreement signed by 196 countries, including the United States, defining countries’ rights and obligations in handling health events and emergencies of international concern. 

The regulations were first adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1969 in response to deadly epidemics in Europe, and revisions were adopted in 2005. 

The International Health Regulations require that all members have health system capacities to detect, assess and respond to dangerous public health emergencies, and that they notify the WHO of emergencies that may be of international concern. The agreement is legally binding, meaning the member states must report these events. Still, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about a third of the countries in the world “have the ability to assess, detect, and respond to public health emergencies.” 

“It has no control over national health policy, and no enforcement mechanisms,” Lawrence O. Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, told us about the IHR in an email.