Reports Search

The idea of an international pandemic treaty is to avoid repeating the failures that occurred during the COVID-19 crisis. Many things did not work, but the most glaring failure was the unequal distribution of, and access to, vaccines, diagnostics and treatments. An international treaty based on the principles of equity, inclusiveness and transparency is needed to ensure universal and equitable access.

Two final – and likely sleepless – weeks of negotiation on the pandemic agreement begin on Monday, and negotiators have been urged to bring in their principals to ensure speed up decision-making.

The negotiations may well be extended but, for now, this ninth meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) is set to end on the eve of the Easter weekend on 28 March and includes a weekend session.

“Since we have now a few weeks left, I think the engagement of the highest level of leaders will be important to give you more space for compromise because it’s through compromise and collaboration that we can get to the finish line,” WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told negotiators at the last INB meeting.

One of the most important Intellectual Property (IP) problems which the Pandemic Accord negotiators need to solve is now in danger of being completely ignored. This is the problem of guaranteeing access to ‘undisclosed information’, also known as ‘know-how’. Such undisclosed information is typically held in secret by pharmaceutical companies but can often be necessary to enable the large-scale production of pandemic countermeasures such as medicines, vaccines and diagnostics. If access to such undisclosed information is not guaranteed then, even if all the patent-related barriers are overcome during a future pandemic by compulsory licensing or otherwise, there will still be no certainty that the large-scale production of particular pandemic countermeasures will be able to take place. This would surely represent a critical failure of the Pandemic Accord process. 

In the apparent absence of any other attempts to solve this problem, we therefore propose the following provision for insertion as a separate sub-section in Article 11 of the draft Pandemic Accord:

Article 11: Transfer of Technology

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), which is tasked under WHO with drawing up an international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, will sit for the 9th and final time from March 18–29. In the 2 years since it first met, hundreds of hours and unknown costs have been spent, but the political impetus has died. The convention is now at a critical juncture: the final text for countries to ratify is due to be presented at the World Health Assembly in May. With only limited days of negotiation left and a long way to go to secure a meaningful agreement, it is now or never for a treaty that can make the world a safer place.

Fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization Ministerial (WTO) Ministerial Conference are continuing to propose subsidy bans that are failing to hold the big distant water fishing fleets accountable. As negotiations continue past their deadline, the latest circulated draft text shows major concessions being made to the large fishing fleets, in particular the distant water fleets who are appearing to have no hard prohibitions on their subsidies. This text asks member to refrain, to the greatest extent possible to provide subsidies for distant water fishing. While there is a requirement to show that the fishing is sustainable, because there is no hard subsidy ban in place and little to hold them to account. “The current proposals are a last-minute carve out for the biggest fleets, this represents a significant failure for the negotiations despite the hard work and resolve by many developing countries and small-island developing states to hold them to account.

Civil society organisations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in the United Arab Emirates this week have criticized restrictions on their participation, including alleging that some of their members had been briefly detained at the talks.

Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS), a network of civil society groups, said on Wednesday it had complained to WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala over several incidents of "detainment, confiscation of materials, and heavy-handed restrictions on lobbying by civil society" groups.

The WTO, in a statement, said the director-general had met with civil society representatives on Tuesday to discuss their concerns and had since spoken with the host chair of the talks to identify solutions.

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.

-- A deal to renew the World Trade Organization’s moratorium on electronic commerce duties likely will include language on an e-commerce work program requiring that members define the parameters of the temporary ban -- a move industry stakeholders fear could make future renewals even more difficult.

Negotiations on e-commerce will begin in earnest here at the 13th ministerial conference on Thursday -- the last scheduled day of a ministerial many expect will be extended one more day. New Zealand Trade Minister and MC13 Vice Minister Todd McClay told Inside U.S. Trade he believes the most likely outcome on e-commerce is that the moratorium is renewed in parallel with a work program that calls on members to clarify the moratorium’s definition by the next ministerial.

But many stakeholders here believe the moratorium’s renewal is only a 50-50 prospect, with some believing it might not be even that high.

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.

South Africa and India have formally opposed the adopton of the Investment Facilitaton “for Development” Agreement for consideraton during the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) of the WTO, upholding legal procedures regarding plurilaterals of the global trade body.

The Marrakesh Agreement is unambiguous that a new plurilateral agreement can only be adopted in the WTO through “Annex 4” rules, as proponents of the IF agreement are proposing, exclusively by explicit consensus of all WTO Members.

There is no consensus at the MC13 that the IF can even be legally entered on the agenda. Previous decisions of WTO Ministers are clear that negotatons on investment can only be launched by consensus, once the Doha round is over, so the IF has no legal status in the WTO.

The Minister of Trade for South Korea, a co-sponsor of the agreement, acknowledged they would need consensus to incorporate the deal, and let slip that the “WTO Secretariat is trying to persuade opponents” to drop their oppositIon.

Read more here