Coronavirus: Agenzia Atomica e Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità

Modifica dell'accordo WHA 12-40 fra l'OMS e l'AIEA

GU C 222 E del 18/09/2003 (pag. 99)

Lingua originale dell'interrogazione: FR

Oggetto:  Modifica dell'accordo WHA 12-40 fra l'OMS e l'AIEA	Risposta(e)
Il 28 maggio 1959, la 12a Assemblea dell'Organizzazione mondiale della sanità approvando la sua risoluzione WHA 12-40 si è legata all'Agenzia internazionale dell'energia atomica tramite un accordo il quale oltre che subordinare i lavori o i programmi dell'OMS, intersezionali con la sfera di attività dell'AIEA, al controllo ed al verdetto di quest'ultima condiziona la procedura e il proseguimento di detti lavori e programmi al negoziato di un consenso (articolo 1, paragrafo 3). Lo stesso articolo 1 espone esplicitamente la rivendicazione, di parte, dell'AIEA a cui "spetta principalmente incentivare, promuovere e coordinare nel mondo intero le ricerche nonché lo sviluppo e l'utilizzo pratico dell'energia atomica a fini pacifici (…)". Nella costituzione dell'OMS, ratificata nel luglio 1946 ed entrata in vigore il 7 aprile 1948, gli Stati parti aderenti, in ossequio alla Carta delle Nazioni Unite, stabilivano quale principio della loro sicurezza che "un'opinione pubblica colta ed una cooperazione attiva da parte del pubblico rivestono un'importanza capitale per il miglioramento della salute delle popolazioni e che i governi hanno la responsabilità della salute dei loro popoli" mentre nella sua relazione consegnata all'OMS nel 1958 il "Gruppo di studio per i problemi di salute mentale posti dall'utilizzo dell'energia atomica" raccomandava che "la soluzione più soddisfacente per il futuro degli usi pacifici dell'energia atomica sarebbe l'avvento di una nuova generazione che avrebbe imparato ad adattarsi all'ignoranza ed all'incertezza (…)". Come reagisce il Consiglio a questa flagrante collusione fra due istituzioni internazionali che subordina le relazioni dell'OMS alla censura dell'AIEA ed al suo partito preso pronucleare? Non allarmano forse il Consiglio i danni e ostacoli, frapposti da dette manifeste compromissioni dell'OMS, alla serenità e veracità degli studi dell'UE in sede di predisposizione dei suoi programmi e azioni inerenti al settore nucleare e alle patologie (indotte dall'utilizzo di uranio impoverito in Iraq e in RFY o dalla conseguenze di Cernobil in Europa orientale)? Questo affronto alla trasparenza e all'indipendenza dell'OMS, rafforzato sia dal decennio trascorso prima che essa organizzi in proprio una conferenza sul dramma di Cernobil sia dalla mancata pubblicazione degli atti, non induce forse il Consiglio a denunciare la collusione introdotta da talune clausole di detto accordo? Si impegna il Consiglio ad esigere, nell'ambito del suo dialogo bilaterale con queste due istituzioni internazionali, la modifica dell'accordo WHA 12-40 (articolo 1, paragrafo 3: "si informeranno reciprocamente"), come lo prevede il suo articolo 13?

Interrogazioni parlamentari
18 dicembre 2002	E-3662/02
INTERROGAZIONE SCRITTA di Marie Isler Béguin (Verts/ALE) al Consiglio

Risposta del Consiglio: "Il Consiglio informa l'onorevole parlamentare di non avere discusso nessuno dei punti esposti nella sua interrogazione."

Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA 

 
Oliver Tickell
 

A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation

Thu 28 May 2009 08.00 BST First published on Thu 28 May 2009 08.00 BST

 

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chernobyl

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.
The WHO's objective is to promote "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", while the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it "shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement". The two agencies must "keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties". And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake "to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest".

The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided. For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Meanwhile, the 2005 report of the IAEA-dominated Chernobyl Forum, which estimates a total death toll from the accident of only several thousand, is widely regarded as a whitewash as it ignores a host of peer-reviewed epidemiological studies indicating far higher mortality and widespread genomic damage. Many of these studies were presented at the Geneva and Kiev conferences but they, and the ensuing learned discussions, have yet to see the light of day thanks to the non-publication of the proceedings.

The British radiation biologist Keith Baverstock is another casualty of the agreement, and of the mindset it has created in the WHO. He served as a radiation scientist and regional adviser at the WHO's European Office from 1991 to 2003, when he was sacked after expressing concern to his senior managers that new epidemiological evidence from nuclear test veterans and from soldiers exposed to depleted uranium indicated that current risk models for nuclear radiation were understating the real hazards.

Now a professor at the University of Kuopio, Finland, Baverstock finally published his paper in the peer-reviewed journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival in April 2005. He concluded by calling for "reform from within the profession" and stressing "the political imperative for freely independent scientific institutions" – a clear reference to the non-independence of his former employer, the WHO, which had so long ignored his concerns.

Since the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in April 2007, a daily "Hippocratic vigil" has taken place at the WHO's offices in Geneva, organised by Independent WHO to persuade the WHO to abandon its the WHO-IAEA Agreement. The protest has continued through the WHO's 62nd World Health Assembly, which ended yesterday, and will endure through the executive board meeting that begins today. The group has struggled to win support from WHO's member states. But the scientific case against the agreement is building up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos, Greece.
At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR's own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators' Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR's scientific secretary and visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences:

"The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima, the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings."

Some birthdays deserve celebration – but not this one. After five decades, it is time the WHO regained the freedom to impart independent, objective advice on the health risks of radiation.