Kenya, the third-biggest African market for Indian medicines, is planning a new legislation against ‘counterfeiting’ that could seriously jeopardise India’s medicine exports to that country. Domestic industry fears that other African nations may follow suit. The Anti-Counterfeit Bill, 2008, placed before the Kenyan parliament recently, indicates that copies or generic versions of all products having patent protection in Kenya or elsewhere can be considered ‘counterfeit’ in case of an intellectual property dispute. Since a majority of medicines manufactured by Indian companies are under patent protection in some country or the other (though they do not enjoy patent protection in India or Kenya), the definition, in its current form, can be misused to delay or prevent supply of low-cost generic medicines to Kenya, industry experts fear.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) has urged every government attending Doha to reform the global economic system in more democratic forums so the people affected by poverty have a full and equal say. A new financial architecture must deal with global imbalances, the need for government regulation and interventions for each developing country. GCAP was represented at the Financing for Development meeting in Doha by members of the Feminist Taskforce and Arab region, African, Asian and European coalition members and co-chairs. The long-term solution to the financial crisis requires much more than re-establishing rich countries’ economies and bailing out banks. The world needs solutions for a new financial and trade architecture that could provide for the poor and often voiceless people in the world.
The top executives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – both Bretton Woods Institutions – have decided not to attend the much-vaunted UN-sponsored Doha conference on Financing for Development. The decision is all the more startling because there remains a clear need for a swift and broad-based response to the financial crisis. By failing to attend the summit, both institutions certainly undermine their claims to leadership. Some observers have interpreted this as a show of contempt for the issues the poorest countries – especially those who did not participate in the G20 Summit on November 15 – may raise about international financial reform. Their conspicuous absence is typical of an approach that favours elitism and ‘club-based’ decision-making over inclusive processes.
This paper seeks to explain the policy-based lending progamme of the World Bank (WB), and the significance of its engagement with developing economies, Africa in particular. The authors find that the Bank, through its policy-based lending, dictates key policies to borrowing countries, thus eroding their autonomous police space and their ability to evolve economic policies best suited to their particular ecologies and peculiar circumstances. The risk of incurring the wrath of the Bank – which will make it to declare such a country non-creditworthy – is often too much for borrowing countries to bear. Clearly, a new model of development will have to emerge from popular political and class struggles at all levels of national and international communities, including the African Union (AU) and the enlarged G77.
This new book provides extensive evidence and data in accessible format for researchers and policymakers in the field of intellectual property rights and gives background information on the origins of the TRIPS Agreement for readers new to the subject. For scholars of international political economy and law, it is the first detailed exploration of the links between global IP politics and the implementation of IP reforms. It exposes how power politics occur not just within global trade talks but afterwards when countries implement agreements. The Implementation Game will be of interest to all those engaged in debates on the global governance of trade and intellectual property.
Confronted with longstanding assertions that World Trade Organization rules intended to bring greater access to medicines to poor countries are not working, WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said discontented members should use the annual review of those rules if they have a complaint. In August 2003, the WTO General Council called for a resolution to the problem of countries lacking pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities but who need to obtain cheaper medicines through a compulsory license. They created a waiver to the WTO rule that products manufactured under compulsory license must be substantially all for the domestic market. Only Rwanda has so far used the Paragraph 6 process and Lamy said no country had raised any significant concern in the annual review. But an official at the speech questioned the validity of the review process and suggested that no real review had taken place. Health activists have repeatedly said the waiver is too cumbersome to be useful and effective.
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.
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.