WHO Forges Partnership With EU to Create Global Digital Vaccine Passport System

The World Health Organization (WHO) adopts the EU’s expiring digital vaccine passport as a global standard, as we warned would happen over a year ago. 

Yesterday (June 5) the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on its website the launch of a “landmark digital health partnership” with the European Union. As part of this agreement, WHO will be taking up the EU’s system of digital COVID-19 certification “to establish a global system that will help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats, including pandemics.”

As we warned back in March 2022, when WHO began dropping hints that it was ready to endorse COVID-19 vaccine certificates, this means that digital vaccine passports are going to become both a universal and a permanent feature of the global health and travel landscape.

That article, Are Vaccine Passports About to Go Totally Global?, reported that T-Systems, the IT services arm of Deutsche Telekom which had played a key role in making the EU’s vaccine passport systems interoperable, had been chosen by WHO as an “industry partner” in the introduction of digital vaccine passports as a standard procedure. This was apparently not only for COVID-19 vaccines but also “other vaccinations such as polio or yellow fever, across 193 countries” as well as presumably other vaccines that come on line in the future.

A “Monstrous Undertaking”

Yesterday, the result of all that work was finally made public in what the German financial journalist Norbert Häring describes as a “monstrous undertaking” that “makes a whole series of alleged conspiracy narratives come true.” WHO’s Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the EU’s expiring digital COVID certificate will be used as a model to establish a global digital health certificate.

“Building on the EU’s highly successful digital certification network, WHO aims to offer all WHO Member States access to an open-source digital health tool, which is based on the principles of equity, innovation, transparency and data protection and privacy,” said Tedros Adhanom. “New digital health products in development aim to help people everywhere receive quality health services quickly and more effectively.”

When it comes to the EU’s COVID-19 digital certificate — the so-called “Green Pass” — it is hard to fathom what exactly Tedros Adhanom means by the two words “ highly successful”. As a means of reducing transmission of COVID-19, the vaccine passports used in Europe (and most other places) did precious little, for the simple reason that the vaccines to which they are tied are non-sterilising.

Indeed, COVID-19 vaccine passports may have actually exacerbated the spread of the disease by creating a false sense of security among vaccine recipients. How else to explain the fact that by the end of 2021 the European Union, whose 27 member states had been using vaccine passports to one degree or another for half a year, was once again ground zero for the COVID-19 pandemic? Also, a recent study by Cleveland, now peer reviewed, found that any protection provided by the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine during the Omicron phase wears off “in a few months”. And over time, more prior vaccine doses translated into “increased risk of COVID-19.”

Yet in November 2022, the governments of all G-20 economies — including China and Russia — acknowledged the importance of “recognizing digital and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations,” in combating COVID-19 and future pandemics. They also called for the establishment of “trusted global digital health networks.” WHO, working hand-in-hand with the EU, is now in the latter stages of making that happen.

Globalising “European Best Practices”

Yesterday Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, described the agreement as “an important step” for the digital action plan of the EU Global Health Strategy:

By using European best practices we contribute to digital health standards and interoperability globally—to the benefit of those most in need. It is also a powerful example of how alignment between the EU and the WHO can deliver better health for all, in the EU and across the world. As the directing and coordinating authority on international health work, there is no better partner than the WHO to advance the work we started at the EU and further develop global digital health solutions.

The perverse irony is that WHO initially opposed (at least in public) vaccine passports because it was not yet clear whether the vaccines actually prevented transmission of the virus.

“We at WHO are saying at this stage we would not like to see the vaccination passport as a requirement for entry or exit because we are not certain at this stage that the vaccine prevents transmission,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said at a UN news briefing in April 2021. “There are all those other questions, apart from the question of discrimination against the people who are not able to have the vaccine for one reason or another.”

Now that we know for sure that the COVID-19 vaccines do nothing to prevent transmission of COVID-19 in the Omicron era and may actually exacerbate it , WHO has decided to endorse COVID-19 vaccine passports for global travel. This is happening as concerns are growing about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the mRNA shots. It is also happening at the same time that WHO is seeking to significantly bolster its role in shaping health policy globally through a pandemic treaty and planned amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).

If the EU’s COVID-19 vaccine certification system is broadly adopted by WHO’s 194 member countries, it will presumably mean that anyone who is not up to date with their vaccine schedule will not be able to cross international borders in the future, though testing prior to travel may be an option, as it is in the EU.

