The authors assert that the World Bank is a structural driver of the land grabs that is dispossessing and impoverishing rural communities across the globe and a central player that is using its financial and political might to force developing countries to follow a pre-prescribed model of development, based on the neoliberal principles of privatization, deregulation, low corporate taxation and ‘free market’ fundamentalism. At the demand of the G8 in 2012, and with funding from the Gates Foundation, the UK, US, Dutch, and Danish governments, the World Bank is now reported to be developing a new instrument to benchmark the business of agriculture (BBA). Started in late 2013, pilot studies are now underway in 10 countries, to be scaled up to 40 countries in 2014.The BBA builds on the Doing Business model and adapts it to agriculture. Despite a language that claims concerns for small- farmers, the goal of this new agriculture-focused ranking system is argued to aim at further opening countries’ agricultural sectors to foreign corporations. CODESRIA report the launch of a campaign to stop the Doing Business ranking. This is the ask of the OUR LAND, OUR BUSINESS campaign.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Many African countries, if not all, are located at the extreme end of what Immanuel Wallerstein thirty years ago termed the core-periphery relationship, a position which impoverishes them to the advantage of rich and industrialised countries in the core. In this paper the author argues that BRICS countries represent sub-imperialists trying to improve their relative location in the world system, perhaps moving toward imperialist power and thereafter even to imperialist superpower status. These countries have different levels of economic development and political influence, vested interests in the African continent and the DRC in particular, and geopolitical positions in world politics. But they all share four characteristics. First, BRICS countries present important opportunities for foreign direct investment that also impoverish people through dispossession of natural resources with little or no compensation, unequal shares of the costs and benefits of mega development projects, repayments of debts incurred to build these projects, and structural exclusion from accessing the outcomes of these initiatives. Second, BRICS countries are argued to share the same modus operandi: accumulation by dispossession. Third, BRICS countries are argued to share the same interests in natural resources including but not limited to mining, gas, oil and mega-dam projects for water and for electricity to meet their increasing demands for cheap and abundant electricity. Fourth, BRICS countries are argued to have poor records of environmental regulation, with virtually no commitment to mitigate climate change and invest in truly renewable energy, to take environmental impact assessments seriously, and to consult with and compensate adversely affected communities.
Africa has the highest disease burden in the world and continues to depend on pharmaceutical imports to meet public health needs. As Asian manufacturers of generic medicines begin to operate under a more protectionist intellectual property regime, their ability to manufacture medicines at prices that are affordable to poorer countries is becoming more circumscribed. The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health gives member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) the right to adopt legislation permitting the use of patented material without authorization by the patent holder, a provision known as "compulsory licensing". For African countries to take full advantage of compulsory licensing they must develop substantial local manufacturing capacity. Because building manufacturing capacity in each African country is daunting and almost illusory, the author argues that an African free trade area should be developed to serve as a platform not only for the free movement of goods made pursuant to compulsory licences, but also for an economic or financial collaboration towards the development of strong pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in the continent. Most countries in Africa are in the United Nations list of least developed countries, and this allows them, under WTO law, to refuse to grant patents for pharmaceuticals until 2021. Thus, the author argues that there is a compelling need for African countries to collaborate to build strong pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in the continent now, while the current flexibilities in international intellectual property law offer considerable benefits.
This paper presents a comprehensive mapping of governance efforts by international organizations to address counterfeit medicines, including analysis of related international treaties and conventions that may be applicable to anticounterfeit efforts. The paper reviews governance and global health diplomacy proposals from the literature that addresses counterfeit medicines. A number of international organizations have become active in addressing the global trade of counterfeit medicines. However, governance approaches by international organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Interpol and the World Customs Organization (WCO), have varied in scope and effectiveness. The authors argue that treaty instruments with applicability to counterfeit medicines have not been fully leveraged to combat this issue and argue that a formalized and multi-stakeholder governance mechanism is needed to address the issue, and that the UNODC should convene it.
