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This month the World Trade Organization threw in the towel on COVID-19. Medicines like Paxlovid have been plentiful in the U.S. and Europe, but because of insufficient supplies and high prices, hardly anyone in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has had access. After more than three years of debate, the WTO declared on Feb. 13 that it was unable to reach agreement on waiving global patent rules for COVID-19 treatment to ease the way for expanded production.

This month the World Trade Organization threw in the towel on COVID-19. Medicines like Paxlovid have been plentiful in the U.S. and Europe, but because of insufficient supplies and high prices, hardly anyone in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has had access. After more than three years of debate, the WTO declared on Feb. 13 that it was unable to reach agreement on waiving global patent rules for COVID-19 treatment to ease the way for expanded production.

Here’s a roundup of the issues at stake at the upcoming ministerial:

Fishing subsidies: The WTO reached a partial agreement at its last ministerial conference in June 2022 to curb subsidies that threaten the future of ocean fish supplies.

This time they are trying for a more comprehensive agreement that would hopefully have a much bigger impact on maintaining one of the world’s most important food stocks.

Of all the issues at stake in Abu Dhabi, officials are most hopeful about getting this negotiation over the line. “If there’s no agreement on fish at MC13, that’d be a tragedy,” one Geneva-based diplomat said.

For Okonjo-Iweala, the negotiation is proof the WTO is still relevant. “260 million people depend on fisheries for their livelihood, and the oceans are being overfished. [The question for ministers in Abu Dhabi is] can we save the oceans, be part of the regenerative blue economy and save jobs?” she told POLITICO in an interview.

rom February 26–29, 2024, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will host the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Governments from 164 countries will be joined by Timor-Leste and Comoros, the first two nations to join the group since 2017.

At stake is a fight between two visions of what role the WTO, as the world’s most powerful rule-making body in the global economy, should play.

Should the institution expand as an even more corporate-influenced body, with rich countries allowed to set agendas, impose negotiation mechanisms in their favor, and leave poorer countries — and multilateralism itself — in the dustbin of history?

Or should members of the institution recognize the constraints that the current rules place on developing economies, including the harm caused to workers, farmers, and the global environment, and increase flexibilities so that these countries can use trade for their development?

Ministerial Declaration

The WHO pandemic instrument should commit the Parties to limit the exclusionary effects that government-granted patents and other IPRs may have during pandemics in support of rapid diffusion of new vaccines, diagnostics, medicines and other tools and facilitate collaboration and freedom to operate. The current draft text of Article 11 would not make any change to the status quo.

The consensus is that there is no consensus.

This really is the story from the WTO on whether temporary clarifications in intellectual property rules be extended for the production and supply of COVID-19 tests and treatments.

The global health ecosystem gets curiouser and curiouser.

In today’s edition, we bring you an update from the WTO TRIPS extension discussions - where countries agreed that there has been no consensus on the decision.

On the same day, February 14th, that WTO members met for a General Council meeting in Geneva, effectively noting the end of the TRIPS Waiver discussions, an ill-timed tweet from the WTO sparked off a kerfuffle on social media. The international trade body with 164 members, got some hate on Valentine’s Day for putting out “pro-patent love tweets”. This is a serious misstep in institutional communication in such a polarized atmosphere.

The World Trade Organization has failed to reach an agreement to waive intellectual property rights on Covid-19 tests and treatments for poorer countries.

Members of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) council said it could not reach consensus after years of discussion, despite the “considerable efforts” of members.

Campaigners said the news was a “slap in the face”.

Research published last year found that more than 50% of Covid deaths in low and middle-income countries could have been avoided if people had the same access to vaccines as wealthy states. According to data published by the World Health Organization in January 2023, 75% of people living in high-income countries have been vaccinated compared with fewer than 25% in low-income states.

At a meeting of the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on 13 February, WTO members adopted two reports that the Council Chair, Ambassador Pimchanok Pitfield of Thailand, had developed to complete work in Geneva as much as possible before ministers gather in Abu Dhabi on 26-29 February for the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference

The reports address two issues the Council has been discussing since the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in June 2022: whether to extend the Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement (WT/L/1141) to COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics, and the Council's current and future work under paragraphs 23-24 of the Ministerial Declaration on the WTO Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Preparedness for Future Pandemics (WT/L/1142).(MC13).

This Policy Brief discusses issues concerning trade, intellectual property, and technology transfer that are most relevant for consideration at the 13^th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC13) in February 2024 and inclusion in its outcomes.

The following recommendations are proposed:

Evergreening patents on medical products – extending the lifespan of patents that are about to expire – is an “abuse of the intellectual property system”, an HIV activist told the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Fair Pricing Forum on Thursday.

Meanwhile, an industry representative laid out her company’s value-based, country-specific approach to improving access to medicines, providing an example of how it had improved access to cancer medicine in Nigeria.

Ukraine-based Sergiy Kondratyuk, who works for the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, said that evergreening is pervasive and a barrier to lower medicine prices.

“In Thailand, about 70-80% of drug patents are evergreened … and approximately 45% were evergreened Ukraine,” said Kondratyuk.