If COVID-19 vaccines become compulsory to cross most or all international borders, it would essentially mean the end of two fundamental ethical principles underpinning modern medicine: bodily autonomy (the right to make decisions over one’s own life and future); and bodily integrity (the right to self-ownership and self-determination over one’s own body). In other words, if we ever want to travel again we will no longer have any say over what goes inside out body. And that will include COVID-19 vaccines (and perhaps other gene therapies) that are neither safe nor effective.

“Nothing More and Nothing Less Than a Digital ID”

There are plenty of other reasons why we should worry about the mandatory application of vaccine passports for global travel, including:

  • The threat they pose to our privacy;
  • The additional abilities and powers they grant to governments and corporations to track, trace and control the population;
  • The not insignificant risk that our most personal data, including our health information and biometric identifiers, could be hacked, leaked or simply shared with third parties;
  • The polarizing, discriminatory and segregational effects vaccine passports are already having across societies, affecting marginalized groups the most.

As I contend in my book, Scanned: Why Vaccine Passports and Digital Identity Will Mean the End of Privacy and Personal Freedom, published in March 2022, a digital vaccine passport or health certificate is “nothing more and nothing less than a digital ID.” Their mass roll out during the COVID-19 pandemic served as an opportunity not only to embed some of the necessary infrastructure for digital identity systems but also to acclimatise large segments of the population to the idea that digital certification is needed to access the most basic of services and venues.

Those digital identity and governance systems are now being put in place in many countries. As readers may recall, Samantha Power, the administrator of the US government’s soft power arm USAID and inveterate neocon, announced at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos this year that Washington is hoping to export the “success” of Ukraine’s e-governance digital identity app, Diia, to other countries around the world. The UN Development Program also believes the system is ready to “go international.”

As the following infographic from the World Economic Forum shows, digital identity could be used to govern (and control) just about every aspect of our lives, from our health to our money (particularly once central bank digital currencies are rolled out), to our business activities, to our private and public communications, to the information we are able to access, to our dealings with government, to the food we eat and the goods we buy.

In a 2018 report on digital IDs the WEF admitted that while verifiable digital identities “create new markets and business lines” for companies, especially those in the tech industry that help to operate the ID systems while no doubt vacuuming up the data, for individuals they (emphasis my own) “open up (or close off) the digital world with its jobs, political activities, education, financial services, healthcare and more.”

This is the world we are rapidly moving towards and largely unaccountable supranational institutions such as the World Health Organization and the European Union are paving the way.

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26 comments

  1. Koldmilk

    It’s been clear for a while now that the authoritarian elites of the EU (and elsewhere) have been envious of China’s use of digital control measures.

    So much for the West claiming to be free and liberal.

    1. flora

      I think they will run into trouble with the Eastern European members of the EU. Those countries’ citizens over the age 40 have direct memories of secret police and totalitarian rule and unaccountable bureaucracy. Poland may go along with this, but I doubt Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, or Slovakia / Slovenia will go along.
      What will the former East German citizens think of it?

      Brexit isn’t looking so crazy now. / my 2 cents

    2. some guy

      America could respond by refusing to issue these WHO passes to any US citizen or resident, and could refuse to recognize any other country’s use of them by stopping any visitor who presents one and immediately shipping that WHO-pass presenter back to whatever country he-she arrived from.

      If any other country-govs agree, they could create for themselves and eachother a WHO-free zone and issue WHO-free passports which they would recognize for eachothers’ legal residents. NoWHO passports.
      No Way. No WHO.

      Too bad for those PMC Americans who find themselves barred from EUrope because EUrope won’t accept the NoWHO Freedom Passport.

      1. Late Introvert

        I don’t see red states or GOP fire breathers accepting any of this. For once they may do something I approve of? I liked the checks they sent out too, but they are intent on clawing all that back and then some.

        1. some guy

          They would be right to reject it. Hopefully their rejection of digital Passport, either WHO-based or any other, would keep the US as a whole from accepting it.

          ” No Digital VaxxPorts. No way, no how, no WHO. “

  2. JW

    So much for ‘fighting for democracy and the free world’. As if anyone believed that any more.

  3. britzklieg

    Hey, but at least WHO didn’t assert that the mrna vaccine can provoke Multiple sclerosis, huh?! Yay, WHO!

  4. flora

    Thanks for this post.

