in preparation for

Preamble

In the lead up to the Qatar Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in November 2001, the ‘Trade Matters’ group of Irish NGOs welcomes the call by Minister of State Tom Kitt TD for a ‘Development Round’ of World Trade Organisation negotiations. A Development Round is necessary if developing countries are to have any prospect of achieving the internationally agreed 2015 Targets for poverty reduction and human development.

There are, however, many understandings of what such a Round might entail.

In order that a ‘Development Round’ be true to its name the following characteristics are necessary:

1. That the objective of the Round is to increase market access and market share for developing countries
2. That it revise the mandate of the WTO, incorporating it fully into the UN family and making its outcomes subject to other international commitments in the area of development, gender equality and the environment
3. That it reforms the mechanisms by which the WTO operates in order that developing countries may have meaningful participation in negotiations
4. That it reform the mechanisms by which the WTO operates in order that the proceedings are transparent to the public
5. That it initiates a significant programme of building trade negotiation and marketing capacity among developing countries
6. That it supports developing countries in the costs of implementing commitments made under existing and new WTO agreements, as many such commitments involve institution-building costs.
7. That it amends those aspects of the WTO agreements (especially AoA and TRIPs) which have proven injurious to the vital interests of women and men in developing countries.
8. That it recognises the need of developing countries to protect infant and vulnerable industries while they build local productive capacity prior to liberalisation
9. That it put in place ongoing impact assessment mechanisms in order to measure what affect WTO rounds are having upon women and men in developing countries
10. That ‘proofing’ mechanisms be incorporated checking WTO decisions in terms of development, gender and environmental impact.

A Development Round is not compatible with the type of ‘broad agenda’ Round advocated by the EU Commission. Negotiations under a ‘broad agenda’ would inevitably focus on richer country interests. Further liberalisation under a ‘broad agenda’ would erode current preferences important to many developing countries and would further marginalise developing countries from world trade.

The three sections below give special attention to three of the areas which are of particular concern to Irish NGOs:

• Section 1 Reform of WTO mechanisms
• Section 2 Agreement on Agriculture
• Section 3 Trade Related Property Rights

Introduction

There has been mounting public concern regarding the manner in which international trade is structured. Since the World Trade Organisation Ministerial in Seattle in 1999, public concern has become more aware of and focused upon both how trade rules are decided and on their consequences for poorer countries.

Issues arise in relation to both the ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ of the WTO. A ‘democratic gap’ remains whereby the public cannot ascertain information regarding decision making. There is public disquiet about the degree to which commercial interests can influence outcomes while public concern for justice and the environment is not reflected in the trade rules agreed.

Further issues arise relating to the marginalisation of developing countries. Poorer countries are excluded from crucial stages of negotiation, and the outcomes result in further marginalisation of developing countries from world trade. The poorest 48 countries account for just 0.4% of total world trade. The refusal by developing countries at Seattle to accept any outcome from the ‘Green Room’ demonstrates the inappropriateness of such exclusive mechanisms within the negotiation process.

Guiding Principle

WTO mechanisms should be both transparent and accountable and ensure full and meaningful participation by developing countries, and should inter alia redress their marginalisation from world trade.

Accompanying this, the mandate of the WTO must be reviewed in order to ensure that trade liberalisation is coherent with international development goals, particularly in relation to poverty reduction, gender equality and sustainable development.

Recommendations

The WTO must operate under mechanisms that ensure the preservation of the following values:

1.1 Democratic processes of decision making among member countries

• All binding decisions should be taken in the General Council or other formal bodies.
• Every member should retain its veto.
• Every member should have access to all formal meetings, and to reports of same.
• Guidelines should be developed to manage the size of delegations, and the number of meetings held in order to ensure equality of representation.

1.2 Transparent and accountable mechanisms which ensure public access to information

• An Ethics Panel should be established to safeguard against conflicts of interests by delegates and officials
• All documents should be de-restricted except those that are retained temporarily confidential according to clear criteria.
• A system of accreditation of NGOs and other civil society groups be put in place.
• The Trade Policy Review Mechanism should include an evaluation of how trade policy is formulated at national and regional level.

