Time is running out to expand an agreement to relax patent rules on COVID vaccines. Members of the World Trade Organization should broaden its scope to treatments and tests.
The World Trade Organization reached an agreement on fisheries subsidies, prohibiting member countries from funding illegal fishing and fishing of overexploited stocks at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva on June 17.
(Fabrice Coffrini/Pool Photo/Keystone via AP)
There is a need for nuanced discussions around the role of fisheries subsidies — even those that may be nominally harmful — to avoid further inequity and marginalization of small-scale fishers.
India’s minister of commerce Piyush Goyal and WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala celebrate the end of the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference.
Fabrice Coffrini/Pool/Keystone via AP
Meeting for the first time since 2017, the WTO’s highest decision-making body managed to agree on some things – including its first treaty with environmental protection as the objective.
Global Justice campaigners in London stand by fake coffins to highlight global COVID-19 deaths. If pharma companies waived intellectual property rights, it would be easier for low- and middle-income countries to access COVID-19 vaccines.
(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
Ronald Labonte, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Waiving patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines and drugs is still crucial to ensure access globally, but the waiver on the table at the June World Trade Organization meeting doesn’t do the job.
Only 14% of people in poorer countries have received one vaccine dose, but a leaked WTO ‘solution’ to waive patents fails to ensure developing countries can access life-saving vaccines and medicines.
Russian-made goods will likely cost more in Western liquor stores if most-favored-nation status is removed.
AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar
The US, Japan and other wealthy G-7 nations plan to remove Russia’s status as a most-favored nation. A trade expert explains what that term means and what might happen next.
Containers are seen stacked at a port in Qingdao in China’s eastern Shandong province on Jan. 14, 2020.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
Large-scale job losses in the US due to trade with China will lead to enduring demographic and political aftershocks without the implementation of policies that promote widespread job growth.
With the World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial Conference – arguably its most important ever – happening next week, attempts to keep it ‘on life support’ may be counterproductive.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing in December 2017.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Canada is conspicuously absent from the new security pact signed between the U.S., the U.K. and Australia on China. Is it time for Canada to take a page from the Australian playbook on managing China?
Industrial fishing trawlers stocking up on unsustainable quantities of fish.
(Shutterstock)
The WTO is set to wrap up negotiations on harmful fisheries subsidies This could help rebuild the oceans’ fish stocks, and support the communities that rely on them.
Two members of the G-7 exchange an elbow bump.
Phil Noble, Pool via AP
Australia’s Prime Minister wants reform of the World Trade Organization to rein in China’s ‘economic coercion’. But it also needs to constructively engage with China on that reform.
Anita Anand, Canada’s minister of public services and procurement, opens a box with some of the first 500,000 of the two million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses that Canada secured last March through a deal with the Serum Institute of India.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio - POOL
Despite some public virtue signalling, the Canadian government is not doing all it can to improve global access to COVID-19 vaccines. Canada has yet to announce its position on the WTO patent waiver.
A COVID-19 surge has pushed hospitals in India beyond their capacity. A stadium in New Delhi was being used as a makeshift ward on May 2, 2021.
Getty Images
Licensing agreements between pharmaceutical companies and the Medicines Patent Pool, in cooperation with the WHO, could accelerate access to doses for the poorest countries.
Hospital staff in Lagos, Nigeria, administer the AstraZeneca vaccine.
AP Photo/Sunday Alamba