[CTC] TRIPS waiver receives more support ahead of WTO meeting

[Arthur Stamoulis]

TRIPS waiver receives more support ahead of WTO meeting
By Brett Fortnam, Inside US Trade 
6/7/2021
 
The prospect of waiving certain provisions of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property is garnering widespread support ahead of a Tuesday TRIPS Council meeting and following a weekend endorsement from Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trade ministers.

The WTO on Monday announced it had received a petition from Avaaz, an online activist organization, and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, that had been signed by more than 2.7 million people in support of a TRIPS waiver. The two groups in December delivered a similar petition <https://insidetrade.com/node/170193> with 900,000 signatures.

The petition delivered Monday calls on “G7 leaders, pharmaceutical companies CEOs, and all member countries of the World Trade Organization” to “urgently to ensure access to lifesaving Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and equipment for everyone in the world.”

“Patents should be suspended, technological knowledge shared freely and openly, and no profiteering allowed during this pandemic,” it states. “Governments, scientists and pharmaceutical companies must cooperate and combine resources to ensure no one is left behind. The pandemic will not be over, until it’s over everywhere.”

According to Avaaz, signatories of the petition include Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, George Clooney, Sharon Stone, Forest Whitaker, Peter Gabriel and others.

Another online activist group, Fight for the Future, is also pushing for a TRIPS waiver. On Monday, it issued a letter <https://www.nocovidinourname.com/> signed by more than 70 celebrities and actors in support of that effort. “Everyone must receive access as soon as possible to the knowledge and tools that will save lives from COVID-19: from vaccines and ventilators to medical technology, designs, and knowledge,” the letter said. “Without an emergency waiver at the WTO of the intellectual property rights that block sharing these resources, many countries may not receive meaningful access to COVID-19 vaccines until as late as 2024 -- if at all. This is unacceptable. We need to immediately share knowledge and technology before devastating new variants kill even more people.”

Signatories of the letter include Mark Ruffalo, Alyssa Milano, eve6 and Debra Messing.

APEC trade ministers on Saturday said they supported “text-based discussions, including for a temporary waiver of certain intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines, as soon as possible and no later than MC12 <https://insidetrade.com/node/171484>,” referring to the WTO’s 12th ministerial conference, slated for late November.

India and South Africa issued a revised proposal <https://insidetrade.com/node/171387> for a TRIPS waiver last month, with the aim of facilitating “progress” in the text-based negotiations. The U.S. has said it supports the negotiations but has not endorsed a specific proposal. The India-South Africa proposal would waive several TRIPS Agreement provisions, including on patents and copyrights.

The European Union, which to date has balked at the waiver efforts, issued its own waiver alternative <https://insidetrade.com/node/171473> last week that aimed to limit export restrictions on COVID-19-reated productions and encourage the expansion of vaccine production. Public Citizen, which is part of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, blasted the move on Monday.

“The EU’s latest move is the height of hypocrisy: EU officials say Covid vaccines should be a universal common good and no one is safe unless everyone is, yet act to prioritize Big Pharma demands and block the rest of the world from enacting a critical first step, the WTO IP waiver, to boost production and access,” the group said in a statement on Monday. “The increasingly isolated EU not only is blocking a waiver that the vast majority of the world’s countries deem necessary to save their people and end the pandemic. It is trying to distract and delay the rest of the world from moving forward.”

Asked about the EU’s proposal during a press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. position had not changed.


Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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