Health equity in economic and trade policies

Africa’s development agenda beyond 2015 was at the heart of discussions at the 15th International Economic Forum in Africa: “Africa beyond 2015”, in Berlin in September 2015. According to the OECD, Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to strengthen to 2016 but poverty and hunger rates remain stubbornly high, progress in health and education is uneven, and huge inequalities persist between and within countries, and between women and men. Furthermore, low productivity and investment as well as weak or non-existent infrastructure are holding back economic and development progress. A panel of African leaders suggested that regional development strategies and local assets provide possible solutions to these challenges, and discussed special economic zones, economic corridors, strategies for lagging regions and slum upgrading for promoting regional development, overcoming spatial inequalities, mobilising local resources and creating productive employment opportunities. The importance of the Common African Position on the Post-2015 Development Agenda “to speak with one voice and to act in unity to ensure that Africa’s voice is heard and is fully integrated into the global development agenda,” was highlighted.

The author writes that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is firmly located in an old ethical order which puts profit over people; where those in power make the rules to suppress the powerless; and where this iniquitous and unjust world “order” (disorder) is legitimised by the ideology of neoliberalism. He states that progressive people must defy this iniquitous system and overturn it as it is not reformable. He observes that it is one that could be neutralised if Africa was united to challenge the WTO and the "Big and Powerful". At the Seattle WTO Ministerial in November 1999 Africa and the global South neutralised the WTO with the help of world peoples' movements fighting for justice for the weak in the international trading system. The Tenth Ministerial Conference (MC10) of the WTO in Nairobi is not just Africa’s war. Trade negotiations in Geneva are said to be carried out in a "surreal" atmosphere where the forest is missed for the trees. In this piece the author argues that the Nairobi negotiations will be behind closed doors where the 'Empire' will use all means at its command to secure a "consensus" that serves its interest and where those from the grassroots resist being drawn into that consensus if that does not do justice to grassroots people and communities. He notes that economics is girded firmly in the politics of power and that power, in turn, is legitimised by an ideology, in this case the ideology of neoliberalism. Those who are fighting for justice thus have to tackle all three levels – economic, political and ideological.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of right to culture recommended a new intellectual property regime for pharmaceutical products stressing that there is no human right to patent protection. This recommendation was made in the report to the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly. The Special Rapporteur recommended that “the United Nations should convene a neutral, high-level body to review and assess proposals and recommend a new intellectual property regime for pharmaceutical products that is consistent with international human rights law and public health requirements, and simultaneously safeguards the justifiable”. This is drawn from the recommendation of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law appointed by the UN Development Programme (UNDP). The report also recommends that states have a positive obligation to provide for a robust and flexible system of patent exclusions, exceptions and flexibilities based on domestic circumstances, including through the establishment of compulsory and government use licences when needed. The report further argues that states have a human rights obligation not to support, adopt or accept intellectual property rules, such as TRIPS-Plus provisions, that would impede them from using exclusions, exceptions and flexibilities and thus from reconciling patent protection with human rights. International agreements that do not provide sufficient flexibility should be renounced or modified. The report highlights Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which ensure that measure be put in place to ensure affordability of and access to technologies essential to life and realisation of all human rights.

The mining industry in South Africa is argued by the authors to contribute significantly to the hardship experienced by black women in rural areas of South Africa. For decades, mining houses have drawn in young black men for labour. Those who have contracted the preventable but incurable lung disease, silicosis, come home to die a slow and painful death. It is then the women in rural communities who are left to provide support and care under the most adverse conditions. As part of its efforts to support pending litigation against the mining industry to secure long overdue compensation to mineworkers who contracted silicosis and for the women who took care of them, Sonke Gender Justice (Sonke) has been conducting research in the rural Eastern Cape. The research is making visible how the gold mining industry’s failure to prevent silicosis has forced rural black women further into the margins of society. There are several ongoing cases on this. The Legal Resources Centre, Richard Spoor Attorneys and Abrahams Kiewitz are representing 56 applicants in a class action lawsuit where current and former mineworkers and surviving dependants of mineworkers who died from the disease are demanding their right to compensation for silicosis and TB contracted in mines. The case will be heard in the South Gauteng High court in October 2015.