August 2016

ECUADOR: TO DEMOCRATISE ACCESS TO HEALTH, MEDICINES VIA COMPULSORY LICENSING

It will continue to oppose stringent IPR rules that hinder access to medicine.

By D. Ravi Kanth

            Ecuador will pursue "progressive" policies for ensuring rapid "democratization of access to health and medicines" by using compulsory licenses for patented drugs, the country's foreign minister Mr Guillaume Long told reporters on 29 June.

            Ecuador, Mr. Long added, will continue opposing the proliferation of stringent intellectual property right (IPR) barriers in mega-trade agreements like Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

            After participating in several meetings at the United Nations Human Rights Council now in session here, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Long told reporters about several initiatives that his government is pursuing to stop "securitisation of human rights", including the denial of basic human rights by the British government to Julian Assange who was granted asylum by the Ecuadorian government in July 2012.

            "Securitisation of human rights and securitisation of finance are linked in many ways and they are the central pillars of the neoliberal economic order," Mr Long said.

            The nexus between these two neoliberal pillars are largely responsible for violation of basic human rights in almost every sphere of human activity, he told the SUNS after the press conference.

            Asked why Ecuador is planning to implement compulsory licenses for patented pharmaceutical drugs, Mr Long said "compulsory licenses and democratization of access to health and medicines form part of the progressive policy [that our government wants to pursue on a sustained basis]."

            Obviously, there are certain circumstances and criteria to fulfill before invoking compulsory licenses, the Ecuadorian foreign minister suggested.

            "As regards compulsory licences we are very much in compliance of the WTO provisions and we will implement them based on our priorities," he emphasized.

            "IPRs," he said, "is part of the new free trade agenda and an important neoliberal pillar."

            Elaborating further on the IPRs and how they are denying access to knowledge, the Ecuadorian minister said "IPRs play a massive role in the new mega-agreements - whether you look at TTIP or TPP, other continental agreements, IPRs are massive in addition to labour rights [and other extraneous provisions]."

            Although global citizens are in a "knowledge economy," they are also in "science and technology age and simultaneously, in a patent age."

            This patent age is not conducive for people-centered economic development and sharing of knowledge on an equitable basis, he suggested.

            "Unfortunately, for the last few decades, beginning from 1980s, patents have become much more recurrent and now patents are being issued even for changing colour, whereas before 1980s, patents were issued only when there is significant change and innovation," Mr. Long pointed out.

            There is greater privatization of knowledge and greater IPRs which affects countries with low level of innovation and development, Mr Long pointed out. Although knowledge and its sharing across nations has to be for a public good, the IPRs wrought anti-development changes in the world, he suggested.

            Therefore, "we need to strike the right balance so to ensure proper flow of knowledge [across nations]," Mr Long emphasized.

            In the beginning of the 20th century, he said, "an English national can patent a French invention and one can do everything as long as it is foreign and not national."

            But now patent rules ensure that "Global South" remains in a state of underdevelopment and this is the biggest challenge for developing countries, particularly in the area of pharmaceuticals, the Ecuadorian minister said.

            Meanwhile, in a separate development, a leading expert on globalization, who asked not to be quoted, severely criticized the World Trade Organization Director-General Roberto Azevedo for misleading members about trade restrictive measures and protectionism in its latest report.

            "Stoking up economic fear has in recent years been identified with a populist trend, so with these kind of unsubstantiated claims, it is fair to describe the WTO secretariat as the guardian of free trade populism," the expert told the SUNS.

            "And like other forms of populism it appears incapable of holding a consistent line," the expert argued.

            "A few days before its protectionist report, Mr. Azevedo himself was warning the British electorate that opting out of the EU would mean having to renegotiate all trade deals from scratch," the expert maintained.

            "This would seem an odd position for the head of the WTO to take -- even beyond the questionable effort by an international bureaucrat to interfere in a sovereign country's democratic process – given that such a proposal would be much more threatening to world trade than whether or not trucks on the Russian-Kazak border are being stopped to see what GPS system they are using," the expert argued.

            "Surely, as head of the World Trade Organisation, he should simply have been promising to do all in his power to maintain the open borders that the UK had worked to achieve in recent years, not threaten administrative chaos if an electorate failed to do the bidding of his neo-liberal buddies in Bruxelles," the expert maintained.

            "But perhaps we shouldn't really be too surprised by this kind of inconsistency, given that neo-liberalism is the ideology of choice for the emperor with no clothes," the expert said.

            "In reality, the main reason why the trading system is in bad shape today is also one of the main reasons why so many working people in the UK went for Brexit, namely, the promotion of a failed economic agenda by an unaccountable elite promoting itself as the upholders of the global public good," the expert argued.

            "British Chancellor George Osborne's turn to austerity economics was a continuation of years of neo-liberal adjustment in the UK that has left many cities and communities outside London in a blighted if not derelict state of affairs," the expert added.

            "As even the IMF now seems willing to acknowledge, the benefits from this agenda have largely flowed up to a small minority at the top of the income ladder, while the adjustment costs of embracing a more open world economy have been borne by those at the bottom of the pile. Stagnant wages, indebted households, and under-funded public services will eventually produce a backlash regardless of how well political elites in London and Bruxelles say things are going.

            "Brexit is a local demonstration of where this route can lead. But with this as a trend across the advanced economies, it should not be surprising that there is insufficient demand in the global economy to underpin a healthy global trading system."

            "In short, the time has come for developing countries to raise a banner against neoliberal policies," as suggested by the Ecuadorian foreign minister, the expert added. – Third World Network Features.

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About the author: D. Ravi Kanth is a journalist with the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS).

The above article is reproduced from the SUNS #8273, 30 June 2016.

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