In a response to critiques of the 2016 Alternative Mining Indaba, the Bench Marks Foundation asserts their commitment to a popular movement of workers and poor people in contesting corporate power and elite control over mining processes. The authors define their approach as evidence or research-based activism, accompanied by community organising and monitoring of corporate conduct with the view of challenging corporate power and continuing to agitate wherever power lies. To date, they have followed an advocacy strategy built on research, community organising, building alliances with organised workers and other communities. The organisers of the Alternative Mining Indaba argue that it is a time for governments to rededicate themselves with concrete deeds to protect and prevent harm for poor people.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Leaders at the G8 conference in Italy have made very cautious commitments with regard to the top issue, climate change, but views on intellectual property rights enforcement began to become clear on the second day. Leaders called for a firm push for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is unchanged from the past. The G8 IP Expert Group (IPEG) reaffirmed the 2000 Okinawa Charter commitment on use of software in full compliance with intellectual property rights that addresses public authorities. It also called on all states to step up consideration about how to combat digital piracy on the internet, which the IPEG sees as growing problem. And it presented the ‘G8 Model Arrangement on Bilateral Information Sharing for Fighting Counterfeiting and Piracy’ to allow the exchange of information between national authorities. Leaders also urged completion of the round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization’s meeting later this year.
This report includes the draft version of the Joint Africa-Europe Strategy (JAES) Action Plan 2011-2013 for the Partnership on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which commits the European Community and African Union (AU) partnership to several health actions and goals, focused on implementing the Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA), increasing human resources for health in Africa and ensuring that governments meet their Abuja commitment to allocate 15% of spending on health. Certain goals are provided. By 2013, CARMMA must have been launched in all 53 AU Members States and its strategy implemented in at least 25 Members States. By 2013, more AU Member States should have improved access to HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria services by implementing the ‘Abuja Call’ with its new set indicators aligned with those of MDG 6. Finally, by 2013, more Member States must have strengthened their health systems through improved human resources for health strategies.
The EPA negotiations in different regions will, or are likely to, include liberalisation of trade and investment in services. Liberalisation of services can have far reaching consequences. Since Article 5 in the GATS requires that regional agreements have to have "substantial sectoral coverage" and eliminate "substantially all discrimination", many services sectors will be included in EPAs that liberalise services, even if Art.5 allows developing countries to liberalise less than developed countries in a free trade agreement. As this is done at the end of the EPA negotiation period, this is a dangerous process because experience has shown that if liberalisation of services is done too swiftly without the necessary assessments and regulations, there might be many negative consequences.
Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are likely to harm regional integration between developing countries, without achieving significant liberalisation of trade between the EU and ACP countries, according to new research by Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan at the Institute of Development Studies. EPAs are new trade agreements being negotiated by the European Union to regulate trade between the EU and the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) group of developing countries. Following the recent publication of the Commission for Africa report, the UK Government argued that EPAs should not be used to force open ACP markets. New IDS research indicates that it will be feasible to achieve this aim, without falling foul of the WTO, if the EU sticks to its recent practice in negotiations with other countries. The evidence from examining the detailed situation of ACP states suggests that most of them can avoid rapid or substantial liberalisation, thereby protecting fledgling domestic industries.
This resolution was adopted by the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Council of Ministers during their meeting in Brussels on 8-10 November 2010. It makes no explicit references to health, but the inclusion of health may be inferred by references to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), food insecurity and development aid. The Council re-affirmed the need to develop objective criteria that will be used to determine the parameters to enable the conclusion and implementation of the economic partnership agreements (EPAs). These criteria may be linked to a number of areas, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agricultural production, and the level of official development aid. The Council calls on the European Union to demonstrate maximum flexibility on all the outstanding contentious issues, with a view to resolving them and thereby affording the ACP States and regions the opportunity to grow economically, particularly in the context of south-south trade, and allow for maximum use of policy space for development purposes. The Council requests that the EU include a specific safeguard clause for agriculture in the framework of the EPAs while maintaining the possibility of resorting to the Special Safeguard Mechanism during WTO negotiations, to help protect small farmers and maintain food security in the ACP regions.
This collection of essays assesses how the world is doing in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The lead essay, 'Regaining Momentum,' notes that, while several of the MDGs are within reach, the global economic crisis has set back progress toward a number of the targets, especially those related to health. Developing countries will need the support of advanced economies in to get back on track. In other essays, economist Jagdish Bhagwati calls into question the premise of the MDGs and economists Arvind Panagariya and Rodney Ramcharan debate on how important it is to fight inequality.
In this brief, the Centre for Health Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) argues that anti-counterfeit measures are not an appropriate policy measure for curtailing the spread of substandard and falsified products, including medicines. The likely impact of the draft EAC Anti-Counterfeit Bill (2010) will be huge implementation costs through monitoring and settling international trade disputes. In addition, intellectual property rights (IPR) border controls and criminalising possession and trade in IPR infringing goods deters overall trade, in both IPR infringing goods and non-infringing goods. CEHURD notes that IPR-related “anticounterfeiting” action in the form of confiscated shipments of generic medicines reveals a pro-IPR bias and is being used to disrupt the flow of generics to developing countries instead of addressing more important issues of quality, safety and efficacy of generic medicines. The brief highlights the importance of distinguishing between generics, substandard medicines and counterfeit medicines. The TRIPS Agreement uses the term “counterfeit” only in the context of criminal trademark infringements that are wilful and on a commercial scale. CEHURD argues that there is a critical need to find legislative and policy approaches that would reduce the spread of such illicit, unregistered, and unsafe products without hindering access to good quality, safe and efficacious medicines - particularly legitimate and affordable generics of assured quality.
This article refers to a forthcoming analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations. The analysis identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The work, to be published later in 2012 in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1,318 companies with interlocking ownerships, each of which had ties to two or more other companies, and on average connections to 20 companies. Although they represented only 20% of global operating revenues, the 1,318 appeared to collectively own through their shares most of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – referred to by the authors as the “real” economy – representing a further 60% of global revenues. Further analysis of the web of ownership revealed that much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies that control 40% of the total wealth in the network – these companies include financial giants like Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs. Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make the global economy more stable, the author argues, adding that we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level. The author argues that firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to prevent power being concentrated in the hands of a few.
At a formal meeting of the regular session of the TRIPS Council on 24-25 October 2011, Member States conducted their annual review of the implementation of the ‘Paragraph 6’ solution in respect of the TRIPS Agreement and public health. The solution aims to help developing countries with insufficient or no pharmaceutical manufacturing capacities to import cheaper generic medicines produced under compulsory licensing. Ecuador and Venezuela continued to argue that, since the system has only been used once, it is too complicated to be effective, while other Member States questioned whether it is working and said they need more information. Members also agreed to extend the period for acceptance of the protocol amending the TRIPS Agreement (of 2005) for a further two years – till 31 December 2013 – until two thirds of World Trade Organisation (WTO) Members accept the amendment, which is required for it to take effect. Discussions were also held on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), during which India, the world’s largest generic manufacturer, stressed that ACTA border measures constituted a grave threat to trade in generics. India argued that ACTA is not legitimate, as it bypasses the multilateral processes of WTO or the World Intellectual Property Organisation and goes far beyond the enforcement levels laid down in the TRIPS Agreement. It noted that ACTA proposals that are underway could undermine the provisions and flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement by requiring patentability of new uses and minor variations of older known drugs, resulting in indefinite lengthening of the patent life and undermine the generics industry.