1.3 Coherence between WTO decisions and objectives of UN bodies

• UN organisations should have access to WTO meetings and the right to make submissions
• The WTO should be brought formally within the UN family and be deemed not to supercede UN conventions and agreements such as the UN Declaration on Human Rights.
• An independent arbitration mechanism should be put in place to decide if WTO rules conflict with other multilateral agreements and commitments.

1.4 Special provision for developing countries which enable them to undo their marginalisation from world trade.

Many developing countries experienced great difficulty in implementing obligations arising from previous Rounds.

• Instead of arbitrary extensions of the time periods for implementation, human development indicators that are gender sensitive should be used to determine the requirements and timeframe for implementation.
• That a system of negotiation ‘credits’ be used whereby third countries would open markets to countries which liberalised their markets unilaterally as part of IMF structural adjustment programmes.
• That the Uruguay Round commitments by developed countries to assist developing countries in technology transfer be specified along with deadlines for their implementation.

1.5 A capacity building programme which enable developing countries to have meaningful participation in WTO decision making

WTO structures and developing country capacity constraints restrict the possibility of meaningful participation by poorer countries in the WTO.

• There should be a common fund to resource developing country delegations.
• The Advisory Centre on WTO Law must be fully funded through binding annual commitments from richer countries.
• Institutional capacity building should go beyond the ‘capacity to implement’ and concentrate on building further capacity for trade policy analysis and negotiation among female and male representatives of developing countries.
• Gender balance guidelines to apply in all WTO decision making bodies and delegations

1.6 Independent impact assessment of WTO decisions in advance of further rounds of liberalisation.

• That a permanent independent Impact Assessment Body monitor the gender and environmental impact of agreements upon developing countries ex ante and ex post.

1.7 Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM)

• That adequate legal and research assistance be made available to developing countries engaged in the DSM, with their full costs being covered where they win a case.
• Where WTO rules conflict with multilateral agreements on environment, development and gender equality, the WTO must collaborate with and share its jurisdiction to those agreements.
• Proceedings of the DSM should be open to the public and criteria agreed for relevant civil society stakeholders to make submissions.
• Guidelines should be developed giving a prescribed role for relevant competent international bodies.

Introduction

Agriculture can and should provide safe and nutritious food for the population; a livelihood for large numbers of people, both directly and indirectly; as well as a habitat for wildlife and a range of land management and environmental services. The prevailing economic model seeks to open and deregulate agricultural markets in developing countries while maintaining high levels of support in some industrialised countries. This is undermining development goals such as food security and agricultural livelihoods. Foremost amongst those who are losing are the poor in the developing world.

Women are the main food producers within the susbistence economy in most developing countries and are therefore particularly affected by export oriented trade policies. Structural adjustment has already weakened this sector and endangered the livelihoods of women and children.

Under current WTO rules there is insufficient flexibility for developing country members to protect their own concerns. The usage of support mechanisms is biased against developing countries undermining their ability to provide support to their indigenous agriculture. Current direct subsidies and price support under the Blue and Green Box measures to agricultural exporters in the developed world continue to lead to dumping of produce on world markets depressing world market prices and impacting negatively on developing country producers, livelihoods and food security.

Guiding Principle

The key priorities of any international regime in agricultural trade policy must be to promote food and livelihood security and encourage sustainable production.

Recommendations

2.1 Food Security

Greater flexibility should be given to developing countries to provide for food security and other non-trade concerns including the provision of a ‘Food Security Box’.

2.2 Export Subsidies

Those export subsidies, including export credits, which undermine domestic agricultural production and which are environmentally damaging and socially injurious should be immediately eliminated.

2.3 Domestic Support

Penalties for distortion of international markets through one general subsidies box which should include those aspects of both Blue and Green Box which can be transparently targeted at food security, environmental, gender and rural development measures taken to correct market failures. No ceiling should be placed upon such expenditure by developing countries. Reduce and then abolish ‘price support’ and other subsidies in the so-called ‘Amber Box’ which encourage over production and intensification thus leading to dumping.

2.4 Market Access

Improve market access of the developing world to the developed world through the removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, especially processed commodities. It is also important that Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures are not used for protectionist purposes against imports from the developing world.

2.5 Net Food Importing Developing Countries

Address the food supply concerns of ‘Net Food Importing Developing Countries’ by supplying direct unconditional financial aid to any that are adversely affected by increases in world food prices. Revise and implement the Marrakesh Decision to make this happen.

 

 

Introduction

Under the WTO Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIPs) Agreement corporate interest in putting patents on plant genetic resources and medical treatments has been pushed to the fore, while the needs of poor communities in developing countries in terms of both food security and access to affordable health care have been largely ignored.

The TRIPs Agreement established a global standard for patents giving uniform 20-year protection on both processes and products patented. This has deprived many developing countries the opportunity to produce cheaper generic medicines essential to their public health strategies including inhibiting their responses to the AIDS/HIV pandemic.

The TRIPs Agreement undermines developing country food security through its conveyance of patenting rights on plant genetic resources. Thus biotechnology companies can acquire monopoly rights over the indigenous knowledge and practices. As a result traditional growers can be prevented from growing crops with the patented genetic trait unless paying royalties to the patent holders.

Appendix I outlines further information on the impact of the TRIPs Agreement upon access to medicines for the world’s poorest people and the threat to food security of developing countries.

Guiding Principles:

• All WTO rules including the TRIPs Agreement must be consistent with human rights law which States have a responsibility to respect, in particular the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and must acknowledges the points made by the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights on 17 August 2000.
• These rules should promote and respect universally agreed human rights standards such as the rights to food and health care.
• The WTO in its rules and operations should serve to enhance the capacity of states to meet these international human rights standards and international commitments to women’s rights and environmental protection rather than to impede such an outcome.
• Public health needs, especially in those countries dealing with an AIDS pandemic, and food security goals, must take precedence over the profits of pharmaceutical and agro-chemical corporations.
• WTO rules must recognise that biological resources, both agricultural and non-agricultural, and local knowledge pertaining to these, have an intrinsic value.

 

Recommendations

3.1 There is a need to enhance public health safeguards to allow developing countries greater flexibility in determining the length and scope of pharmaceutical patenting, including:
- the option to exempt medicines from product patenting on public health grounds
- a strengthening of the ‘general exception clause’ under TRIPs, and
- the easing of the conditions for compulsory licensing, including any restrictions on the production of medicines for export to another country where a compulsory license has been issued.

3.2 A substantive review of the health impacts, affordability and availability of medicines in developing countries, food security impacts, and overall development and gender impacts of TRIPS under article 71.1 should be undertaken. The forthcoming review of the TRIPS agreement should include this assessment. The review should be supported by independent studies by the WHO and other relevant international organisations, in consultation with governments and public-interest groups.

3.3 The introduction of longer transition periods for developing countries who are putting in place new intellectual property laws for pharmaceuticals and seeds, with such transition periods being based on the achievement of development milestones rather than being based on arbitrarily determined timeframes.

3.4 Article 27.3(b) of TRIPs should be rewritten to exclude all life forms from patenting and to remove the requirement for plant variety protection, with a moratorium on implementation in the interim.

3.5 In relation to the review of Article 27.3b and discussions in WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation), the EU should support developing countries’, and in particular:
- the African Group’s proposal to maintain flexibility for countries designing sui-generis systems, and
- the inclusion of disclosure of the source of genetic material as put forward by India, i.e. that the TRIPs Agreement contain a requirement for full disclosure of the source of biological resources for which protection may be sought, either under plant variety protection, or under a sui generis system.

3.6 The WTO TRIPs Agreement should be made consistent with

1. provisions in the Convention on Biological Diversity to conserve natural resources, to ensure prior informed consent and benefit sharing and to prevent biopiracy; and
2. the International Undertaking of the FAO on Plant Genetic Resources and Farmers Rights.

