WASHINGTON, D.C. – Leading U.S. organizations today joined their South African and Indian counterparts in urging their government to reject a recently-leaked alternative to a waiver of World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property barriers that recently leaked. In a letter, the groups called on President Joe Biden to redouble U.S. efforts to urgently enact a waiver to boost production of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests necessary to save lives and stabilize the global economy.
“This text is just another rehash of the EU’s efforts to thwart the very concept of a waiver, despite support for it by almost all other WTO nations. The text restates existing WTO rules that have proved unsuitable for boosting COVID-19 supplies as if they were new, and then imposes burdensome new conditions on nations seeking to use the existing flexibilities,” the letter notes.
The letter notes the leaked text would not achieve any of the goals of the intellectual property waiver a large majority of the world’s governments have demanded. Instead the text is limited to only COVID vaccines, not tests and treatments, and includes severe limits on what countries it applies to.
Letter signers include Doctors Without Borders, Partners In Health, Oxfam America, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Public Citizen, Health GAP, Knowledge Ecology International, Treatment Action Group, NETWORK, Citizens Trade Campaign, Trade Justice Education Fund and ReThink Trade. European civil society organizations today also wrote to EU and EU member-country officials, urging them to desist from pushing others to support the leaked WTO text.
“If adopted as-is, this text, while continuing to privilege Big Pharma monopolies and profits, would continue to deny access to lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines and treatments to millions around the world. Thus, absent major improvements, we urge you to reject this text,” the U.S. letter states.