No 'founding document' gives WHO exemption from 'criminal prosecution' - claim misuses diplomatic immunity treaty for all UN agencies
IN SHORT: Well-known conspiracy theorist David Martin claims that the World Health Organization has exempted itself from criminal prosecution. That's not true, and the document he cites as proof isn't the WHO's "founding document", but the UN's convention on the immunities of specialised agencies.
"It turns out that the World Health Organization, in its founding document (1946), EXEMPTED itself from criminal prosecution," reads a claim that has been circulating on social media in South Africa and elsewhere since early July 2024.
It includes a one-minute video of UK comedian and known conspiracy theorist Russell Brand interviewing US financial analyst and known conspiracist David Martin.
Brand asks Martin why he claims the World Health Organization (WHO) is a "criminal cartel" and "how the events of the last few years somehow demonstrate or at least utilise that".
Martin responds: "In the founding document of the World Health Organization, they gave themselves the right to be exempt from all criminal prosecution of any kind whatsoever."
He adds: "Why would an organisation need to give itself exemption from criminal prosecution? This is not civil prosecution, this is criminal prosecution ..."
The reason "they wrote that into their founding charter", says Martin, "is because they knew they were already breaking the law".
Throughout the video, a clipped page of the WHO's supposed "founding document" is displayed on screen as proof of Martin's claim. It includes a URL to page 34 of the document.
The page on screen is headed: "CONVENTION ON PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES. Article V - Representatives of Members."
It reads:
Representatives of members at meetings convened by a specialized agency shall, while exercising their functions and during their journeys to and from the place of meeting, enjoy the following privileges and immunities:(a) Immunity from personal arrest or detention and from seizure of their personal baggage, and in respect of words spoken or written and all acts done by them in their official capacity, immunity from legal process of every kind;
But the page isn't part of the WHO's "founding document", and doesn't "exempt" the organisation from "criminal prosecution".
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Convention passed by UN general assembly in 1947
If Martin had looked at page 30 of the document, he would have found that the section of text he's referring to is not the WHO's "founding document".
Instead, it's the text of a United Nations treaty, the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies, adopted by the UN general assembly on 21 November 1947.
The treaty applies to all of the UN's 17 specialised agencies, including the WHO.
All the treaty does is to grant what is essentially diplomatic immunity to representatives of the UN's specialised agencies, as international organisations. This means that officials from one country who travel to or live in another country are not subject to the laws of the second country. This is an old principle of international law.
The PDF Martin refers to is not the WHO's "founding document" either. It's simply a collection of essential WHO texts collected under the title Basic Documents. It includes the WHO's constitution, agreements with other intergovernmental organisations, rules and regulations, and more.
By "the events of the last few years", Brand is clearly referring to the Covid pandemic. Both he and Martin are proponents of the disproved "plandemic" conspiracy theory, which claims that the WHO and other shadowy elites somehow planned the pandemic.
But in the video, Martin doesn't explain how the WHO was "already breaking the law" back in 1947.
The claim is false.
