‘WTO’s time is up’: summit heading for vaccine failure, say campaigners
Date: 10 June 2022
Campaigns: Pharma
Negotiations go to wire as Britain tries to block developing world demand for a Covid patent waiver
As delegates prepare to travel to Geneva for the long-postponed World Trade Organization ministerial conference, which starts on Sunday, campaigners have slammed the meeting as “a failure before it’s even begun” over global vaccine access.
Commenting on the 18-month failure of the institution to agree proposals which could have laid the path for a rapid scale-up of Covid-19 medicines and a more equitable global vaccination effort, Global Justice Now said: “The WTO’s time is up”.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now said:
“An institution which can’t bend its pro-big business rules to allow for the rapid scale-up of medicines desperately needed to end a global pandemic is simply not fit for purpose. A full 18 months ago, India and South Africa, backed by the vast majority of WTO members, asked for the WTO to waive intellectual property rules. This perfectly reasonable demand has been blocked, consistently, by a small group of countries which themselves bought more vaccines than they needed.
“Boris Johnson’s government has played a particularly scandalous role, doing everything in its power to scupper even the weakest of agreements with repeated wrecking tactics. The British government couldn’t be clearer – big pharma’s profits are more important than global healthcare.
“This weekend, global south delegates face an unwelcome choice between no deal, which would prolong the disaster of the last 18 months, and the bad deal rich countries have been pushing in recent weeks, a belated stitch-up which would in some respects make vaccine access harder. Neither would represent progress, so this summit is a failure before it’s even begun.(1)
“The WTO has always been a deeply problematic organisation whose rules have helped big business monopolise our food system, decimate our public services and stretch our supply chains to breaking point. It’s now been shown that, in a crisis, it’s worse than useless – it’s an impediment to ending the worst health emergency the world has seen in 100 years. The WTO has failed the world, its time is up.”
Notes
1. For detailed analysis of the negotiations, see:
‘MSF Comments on the Reported Draft Text of the TRIPS Waiver Negotiation’, MSF, March 2022, https://msfaccess.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/COVID19_TechBrief_MSF-AC_Waiver-Quad-text_briefing-doc_ENG_March2022.pdf
‘WTO: UK & Switzerland attempt to limit scope of COVID-19 TRIPS Decision’. Third World Network, 7 June 2022, https://www.twn.my/title2/health.info/2022/hi220601.htm
Global Justice Now is a UK-based campaigning organisation tackling the root causes of global poverty and inequality, and a member of the People’s Vaccine Alliance.
Photo: Piotr Swat/Shutterstock