    I don’t remember voting for Tedros. (Or for anyone at the WEF – a private organization.)

  5. jefemt

    Early on in the covid ‘vaccine’ dither, there were warnings against taking the vax if one had experienced allergic reactions to Medical Dye. That’s me. (Interestingly, the internet seems purged of these warnings.) Anyway….
    As I am not vaaaaxinated with any COV concoctions, I have not renewed my expired Passport- and have written off any delusions of being a Citizen of The World, free to move about the cabin.

    In a back-door way, it helps aid and abet my goal of doing little with less as we dance
    -like no one is looking- to the brink in the Lemming Conga Line.

    Becoming The Other.

  6. Ignacio

    So, to start some kind of “digital health” authorities have no better idea than choosing the disease less suited for a “passport”. Bravo! Well done! Excellent!- Idiots.

  7. The Rev Kev

    Sounds like a great system for controlling the movements of populations – or even individuals. Putting my tin foil hat on, this sounds like that it was dreamed up by the WEF as part of their grand design and odes ill for all us muppets. But where it says ‘Washington is hoping to export the “success” of Ukraine’s e-governance digital identity app, Diia, to other countries around the world’ they have a strange idea of the meaning of that word. Perhaps the Russians can do us all a favour and shut down the Ukrainian power grid altogether and let the world see how well Diia works then.

    1. some guy

      First we would need a candidate to overtly reject this madness by name. That way we might know whom to vote for.

      Or we could try guessing which color-coded Team Party would be less likely to support this madness and hope we get it right.

  8. Quentin

    I am not in possession of a smartphone. Is the WHO is going to ‘gift’ me one?

    1. Anon

      Aren’t our IDs pretty much digital already? Is this not the ‘natural’ progression of the technologies? It seems to me our options are a stone-age, or surveillance dystopia, with the impetus behind surveillance. If one were to oppose digital-ID, he would have to launch from a fairly abstract philosophical argument of ‘what-ifs’ and conspiratorial ramblings, that would land on a slippery-slope to the Amish and/or some shade of techno-rebellion. One would think we need a global, organizing body, with actual teeth to work out the climate mess, no? Suppose we became an interplanetary species, certainly there would be a one-world-gov then? Food for thought.

      1. flora

        Conspiratorial ramblings? It’s right there in the digital id sales pitch. See ID2020 offered “benefits”. All your data, and I mean all your data, right there in one server farm (with mirrors) owned by private companies, available for data mining or sales to other private companies, and cross-purposed to govt for whatever the govt uses said govt wants. Participate in an unwelcome peace demonstration? Will your access to your bank account then be frozen? See Canadian Truckers’ Protestors. That’s just for starters.

        adding: as far as I know we aren’t currently living stone age lives even though we don’t have digital ids. go figure.

      2. some guy

        You know what they say about Konspirisi Thiri . . . its not a ” Thiri” if its happening.

      3. some guy

        ” Conspiratorial rambling”? Here’s some “conspiratorial rambling” for you. The WHO-covid VaxxPort will be used as a template to extort the would-be traveler to have to prove other vaccinations to travel as well. This could be seen as “not a problem” for the classical time-tested genuine vaccines.

        But once the Vaxx-Pass model is accepted, the mRNA para-vaccinoid industrial complex will work with Big Pharma and its captive governments to retire all the classical vaccines from existence and replace them with mRNA para-vaccinoids, which you will be extorted into taking if you wish to travel between America and Canada lets say . . . or between Germany and France . . . or between Sweden and Norway and Finland . . . etc.

        Some Rejectionist Front countries should really form a ” Freedom to Travel” zone among themselves without any Forced WHO-Vaxx Passport. And this Rejectionist Front could ban entry to anyone showing a Forced WHO-Vaxx Passport.

    2. some guy

      They could give them out and call them WHObama phones. Maybe Obama could endorse them if WHO-WEF were to pay him enough.

  9. WRH

    as he says this is merely a backdoor into Digital ID for all. And that is something that should deeply concern ALL of us.

    1. some guy

      Their response would be, in the deathless words of President George W. Bush . . . ” Who cares what you think?”

      Hostile publics will have to figure out how to torture and terrorise the WHO VaxxPort supporters and designers into caring what we think. It might have to start with a few Rejectionist Front countries.
      ” This is a Freedom Of Travel country. God help you WHO/WEF/EU member/supporter if the sun sets on you here.”

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