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The Cairns Group of farm-exporting countries came under criticism at the Doha negotiating body on agriculture for allegedly shifting the focus of the discussions to comprehensive reform of domestic support, instead of on the issue of public stockholding programmes for food security purposes in developing countries.

The GC meeting, which continued on 14 December, appears to have cast a dark shadow on issues like the extension of the MC12 Ministerial Decision on the TRIPS Agreement to cover COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics; the proposed termination of the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions; the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) graduation issue concerning transition support measures in favour of those LDCs that have graduated from the LDC category; and several other issues, said people who asked not to be quoted.

by D. Ravi Kanth

At the year-end meeting of the World Trade Organization’s General Council, India apparently argued that the proposed Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement is allegedly “illegal” and cannot be placed on the agenda of the upcoming WTO's 13th ministerial conference (MC13).

An informal mini-ministerial meeting held on 27 November failed to provide any political guidance on injecting momentum into the agriculture negotiations in the run-up to the upcoming World Trade Organization’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13).

India on 13 December sought clarification from the World Trade Organization’s General Council (GC) chair whether the inclusion of item 18 on the GC agenda on “Information on Investment Facilitation for Development – Request from Chile and the Republic of Korea” was merely for information or any other purpose, during the adoption of the agenda.

The GC meeting, which was scheduled for 14-15 December, was advanced by a day due to a long list of items to be discussed.

Calls for reforms of the international financial architecture are becoming ever louder. Governments, UN institutions, expert groups and civil society organizations are criticizing the fact that the network of institutions and rules that currently determine global monetary and financial policy and control global financial flows are not up to the current crises. The international financial architecture is “outdated, dysfunctional and unfair”, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

In view of these challenges, the UN Member States made the reform of the international financial architecture a priority topic of the UN Summit of the Future (SotF). It is due to take place at the level of Heads of State and Government in New York on 22 and 23 September 2024. The outcome will be a Pact for the Future. Its content will be negotiated in New York in the months leading up to the Summit. The following six topics are expected to be discussed in the negotiations on the global financial architecture:

  i. Reforms of the international financial institutions 

 ii. Short-term liquidity and financial safety nets

But pending discussions and consensus on key proposals including those focused on introducing equity-related considerations to the IHR, more time has been sought to conclude the negotiations on amending these rules. In addition, critical issues such as definition of a pandemic; a tiered alert system for declaring health emergencies; and on financing mechanisms; are being addressed both in the forum to amend the IHR, and in parallel discussions towards a new Pandemic Agreement. Unless these key issues are addressed within the overall scope of governing health emergencies including also pandemics, changes to IHR cannot be approved in isolation, diplomatic sources explained to us this past week.

In today’s edition we bring you the state of play in the discussions towards a new Pandemic Agreement, where countries are tackling the toughest issues in global health in the shortest possible time.

The process could take two paths, a shorter, easier one that might lead to the final deadline in May 2024, albeit without much change in status quo. A second, more challenging one, with a longer timeline, but one that might lead to few but potentially significant changes in the governance of health emergencies particularly for response measures. It is beginning to appear that political expediency could very likely push the first approach.

Proposals on various textual amendments to the international Health Regulations (IHR) from the Bureau of the working group mandated to undertake the amendments raise concerns on an early harvest approach at the cost of excluding proposals on equity, especially those on equitable access.

2/07/2023

From October 23 to 27, 2023, 76 states met at the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council to negotiate an international human rights treaty to regulate companies and their value chains (also known as the “UN Treaty”). Since the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 26/9 in 2014 and mandated an intergovernmental working group to draft such legally binding instrument, it has met nine times. After a slow start, the process has emerged surprisingly stronger from the ninth round of negotiations.