Doha is known for having its name attached to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Development Round, the current trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organisation which commenced in November 2001. As of 2008, talks have stalled over a divide on major issues, such as agriculture, industrial tariffs and non-tariff barriers, services, and trade remedies. Major negotiations are not expected to resume until 2009. Civil society organisations have pointed out a need for a strong regulatory framework to counter well-documented abuses, and ensure positive developmental impacts of foreign direct investment. They recommended specific mechanisms, such as country-by-country reporting to regulate transnational corporations, policies to harness the revenue from natural resource extraction and commitment to combat increasing trade and investment liberalisation.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
With many countries repaying their loans to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and not seeking new lines of credit, the institution’s traditional means of generating income is dwindling. Facing a budget shortfall of US$400 million in 2010, in April, the IMF’s Executive Board approved a proposal to sell some of its gold reserves. The revenue will be used to create an endowment whose earnings will assist in financing the institution’s administrative budget. Civil society is writing to urge that before the Executive Board implements gold sales, it must insist on meaningful pro-development reforms in IMF policy in developing countries and attach conditions to how gold sales will occur. Over the last three decades, IMF policies have limited development, and denied opportunity and decent livelihoods to hundreds of millions of people.
The World Health Organization has released a long-awaited list of high-level experts tasked with finding innovative funding mechanisms for needed medical research on neglected diseases. The list largely contains governmental and intergovernmental representatives, and first reactions to it have been generally positive. The creation of this ‘results-oriented and time-limited’ expert group was a key outcome of the WHO’s global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property, approved at World Health Assembly in May. The 24-member body will look at the current financing and coordination of research and development, as well as proposals for new and innovative sources of funding to stimulate research and development in diseases which disproportionately effect developing countries.
While world leaders gathered in New York for a high-level meeting last month in New York on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), international development agencies, including Britain's Christian Aid, warned that progress is being hampered by the activities of rich countries and big business. Christian Aid said that the problems were due to short-sighted trade liberalisation imposed on poor countries and the use of offshore havens by transnational corporations to reduce their tax liabilities in the developing world, grievously undermining international aid efforts. The aims of the MDGs were wholly desirable but rich countries were likely to argue about how much more aid they could afford, instead of addressing trade liberalisation and offshore havens.
Economic partnership agreements were one of the topics discussed at the 6th African, Caribbean and Pacific Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Accra, Ghana from 30 September to 3 October. African, Caribbean and Pacific countries decided whether to sign agreements that they have initialled, re-negotiate them or expand interim goods agreements further. Among the conclusions of the analysis of this topic are that the provisions on movement of capital and entry of EU providers of financial services may magnify the problem of instability that new financial services generate, and that the developing countries would have to undertake obligations in market access and rules in new areas (investment, government procurement, competition policy) that had been rejected as negotiating topics in the WTO. For example the right to regulate services has been narrowed further than GATS, universal service provision will be more limited.
The Executive Coordinator of the Millennium Campaign has called for coherent global collaborative action to effectively deal with trade imbalances suffered by developing countries. Addressing the inaugural Geneva Trade and Development Forum at Crans-Montana, she bemoaned the current situation where developing countries are left fragmented in negotiating processes: ‘It is time to make trade policies part of the broader relationship, not just with other countries, but, more importantly part of the broader agenda of challenges of global poverty, the environment and security.’ Included in the agenda should be the issues of public health, food security and nutrition, as well as the relationships among the three.
Some developing nations nave accused developed nations of overreaching themselves in their push to escalate enforcement of intellectual property rights and want their efforts to be reined in and centralised in the World Intellectual Property Organisation. This especially applies to a secret negotiation led by the United States, Europe and Japan to create an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The ACTA might create trade barriers and harm consumers, domestically and outside the signatory nations. The agreement lacks ‘democracy’ and balance, as it relies heavily on industry groups and rights holders with no representation on behalf of consumers. And as the law enforcement side rises, individual legal rights may be diminished. Secrecy around the treaty negotiation has fuelled speculation that its terms will undermine vital consumer interests, including access to low-cost generic medicines.
This paper from the South Centre is concerned with the widening development gap in the setting of new international policy regimes and a changing global economic environment. It discusses participation and developing country governance adaptation issues in the WTO and in the UN Conference on Trade and development (UNCTAD). It concludes that developing country group action should be an essential component in global trade governance. Inclusive governance will require clear policy issue and agenda articulation from shared understanding, institutionalised coordination and group leadership mechanisms, good working relationships between individual country delegates and other developing country delegates, and full and continuous institutional support of high professional quality.
The Brazilian Patent Office has rejected a patent application by Gilead on the drug tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), in a move that could increase access to a key HIV/AIDS medicine across the developing world. The decision means that the medicine can now be produced by Brazilian generic companies or imported from other generic sources from abroad. This is the first time that a patent related to an antiretroviral (ARV) medicine has been rejected as a result of a pre-grant opposition in Brazil. The patent office in Brazil rejected it on the grounds that it lacks inventiveness – one of the key requirements for a patent in Brazilian and international patent law. The consequences extend far beyond Brazil’s borders and may set a precedent for other developing nations.
The behaviour of China and India as development partners is changing the global aid picture, most importantly in Africa. Welcomed by African governments as alternative sources of development finance to the West, they have modelled their development finance on a framework of concessional loans and aid for resource security and infrastructure reconstruction. But their development assistance remains negligible, compared to the DAC and multilateral donors, who remain Africa’s main development partners. Until fairly recently, both countries have received large Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) disbursements. Conflicting definitions of aid as co-operation or ODA, offered by the Chinese government and well positioned academic sources, reflect a lack of clarity in Chinese foreign aid policy. Trying to pigeon hole or compartmentalise aid policies in each country into neatly defined boxes proves difficult, particularly as China and India’s donor activities in Africa are often inextricably viewed together with commercial interests and investment projects.