A stake in the WTO medicine

Arab countries are gearing up for the forthcoming WTO conference in Doha, where, as Dina Ezzat reports, the developing countries will once again have to face up to the challenge of exclusion
In coordination with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Economic and Social Commission of Western Asia (ESCWA), representatives of Arab states signatory to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are planning to meet in early September in Geneva as part of the preparations for the upcoming WTO ministerial meeting. This meeting is scheduled to take place in Doha, Qatar in November.
The Doha meeting is already causing much debate in the corridors of the WTO due to its anticipated impact -- largely expected to be negative -- on the world economy, particularly in the case of the developing countries.
Late last month UNCTAD arranged for a similar meeting in Geneva. The objective of that get-together, and others planned ahead of the Doha meeting, was to review the potential agenda for WTO's November conference and prepare a unified, or at least semi-unified, Arab position on central issues.
The WTO ministerial conference in Doha is the first since the collapse of the Seattle meeting in November 1999. Its agenda includes a review of the state of the world economy with a particular focus on the status of WTO and the need to combat protectionism. Global economic coherence and sustainable development are also on the agenda, which may be extended to include other issues.
As far as Arab countries are concerned, these are all important issues. But the most important issue that will be raised in Doha, from the Arab perspective, is probably that of implementation.
Implementation of WTO provisions has not been easy. This has been due primarily to the burdens these provisions entail or their lack of clarity. Such challenges are highlighted by the implementation of the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which affects a wide range of products, the most sensitive of which is medicine.
A grace period is currently in force for developing countries prior to the full implementation of TRIPS. However, delegates meeting in Geneva late last month for the UNCTAD-sponsored meeting and for a special session on TRIPS and pharmaceuticals that was held by the WTO at around the same time, voiced serious concerns about the economic and social burdens implementation will impose on their countries.
"Implementation should be the key subject in Doha," was the kind of statement reiterated by Arab delegates who believe that WTO ministers need to assess seriously the difficulties of implementation and work on realistic strategies for overcoming them. For this to happen, it is being argued that the Doha meeting needs to find a way to end the ongoing exclusion of developing countries from the process of elaborating international standards. Developing countries are being asked, if not forced, through the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, to comply with these standards irrespective of the fact that conformity in many instances is beyond the technical and financial capacities of many developing WTO member states.
"The developing countries are forced to comply with WTO standards even though the WTO-declared objective of a larger export market share and better living standards for people [in developing countries] is not being met," commented Ambassador Saad El-Farargi, the permanent representative of the Arab League to Geneva-based UN organisations.
A recent World Development Report by the World Bank shows that 1.2 billion people live in dire poverty. Meanwhile, 11 million people die each year from preventable and treatable infectious diseases, largely due to the inaccessibility of medicine. The continued inconsistency in application of WTO provisions, particularly in relation to TRIPS, is expected to worsen, not improve, this situation in which a good number of Arab states are victimised.
"The particular case of medicines is very significant and the stories behind it are many and also very telling," commented Bahaa Fayez, a member of the Egyptian delegation that took part in the WTO special session on TRIPS and medicines. According to Fayez, the question that looms in the minds of many people in the Arab world, and elsewhere in the developing world, is "whether the 10-year transitional period is sufficient for the transformation of a typical developing country towards being able to apply the same rules to obtain reasonably similar results as developed countries."
Delegates meeting in Geneva late last month tended to agree that the answer to this question is no. They also tended to agree that in addition to more time they also need additional clarification on certain provisions, particularly those related to aspects of TRIPS that allow for flexibility in its implementation. TRIPS provides for compulsory licensing of certain patents in situations where national health security is jeopardised. It also allows parallel imports at lower prices in emergency situations.
Other matters developing countries say they need clarifications for include the rules that have been allowing drug companies to practice transfer pricing in the trade of raw materials used in the manufacture of drugs in a manner that raises the cost of medicines in developing countries. They also include the provisions that allow patent holders of new life-saving drugs a 20- year period in which they hold exclusive rights for manufacturing, distribution and sales.
The developed countries, particularly those with large pharmaceutical industries, such as the US and Switzerland, are not eager to provide such clarifications. "In fact there was clear opposition from these countries to the convocation of the special session on TRIPS and medicines that took place a few days ago," commented Ambassador Fayza Abul-Naga, Egypt's permanent representative to Geneva-based UN organisations.
Meanwhile, the EU is expected to use clarification requests made by developing countries as an opportunity to turn the Doha ministerial council into a round of renegotiations in the hope of rewriting certain WTO provisions. "The EU wants to use Doha as an opportunity to rewrite provisions related to TRIMS [Trade-related investment measures] by which foreign investors would be granted rights equal to those of investors who are nationals in Third World countries," commented one Arab delegate. He added, "We expect Doha to help us overcome this problem by encouraging the necessary coherence in global economic policy- making that could achieve consistency between national policies and international commitments."
In the absence of such coherence, WTO provisions, particularly TRIPS, will continue to face the legitimacy crisis which has caused anti-WTO riots throughout the world, even though the Doha meeting itself, due to obvious logistical considerations, is unlikely to witness such demonstrations.
Recommend this page
Related stories:
WTO prospects 5 - 11 July 2001
Monopoly on life 5 - 11 July 2001
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor