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Issue No. 345/346 (2020/3&4)
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COVER:
THE GREAT INEQUITY: Intellectual property barriers and rich countries' hoarding deprive poor countries of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments
India-South
Africa proposal for a waiver from certain obligations under the TRIPS
Agreement
India and South Africa have filed a waiver proposal before the
World Trade Organization which, if adopted, would provide the policy
space to take measures to ensure availability of COVID-19 medical products.
By Biswajit Dhar and K
M Gopakumar
TRIPS
waiver gains more support despite efforts to stall its passage
The India-South Africa proposal for a waiver from certain obligations
under the TRIPS Agreement is increasingly gaining support inside the
WTO despite relentless attempts by the US and some other developed countries
to stall its passage.
By D Ravi Kanth
UN
experts criticise countries for hoarding COVID-19 vaccines
A group of United Nations human rights experts has criticised some governments
that are trying to secure any future vaccine against COVID-19 only for
their own citizens.
By Kanaga Raja
North
gets bulk of COVID-19 medical supplies – UN report
Exports of medical equipment needed to deal with COVID-19 are mainly
flowing to the rich nations, a United Nations report has revealed.
By Lean Ka-Min
No
‘return to normal’: Why we need the People’s Vaccine
The People’s Vaccine initiative is a growing movement urging that when
safe and effective vaccines are developed, they be produced rapidly
at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of
charge.
Policy
platform for achieving equitable access to COVID vaccines
Warning that the threats, both nationally and internationally, to equitable
access to COVID vaccines are significant, the writers set out a policy
platform designed to address these threats.
By David G Legge and Sun
Kim
How
the ‘Oxford’ COVID-19 vaccine became the ‘AstraZeneca’ COVID-19 vaccine
The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine appears to be nothing more
than the product of a partnership between a non-profit medical research
institute and a wholly profit-oriented pharmaceutical corporation.
But the reality is more complex.
By Christopher Garrison
Patent
dispute looms as a major complication for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine
The patent dispute between Moderna, the American biotechnology company
producing the mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine, with Arbutus, a small Canadian
biotech company, may have an impact on the price, availability
and future funding of the vaccine.
By Edward Hammond
Pandemic
profiteers?: Publicly funded Vanderbilt University aims to make the
COVID-19 disaster its financial windfall
Antibodies from Vanderbilt, potential COVID-19 treatments whose discovery
was paid for by the public, have been turned into private property as
the University and its partner, the drug giant AstraZeneca, position
themselves to reap profits from the sale of expensive monoclonal antibody
(MAB) drugs.
By Edward Hammond
Vaccine
talk: Therapeutic development or a political game?
While the world is facing a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, global
interest has shifted from medications for treating the disease, towards
the race among many countries, companies and research centres around
the world to develop a vaccine.
By Heba Wanis
ECOLOGY
State
of play of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the absolute necessity to address
the growing inequality and inequity among countries and peoples and
to protect against the further destruction of nature.
By Lim Li Lin
Nature-based
solutions or nature-based seductions?
The writer unpacks the dangerous myth that nature-based solutions can
sufficiently mitigate climate change.
By Doreen Stabinsky
Pushing
the agribusiness agenda
The Gates Foundation is seeking to reshape the global landscape of food
and farming by relentlessly promoting agribusiness and biotechnology
interests.
Finding
traditional knowledge’s place in the digital sequence information debate
In biodiversity, agriculture and health, policy-makers are struggling
with a difficult knot of considerations as they seek a solution to the
access and benefit-sharing (ABS) issues posed by digital sequence information
(DSI).
By Edward Hammond
HEALTH
& SAFETY
Good
health care for all
To ensure good health care for everyone, concerted action is needed
to improve health services, boost governmental oversight and strengthen
public institutions.
By Andreas Wulf
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ECONOMICS
Recovering
better from COVID-19 will need a rethink of multilateralism
The global economy now mired in a deep recession and ravaged by a
pandemic cannot be set on the road to genuine recovery without a comprehensive
reform of the existing multilateral system.
By Richard Kozul-Wright
The
urgency of fiscal justice
Many developing countries are in danger of facing ‘a lost decade’ as
their pathways to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and
Paris Agreement on climate change targets are effectively derailed.
By Bhumika Muchhala
The
WTO agenda in the time of a pandemic: Aggravating constraints on policy
space
Many questions have been raised on whether the rules enshrined under
WTO agreements aid countries in facing the current crisis – both its
public health and economic aspects – or whether they impede their
responses.
By Kinda Mohamadieh
and Ranja Sengupta
WTO
fisheries subsidy negotiations being used to undermine sovereignty
and development
The precarious conditions for small-scale fishers place them in an
especially vulnerable situation in regard to the ongoing WTO negotiations
on fisheries subsidies.
By Adam Wolfenden
Global
poverty soars as billionaire wealth hits new highs
The projected increase in poverty would be the first since 1998, when
the Asian financial crisis shook the global economy.
By Thalif Deen
Could
US capitalism turn nationalist?
Trump’s nationalism is clear, but is US capitalism turning nationalist
too? Addressing this question, the writer traces the possible responses
open to capitalism as it confronts nationalism.
By Richard D Wolff
WORLD
AFFAIRS
Whose
century is it?
Whether President Trump and his team know it or not, the American
century is over, which doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to improve
the US position in the years to come.
By Dilip Hiro
Africa
and the geopolitics of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the vulnerability
of the seemingly powerful countries belonging to groupings such as
the G7, the G20 and NATO. If ever there was a time for African solidarity,
it is now.
By Gilbert M Khadiagala
and Bob Wekesa
International
negotiations by virtual means in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic
With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, in-person meetings and
negotiations in the major diplomatic centres have given way to ‘virtual
meetings’. However, the following article explains why there can be
no substitute for in-person negotiations.
By Vicente Paolo B Yu
III
Peace
plans that have nothing to do with peace
Attempts have been made to portray the recent normalisation of relations
between Israel and Bahrain and the UAE as a peace plan when it has
more to do with consolidation of US geopolitical power in the Middle
East.
By Ted Snider
HUMAN
RIGHTS
Dying
alone: When we stopped caring for Palestinian prisoners
There can be no doubt that since the 1990s, the issue of the prisoners
has been largely dropped from the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating
agenda.
By Ramzy Baroud
COVID-19
pandemic another threat to indigenous communities
The pandemic has generated a health, economic and cultural crisis,
where indigenous peoples are one of the most affected groups due to
the historical structural inequalities in which they live.
By Angel Mendoza
WOMEN
Overburdened,
exploited and carrying the emotional cost
Venezuelan women are the hardest hit by the US blockade.
By Maria Mercedes Cobo
TRIBUTE
Martin
Khor – a life spent fighting for a just global economy
Economist and journalist Martin Khor, whose life was cut short by
cancer on 1 April 2020, was a standout figure in the struggle for
a radical transformation of global economic relations.
By Arndt Hopfmann
ACTIONS
& ALTERNATIVES
Co-ops
can lay a path to just economies amid the COVID crisis
Cooperatives are showing greater resilience than traditional enterprises
in Argentina amid the COVID-19 crisis, producing COVID tests, masks
and disinfectant, and directly meeting the needs of their workers
and communities.
By Kristina Hille
POETRY
Cholera
The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Malaika (1923-2007) was moved to write the
following poem in the time of another devastating disease outbreak
– the 1947 cholera epidemic in Egypt which claimed more than 10,000
lives.
By Nazik al-Malaika
Third World Resurgence
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