The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday called on the leaders of the Group of 20 nations to make progress in negotiations on a proposal to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines.
“We must act now to get all ambassadors to the table to negotiate a text,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said at the virtual G20 health summit. “We have to sit down and negotiate if we want to save lives.”
Two weeks ago, trade experts said WTO negotiations on a waiver of intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines could take months – provided they can overcome significant opposition from some member countries.
The talks also are likely to focus on a waiver that is significantly narrower in scope and shorter in duration than the one initially proposed by India and South Africa last October.
Prior to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision on Wednesday to back talks for a vaccine waiver, the two countries confirmed their intention to draft a new proposal after seven months of opposition.
WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala welcomed Biden’s move and urged talks on the new plan to start as soon as possible. “The world is watching and people are dying,” she added.
“At a minimum, it’s going to be a month or two,” Clete Willems, a former Trump White House trade official who previously worked at the U.S. trade mission to the WTO in Geneva, said of any possible agreement.
“Right now, there is no proposal on the table that would waive the TRIPS agreement simply for vaccines,” he said, referring to the WTO’s agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights that governs the transfer of property like movie rights or vaccine-manufacturing specifics.
A more realistic goal may be completion of the agreement in time for the WTO’s next ministerial conference, scheduled for Nov. 30 through Dec. 3, said Willems, now a trade partner at the Akin Gump law firm in Washington.
That would give vaccine producers more time to boost global supplies which could help contain the virus and ease pressure for the waiver.
The initial IP waiver proposal by India and South Africa last October included vaccines, treatments, diagnostic kits, ventilators, protective gear and other products needed to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reuters-
