[governance] Tangential + TWN Info: Please Stop Bullying the World's Poorest Countries

Mon Jun 10 08:25:40 EDT 2013

This links to intellectual property, as Gandhi said, how we treat the most
vulnerable is how to judge a civilisation... nice idea...

**
TWN Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Jun13/04)
7 June 2013
Third World Network
www.twn.my

*Please Stop Bullying the World's Poorest Countries
**By Matthew Kavanagh  *

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-kavanagh/please-stop-bullying-the-_b_3391927.html

This week, the Obama administration's trade agenda hit a bit of snag as the
nominee to be lead trade negotiator was challenged over holding a half
million
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3315ca8-cdcd-11e2-8313-00144feab7de.html#axzz2VMuViVDc>dollars
in offshore accounts. But as the President prepares to head for Africa this
month, that's largely a distraction from a much bigger fight that should be
more in the news: the U.S. bullying of least developed countries over
intellectual property rules.

In a move that has been roundly criticized by everyone from Doctors Without
Borders<http://http://www.msfaccess.org/about-us/media-room/press-releases/incoming-wto-director-general-urged-make-access-medicines>to
the world's
librarians
<http://http://www.eifl.net/eifl-statement-support-lcd-trips-waiver>and
the U.S.
technology industry <http://www.ccianet.org/?sid=5&artid=363&evtflg=False>,
the Obama administration has taken the position that least developed
countries must implement World Trade Organization rules on intellectual
property within the next five years. Haiti, Bangladesh, Lestotho, and other
Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have proposed an alternative: let the
poorest countries in the world focus on getting medicines to their people,
making textbooks available, and getting technologies to mitigate the
effects of climate change instead of creating patent offices and enforcing
the copyrights of multinational corporations. Their proposal simply
suggests least developed countries should implement WTO rules when they are
no longer officially "least developed." Remember these are the poorest
countries in the world -- not rising powers like India or South Africa --
countries classified by the UN as facing the most dire poverty. But U.S.
negotiators have rejected that and are strong-arming countries instead.

For those who (like most of the world) have not been following the WTO
recently as it has seemed to fade into irrelevance, a bit of background:
When the WTO agreement was signed, the members agreed that LDCs would not
have to implement the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS) agreement for a period of 10 years, which was extended for another
7 ½ years, but is now set to expire at the end of the month.

There is literally no clear
evidence<http://infojustice.org/archives/29370#_ftnref4>that
implementing a strong patent system helps poor countries. That's why
the U.S. refused to grant patents
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/05/we_were_pirates_too>on
British technology when we were a developing country and needed to build up
our industrial base. Today, LDCs are in exactly the same position, but the
U.S. is trying to foreclose the route that most countries in the world have
taken to prosperity. The promise in 1994 was that rich countries would help
LDCs to develop through transferring technology and help in their
development -- so that they would reach a level of prosperity that might
enable them to benefit from intellectual property rules. But it never
happened -- today LDCs are largely falling further and further behind the
wealthy world.

LDCs face massive development
challenges<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-kavanagh/www.unctad.org/en/Docs/presspb20118_en.pdf%E2%80%8E>:
More than half of the LDC population lives on less than $1.25 per day;
adult literacy rate in LDCs is on average at 60.7%; only about 5 out of 100
have access to the worldwide web. In fact, more than half of the LDC
population do not have access to electricity, water or sanitation
facilities. LDCs are also dealing with
<http://www.unohrlls.org/UserFiles/File/Elle%20Wang%20Uploads/UN_LDC_Factsheet_061610.pdf>natural
disasters from severe droughts to earthquakes and tsunamis along with
political instability.

Yet these are the countries that the Obama administration wants to focus on
implementing intellectual property rules?

There are important reasons that LDCs should not enact these outlandish
rules on IP. Not only is there no evidence it will help them grow, the
costs are incredibly high. Just to name a few areas of
concern<http://healthgap.org/s/LDC-extension-Fact-Sheet-Final.pdf>,
WTO rules would likely:

   - *Make life saving medicines too expensive:* LDCs, by definition, face
   substantial health problems, but TRIPS IP rules drive up the price of key
   medicines by allowing them to be patented. Life-saving technology gets put
   out of the reach of patients and national health programs.
   - *Condemn students to outdated books and software:* Both the
   distribution and translation of important books -- even out of date ones --
   are routinely blocked by copyright rules. LDC education budgets, though,
   can rarely afford new bulk purchase of copyrighted books, a reasonable
   selection of academic journals for universities, or licensed copies of
   software.
   - *Undermine farming & food systems:* As our Supreme Court showed last
   month, IP can hinder traditional farming practices by preventing free
   exchange of IP-protected seeds and varietals that will be increasingly
   essential in places facing soil depletion and food insecurity.
   - *Make it impossible to adapt green technologies to fit tropical and
   low-resource climates:* Is it illegal for Bangladesh, the most climate
   insecure country in the world due to sea-level rise and river flooding, to
   adapt Israeli-designed water filtration systems to work in a low-resource,
   tropical setting? Without permission of the multiple-patent holders it
   could be under TRIPS.

What makes this especially cynical is that, when the WTO rules were
negotiated, the LDCs were promised this would not happen. Anticipating that
it might take some countries a long time to reach prosperity (as it did for
the U.S.), the TRIPS Agreement (Article
66.1<http://infojustice.org/archives/29370://>)
says that the Least Developed Countries "SHALL" be granted an extensions if
they submit a "duly motivated request," which they did last November. But
instead of granting that extension without conditions, the U.S, is
extracting concessions.

Can the U.S. win this negotiating round? Of course -- the most powerful
country in the world vs. the weakest. But should it? No.

Members of the U.S. Congress have called on the Administration
<https://healthgap.squarespace.com/s/LDC-IPR-Waiver-Letter-to-USTR-FINAL-5-14-13-1.pdf>to
respect the rules of the game and support a full extension--not just a few
years. Civil society groups representing millions
agree.<http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CSO-Letter-Supporting-Extension-of-LDCs-Transition-Period.pdf>UN
agencies do
too<http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2013/february/20130226prtrips/>
.

The only ones who do not, it seems, are President Obama's diplomats in
Geneva. U.S. negotiators, it seems, do not know when its no longer ethical
to play hardball.
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