Asia-Europe People’s Forum Statement: Responding to The Result of The TRIPS Council Meeting on 10-11 March 2021

AEPF, 12 March 2021. We, Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF), join  the global demand  to all WTO members and DG WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to immediately reach an agreement on the TRIPS Waiver Proposal as the solution supported by majority of members in addressing the access inequality of Covid19 vaccines to end the Pandemic.

Around 200 people in Asia and Europe have lent their support to the campaign and growing peoples movement by sending a strong message highlighting  the importance of TRIPS Waiver to allow all, but especially the poor nations open and equitable access to vaccines in order to address this global pandemic.

The delay in the approval of  TRIPS Waiver at the TRIPS Council reinforces the view that the WTO is an institution that is driven by the interest of the rich and powerful. We deplore the efforts of the rich countries and the big pharmaceutical companies to  the Covid19 pandemic an opportunity to secure windfall  profits over and  above the humanitarian crisis and the interest of people across the globe.  This issue over vaccine monopoly must be resolved through global solidarity action.

The “Third Way” promoted by the DG WTO to supposedly improve access “through facilitating technology transfer within a multilateral regulatory framework” and by pharmaceutical companies entering into licensing agreements to enable other producers to produce vaccines and other products will not address the problem of vaccine monopoly.

“Third Way” proposal offered by DG WTO should be rejected. The voluntary licensing is confidential and restrictive. There is a serious lack of transparency as the terms of the license are usually confidential and still provides exclusive rights to pharmaceutical companies.  The geographic scope of the proposal is also limited excluding many developing countries from being supplied under the license agreement or allowing for manufacturing only for purposes of export (can you rephrase this please? Its not clear, Are we saying it allows only for export from countries with manufacturing capacity?; license is only offered as well to very specific manufacturers presumably aiming to limit supply; and  the restrictive terms on the source and production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs)^[1].

In this regard, we emphasized that we don’t need a compromise solution, but we want to TRIPS Waiver as solution endorsed by developing countries to abolish the monopoly of vaccines. The TRIPS Waiver proposal must be reached immediately to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

The TRIPS Waiver proposal is a proposal submitted by India and South Africa in October 2020 at the WTO but has since been endorsed by 100 developing countries to allow all countries not to implement the TRIPS Agreement which regulates patent protection, copyright, and related rights, industrial design, protection of undisclosed information, which is directly related to drugs, diagnostic tests, vaccines and other technologies regarding COVID-19 in the course of the pandemic. However, wealthy countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, European Union, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, still hold back their support for the proposal considering that they have traditionally been supporters of the interests of pharmaceutical companies through the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) monopoly system. ****

With Solidarity:
Indonesia for Global Justice, Focus on The Global South, Global Justice Now-UK, Transnational Institute

Contacts:

Rachmi Hertanti, IGJ: rachmihertanti@gmail.com
Joseph Purugganan, Focus: josephp@focusweb.org
Dorrothy Guererro, GJN: Dorothy.Guerrero@globaljustice.org.uk
Pietje Vervest, TNI: pietje.vervest@tni.org