3.7 TRIPs’ Article 66.2 obligation should be fully implemented to ensure the transfer of technology to enable least-developed countries create a sound technological base, and the extension of transitional arrangements

 

• Patent Injustice: How World Trade Rules Threaten the Health of Poor People, Preface by Sir John Sulston Co-founder of the Human Genome Project, Oxfam, Feb. 2001
• Biopatenting and the Threat to Food Security – A Christian and Development Perspective, CIDSE/Trócaire, 2000.
• Food, Christian Perspectives on Development Issues, Trócaire, Veritas, CAFOD and SCIAF, 1999.
• VOICE Position Paper on the Revision of Article 27.3(b) of the TRIPs Agreement. VOICE, July 1999.

This paper is published on the web-sites of some of the organisations including www.comhlamh.org/policdoc/tmqatar.html

Patent Injustice- The Costs of Medicines

Each year 11 million people die from infectious diseases, that is 30,000 people every day. Many die because they cannot afford basic medicines. Many more live with debilitating illnesses for the same reason. Although affordable medicines are only one of the problems facing the public health systems of poor countries, the price of basic medicines still remains an important factor in determining public health. While affordable drugs are not a panacea in the fight to end the global AIDS and other health crises, they do form a key part of any meaningful effort in this regard.

Because generic-drugs industries are able to market products at a fraction of the costs associated with patented brands, they provide a lifeline to low-income households. The TRIPs agreement threatens to cut this lifeline. The agreement established a global standard for patent protection. It provides companies with a uniform 20-year patent protection period, (including medicines), on both processes and products. Many developing countries prior to this had chosen only to allow patents on processes, in order to encourage competition and keep prices lower.

Price increases resulting from the extension of exclusive marketing rights will have grave consequences for public health in developing countries. Infectious diseases that were once relatively easily curable with simple antibiotics are increasingly becoming drug-resistant. Longstanding killer diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, and respiratory infections – a group of diseases that cost millions of lives each year – are proving increasingly difficult to treat. Improved access to effective and affordable medicines is essential if these threats are to be addressed. But the danger is that product patents will restrict access to the next generation of drugs needed to protect public health, and access to existing drugs will be restricted if extensions are granted on current patent rights.

Millions of small farmers, many of whom are women, who traditionally save seeds from their crops to sow the next year round, are still dependent on staple crops for their livelihood and food security. Rapid scientific development in genetics has allowed corporations to identify and isolate certain genes such as those carrying traits such as higher oil content or disease resistance. Chiefly as a result of the strong interest of agro-biotechnology companies’ in patent protection for such traits, the TRIPs agreement introduced intellectual property protection for plant genetic resources to international trade rules for the first time. By patenting these genetic traits, agro-biotechnology companies can acquire monopoly rights to the production and marketing of certain seeds, often rendering them sterile in order to increase repeat purchases. The impact of all this will be that farmers are legally prevented from growing crops with the patented genetic trait; farmers who want to benefit from crop improvement will not be able to save seed but will be backed into an annual cycle of purchasing seed, fertiliser and herbicide from the agro-biotechnology companies. This will increase these farmers’ vulnerability to debt and ultimately to the loss of their land, their most important productive asset. Patenting of indigenous knowledge by a third party threatens the livelihoods of female and male farmers depriving them from the benefit of their traditional knowledge and practices.

Patents allow companies to raise prices and/or prevent farmers from reusing seed varieties. The profit incentives behind patents are also skewing research towards seeds and crop varieties which are expected to yield the highest commercial returns but which may be inappropriate for meeting the food security requirements of the millions of farmers world-wide who depend on agriculture for their survival. The CGIAR (the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) has a key responsibility for stewardship over and access to plant genetic resources which are essential for food security, yet its resources are limited. In addition, there are concerns about corporations gaining control over genetic resources entrusted to CGIAR.

Genetic resources entrusted to CGIAR, or those still being grown by farmers form the basis of agricultural bio-diversity which is essential for research into useful genes. WTO rules which allow the patenting of life-forms, also facilitate biopiracy through the theft from developing nations of their biological resources and traditional knowledge from developing nations. Local communities are not only not compensated, but their economies are deprived of potential export earnings as well as local producer incomes from such resources.