While the chair of the World Trade Organization’s General Council (GC) and the WTO Director-General said on 24 October that the two-day Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) ended on an optimistic note with clear guidance going forward, the Chairpersons’ Summary issued by them has raised some serious questions.
See full report for further details on Dispute settlement, TRIPS, Agriculture, Development, Fisheries subsidies, WTO reform, JSIs
Sangeeta Shashikant
The findings of the report from the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) relating to COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics affirm the insufficiency of existing initiatives such as voluntary licenses, tier-pricing and access schemes of international organizations in facilitating prompt access to these medical products in developing countries.
The chair of the World Trade Organization’s General Council (GC) has issued a “state of play” report for the Senior Officials Meeting on 23-24 October where the key issues of MC12 TRIPS Decision extension and the permanent solution for public stockholding (PSH) programs for food security appear to have been eclipsed in the meeting’s agenda.