By any reasonable definition, the majority of humanity is on the rack of poverty; and a major obstacle to its eradication is the growing threat of extreme and irreversible climate change. The coexistence of a chronic crisis of serious under-consumption for most with an increasingly critical environmental crisis resulting from over-consumption in aggregate can only be explained by extreme inequality in the global distribution of income. Resolving both simultaneously, as envisaged in the Post-2015 Agenda, requires a fundamental reconsideration of the nature and objectives of economic policy, and of the global economic system. The lecture discusses the extent and implications of global inequality, before building on a number of working hypotheses to outline an alternative model of economic development more conducive to the achievement of these two most fundamental global goals.
This work is a review of public sources including white papers, news and peer-reviewed literature with a focus on mainstream approaches used by the pharmaceutical industry (such as unaffordable price premiums for innovative medicines) and governments (such as denial of intellectual property rights) to support their interests. The authors also explore the implications of possible approaches on pharmaceutical policy in the context of global health diplomacy. The latter is a requirement for universal health coverage given the increasing power of state and non-state actors in emerging markets. The authors conclude that evidence and due processes, through inclusive and transparent priority-setting mechanisms, offer a reconciliatory way forward for both parties. Value-based pricing, underpinned by Health Technology Assessment (HTA), could leverage global health diplomacy to set priorities and resolve the perhaps unsustainable status quo. HTA is itself a diplomatic, consensus building and evidence-based approach that can help diffuse the current tension, enhance mutual understanding and perhaps help strengthen (or even mend) the current model of product development. Value-based pricing and HTA offer a potential priority setting mechanism that can serve as a transparent, non-adversarial platform for governments and the pharmaceutical industry to engage with each other and work towards enhancing access to medicines. Further quantitative research, exploring the impact of different policy-setting approaches by governments on medicine access using HTA, would strengthen this discourse.
Genetic Engineering of crops means that recombination DNA technology is used to insert, delete, transpose and substitute new genes in plants. The author notes that new gene products may serve as allergens capable of inducing illness in consumers. Antibiotic resistance genes are reported to be used to enable the selection of bacteria harbouring the desired gene, a technique which is thought to contribute to increasing resistance of bacteria to well established antibiotics such as penicillin, ampicillin, tetracycline and numerous others. The effect of the viral vector used in gene transfers on the environment, crops and individual consumers is not known. The author calls for an active regulatory guide by the United Nation Organization to safeguard the human population, the environment and life in general.
The Geneva-based South Centre has encouraged India and other developing countries "to continue to make full use of the TRIPS flexibilities for public health and other public policy objectives," consistent with their rights and obligations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
In a statement released here, the intergovernmental organisation of developing countries called on WTO Members to respect the legitimacy of the use of TRIPS flexibilities for public health in light of new threats of unilateral trade measures by the United States against India over its intellectual property (IP) laws and regulations. The South Centre statement cautioned that continued pressures by the United States on India and other developing countries "to adopt an IPRs [Intellectual Property Rights] regime that would go beyond the minimum standards in the TRIPS [Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights] Agreement and that does not make use of the flexibilities that are part of TRIPS would have adverse social and developmental effects, including on the public's access to medicines."
The world’s richest nations have admitted that global inequality is appalling. But, the author asks, are they prepared to radically tackle the capitalist system that harbours 'rich tax thieves and appropriators of labour', who increase their wealth with political favours? A system that safeguards the interests of the minority at the expense of the majority poor? The World Economic Forum (January 2014) said that the growing rich-poor income gap is the biggest risk the world is facing for the next decade. The author raises that inequality, the world system’s ‘gift’ to humanity, is not only a process active in poor countries. It is also a regular and integral part of advanced, matured capitalist economies. He cites the message of Pope Francis on the World Day of Peace pointing to the ‘new tyranny’ of ‘unfettered capitalism’ and calling for action ‘beyond a simple welfare mentality’saying: ‘I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor'. The author however calls for the pressure for change to come from the people, cautioning that the class interests of elites make a vow to fight inequality a day dream.
This paper by researchers at the International Monetary Fund appears to debunk a tenet of conservative economic ideology — that taxing the rich to give to the poor is bad for the economy. It incorporates recently compiled figures comparing pre- and post-tax data from a large number of countries. The authors say there is convincing evidence that lower net inequality is good economics, boosting growth and leading to longer-lasting periods of expansion. The study concludes that redistributing wealth, largely through taxation, does not significantly impact growth unless the intervention is extreme.