 |
||
|
TWN Info Service on Health Issues (Sep25/04) EU's PABS Hybrid Model Incompatible with Article 12 of the Pandemic Agreement Geneva, 18 September – Eleven legal experts submitted a legal brief to the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) negotiating the Annex to the WHO Pandemic Agreement examining the compatibility of the proposed “hybrid model” for the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System with Article 12 of the Pandemic Agreement. The experts work across global health, international law, intellectual property, human rights and access to medicines, affiliated with the Third World Network (TWN), AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) and its Global Public Health Institute, Georgetown University, the University of Warwick, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Fundación GEP in Argentina, and the Kenya Legal & Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN), alongside independent legal experts. The submission argues that the hybrid model, proposed by the European Union in the context of the negotiations, is incompatible with the requirements already agreed by Member States under Article 12, including legal certainty, access and benefit sharing on an equal footing, traceability, accountability, and biosafety and biosecurity. They call IGWG negotiators to remove the proposed “green” and “orange” access modalities from consideration and instead focus on mechanisms consistent with Article 12, including user registration, traceability and standard contracts that establish benefit-sharing obligations at the point of access.
|
||
