WTO Covid negotiations could reverse precedent that public health comes before IP, experts warn

Negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over COVID-19 intellectual property rules could set a “dangerous precedent for future pandemics” by allowing intellectual property rules to be enforced over public health concerns, a group of experts have warned.

In a letter to all WTO delegates, experts warn that the text under negotiation could reverse a precedent that affirmed an intellectual property agreement “does not and should not prevent [WTO] Members from taking measures to protect public health”, known as the Doha declaration, agreed in 2001 to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

The warning comes from Ruth Dreifuss, former President of the Swiss Confederation, Celso Amorim, two-time Brazilian Minister of Defence and Foreign Affairs and one of the central figures in negotiating the Doha declaration, and Dr Jorge Bermudez, a renowned global health expert who sits on the WHO’s C-TAP advisory board and has advised the UN secretary-general on access to medicines.

It comes more than twenty months after India and South Africa proposed a waiver of the Trade Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement at the WTO for COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments.

The proposal has been blocked by the EU, UK and Switzerland, but the WTO secretariat has presented a “slimmed-down alternative text“ which is currently under negotiation ahead of next week’s WTO Ministerial Conference.

The alternative text “would add new requirements before a country can exercise the existing flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement, erecting new barriers for developing countries combatting COVID-19”

Without amendment, this “undermines the flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement” and would be “a reversal of the Doha declaration”, which stated that “the TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent Members from taking measures to protect public health”

That “could set a dangerous precedent for future pandemic,  the signatories say.

They call on WTO delegates to amend the document to remove any additional barriers and ensure a broad waiver of intellectual property rules that helps, not hinders, access to COVID-19 tools.

The warning comes as Oxfam warns that nearly 30,000 people have died every day that the WTO has failed to act over intellectual property restrictions.

/Ends

Notes to editors

The full letter is available here: https://peoplesvaccine.org/resources/letters/wto-delegates-trips-2022/

Media contact

Joe Karp-Sawey, Senior Media Advisor, People’s Vaccine Alliance

[email protected]