Few people are aware how much national and regional food systems are impacted by international policies and trade rules is on national and regional food systems—this report makes these links and offers alternative responses. It also addresses agriculture and global warming, how to move organic and local food models forward, and discusses other emerging issues as well. The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) is a research and educational institution comprised of leading scholars, economists, researchers, and activists from around the globe.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
The rise and predictable fall of globalized industrial agriculture: A report from the international forum on globalization
Barker D: International Forum on Globalization (IFG), 2007
WTO Offers New Proposal to Break Deadlock
Mekay E: IPS News, 17 July 2007
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has proposed a new plan to unlock global trade talks that have stalled over farm subsidies in rich countries and reluctance by poor nations to further open their markets for Western goods and services without reciprocation from industrialised nations. But analysts who studied the new text warned that it still leaves rich countries' trade protections largely intact, while giving poor nations little in return.
Does the TRIPS agreement strike the right balance?
Charveriat C, Bale H: WTO Forum Video Debate
This video debate asks: 'Does the TRIPS agreement strike the right balance between the rights of governments and the rights of patent holders?'
EU confronts its unhealthy policy
South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) 6299, 24 July 2007
The European Union's only directly elected institution is at loggerheads with the bloc's 27 governments over a measure officially designed to ensure that poor countries have access to affordable medicines. In 2003, the EU helped broker a temporary waiver to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) agreement on intellectual property rights, which is known by the acronym TRIPS. Meeting on July 17, however, the European Parliament's committee on international trade decided to delay giving its assent to ratification because it is not satisfied that the EU is doing enough to boost the supply of vital drugs to the needy.
Globalization and social determinants of health: Introduction and methodological background (part 1 of 3)
Labonté R and Schrecker T: Globalization and Health 3:5, 19 June 2007
Globalisation is a key context for the study of social determinants of health (SDH). Broadly stated, SDH are the conditions in which people live and work, and that affect their opportunities to lead healthy lives. This first article of a three-part series, describes the origins of the series in work conducted for the Globalization Knowledge Network of the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health and in the Commission's specific concern with health equity. This paper explains the rationale for defining globalisation with reference to the emergence of a global marketplace, and the economic and political choices that have facilitated that emergence. It identifies a number of conceptual milestones in studying the relation between globalisation and SDH over the period 1987–2005, and shows that because globalisation comprises multiple, interacting policy dynamics, reliance on evidence from multiple disciplines (transdisciplinarity) and research methodologies is required. So, too, is explicit recognition of the uncertainties associated with linking globalisation – the quintessential "upstream" variable – with changes in SDH and in health outcomes.
Globalization and social determinants of health: Promoting health equity in global governance (part 3 of 3)
Labonté R and Schrecker T: Globalization and Health 3:5, 19 June 2007
This article is the third in a three-part review of research on globalisation and the social determinants of health (SDH). The third article of the series discusses how interventions to reduce health inequities by way of SDH are inextricably linked with social protection, economic management and development strategy.
Globalization and social determinants of health: The role of the global marketplace (part 2 of 3)
Labonté R and Schrecker T: Globalization and Health 3:5, 19 June 2007
This second article of the series identifies and describes several, often interacting clusters of pathways leading from globalisation to changes in SDH that are relevant to health equity. These involve: trade liberalization; the global reorganization of production and labour markets; debt crises and economic restructuring; financial liberalization; urban settings; influences that operate by way of the physical environment; and health systems changed by the global marketplace.
Rwanda: Country notifies WTO of plan to import cheap, generic Aids drugs
Rwanda News Agency, 21 July 2007
Rwanda plans to import a generic HIV/AIDS medicine made in Canada, making it the first country to test a WTO waiver on drug patents. In a submission to the WTO, the country said it expects over the next two years to buy 260,000 packs of TriAvir, a fixed-dose combination of widely used anti-AIDS drugs lamivudine, zidovudine and nevirapine. The generic product is manufactured in Canada by Apotex Inc. This essentially means Rwanda has invoked a never-before-used August 2003 waiver to WTO's intellectual property rules, meant to allow poor countries with public health problems to import generics when they cannot manufacture the drugs themselves.
TRIPS, the Doha declaration and paragraph 6 decision: what are the remaining steps for protecting access to medicines?
Bradford Kerry V and Lee K: Globalization and Health 3:3, 24 May 2007
The World Trade Organisation's Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (known as the Doha Declaration) of 2001, and subsequent Decision on the Interpretation of Paragraph 6 reached in 2003, affirmed the flexibilities available under the Agreement on Trade Related Property Rights (TRIPS) to member states seeking to protect public health. Despite these important clarifications, the actual implementation of these measures to improve access to medicines remains uncertain. There are also concerns that so-called TRIPS-plus measures within many regional and bilateral trade agreements are further undermining the capacity of the poor to access affordable medicines.
Balancing intellectual monopoly privileges and the need for essential medicines
Martin G, Sorenson C, Faunce T: Globalization and Health 3:4, 12 June 2007
This issue of Globalization and Health presents a paper by Kerry and Lee that considers the TRIPS agreement and the recent policy debate regarding the protection of public health interest, particularly as they pertain to the Doha Declaration. This editorial considers the debate, examines issues of enacting, implementing and monitoring TRIPS provisions and identifies questions that should be considered by key stakeholders in ongoing discussions.