Inter Press Service - December 15, 2002
Gustavo Capdevila

In the remaining days before the WTO begins its year-end recess, the institution's 144 member states face the daunting task of resolving the two contentious issues if they are to comply with the resolutions adopted by their trade ministers at the November 2001 conference in Doha, Qatar.

The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which covers pharmaceutical patents, may not be enacted to impede member countries from taking steps to protect the health of their citizens, according to the section of the Doha Declaration on the relationship between international trade rules and public health.

The Doha conference also commended the WTO to establish, before 2003, the necessary procedures for countries with zero or insufficient capacity to manufacture their own essential medications to take advantage of TRIPS provisions allowing for low-cost imports.

The agreement authorises governments, in cases of health emergencies, to grant licenses to produce otherwise patented drugs, though it recognises the royalty rights of the pharmaceutical corporations holding the corresponding patents.

The vast majority of developing countries lack the industrial infrastructure to take advantage of authorisation to manufacture needed drugs, such as those used in treating HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis.

And the Doha Declaration requires the WTO to regulate poor countries' access to generic medicines produced in other developing nations.

Generic drugs, which are identified by their active ingredient, not a brand name, are much cheaper than their patented equivalents. The big pharmaceutical companies, however, maintain that producing generic drugs is a form of piracy.

In the process of drafting the rules mandated in Doha, which extended throughout this year, disputes have dragged on, in large part due to the objections of the industrialised countries that are home to the transnational pharmaceutical giants.

One such controversy is related to determining which countries should be allowed to import generic drugs.

Argentina's chief negotiator at the WTO, Alfredo Chiaradia, commented that at the Doha meet the ministers did not establish different categories for the developing world.

However, several delegations from the North are attempting to differentiate the 49 nations that the international community recognises as the poorest from the rest of the developing countries.

The current chairman of the WTO General Council, Sergio Marchi, Canada's ambassador to the organisation, said late last week that "there needs to be some generosity and some understanding on the part of developing countries" in order to resolve the matter.

Marchi did not name names, but suggested that developing countries with higher incomes -- "they have the resources, and they have the capacity and some of them have the ability to manufacture" pharmaceuticals -- admit that this chapter of the Doha Declaration was not intended to benefit them.

The diplomat apparently was referring to South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, but a negotiator commented to IPS that countries like India, Brazil or South Africa could be included in that category. The latter three have led the international campaign of the last few years to gain access for poor countries to urgently needed medicines at low cost.

Talks about the text on developing countries importing generic drugs will continue in the coming days at the TRIPS Council, chaired by Mexican diplomat Eduardo Pérez Motta.

Marchi told a press conference Thursday that the final date for resolving differences is Dec 20, as that is the day the WTO wraps up its administrative activities until January, when the deadline set in Doha will have passed.

He urged the delegates to keep in mind the importance of the tasks at hand, admitting that, "collectively, maybe we have lost our way a bit."

One of the points in dispute is to establish which generic medications can be imported by developing countries.

Chiaradia and other negotiators have stressed that no restriction of any kind was agreed in Doha, but the United States is lobbying so that only drugs to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and certain other infectious diseases would be given this sort of authorisation.

The document that Pérez Motta is negotiating lays out some procedures for obtaining the right to pharmaceutical imports, but the developing countries complain they are too cumbersome.

Chiaradia says these rules set up a series of requirements that ultimately restrict the Doha mandate, and could even contradict it.

Marchi rejected the notion that industrialised countries are trying to block the developing worlds' access to medicine. "We don't want to impose new hardships and procedures for developing countries," he said.

"But at the same time we don't want any drugs or medicines intended for AIDS victims to not even leave the airport or to find themselves in some other rich markets or on the black market," said the Canadian diplomat, urging WTO members to "recognise the need for safeguards."

The mission agreed in Doha was to address "the poorest of the poor in the most remote places of the world to deliver affordable drugs in a most efficient way possible for people in need," recalled Marchi.

Another stumbling block in the WTO negotiations is the issue of "special and differential" treatment for developing countries, given the economic disparity between them and the industrialised world, which puts them at a disadvantage in trade terms.

The Committee on Trade and Development, chaired by Jamaica's ambassador Ransford Smith, is hammering out the necessary provisions for granting special and differential treatment. Industrialised countries have objected to proposals that seek to extend the benefit to all agreements of the multilateral trade system.

The matter was to have been resolved in July, but the deadline came and went without an agreement. Marchi announced that it has been extended to Dec 20.

In spite of the looming deadline and continued differences of opinion, the General Council chairman asserts that "the political will is still there" among the WTO member states to resolve the pending issues before the end of the week, the last chance to comply with the Doha mandate. (END/IPS/WD/IF-HE/TRA-SO LD/PC/MP/02)

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