Enhancing Access to Remedy through International Cooperation: Considerations from the Legally Binding Instrument on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises
The shortcomings in international cooperation between regulatory authorities in different countries can open up a gap in their legal regimes which could be exploited by transnational corporations and allow them to elude responsibilities for the violation or abuse of human rights. The Revised Draft of the Legally Binding Instrument on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises seeks to bridge this gap and works towards increasing collaboration among countries for ensuring access to effective remedies for victims of human rights violations or abuses due to business activities. This brief looks at some of its salient features and how they can be utilized by countries for the protection and promotion of human rights in their territories.
Seeking Remedies for Access to Medicines and Intellectual Property: Recent Developments
About the Book:
This book is a collection of research papers by Germán Velásquez published by the South Centre, between 2015 and 2019 on the recent international deliberations and negotiations in the United Nations on access to medicines and their relationship with international trade and intellectual property regimes.
Author: Germán Velásquez is the Special Adviser, Policy and Health of the South Centre.
South Centre Statement to the United Nations High Level Dialogue on Financing for Development
Four years after its adoption, Agenda 2030, “Transforming Our World,” the United Nations’ (UN) most recent and most ambitious development agenda, is off-track. Various estimates of the spending needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) range from $1 to $3 trillion. Domestically mobilized resources are critical to achieve these goals. A main source of the inadequate scale of public revenues are shortfalls in corporate tax collection, which are largely explained by international corporations hosted by or doing businesses in developing countries that take advantage of facilities offered by the international tax standards and practices to avoid full payment of taxes in those countries. A substantive global reform process involving a variety of multilateral platforms is underway. The question is not whether the system of global tax standards and practices will change, but in what direction it will change. Drawing lessons from the developing country context will be critical if the ongoing process of global tax reform will benefit developing countries and achieve substantial success in generating the income needed to effectively attain the SDGs.
Call for Papers – TRIPS Flexibilities and Public Health (Deadline: 15 October)
The South Centre and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition are organizing a Global Forum on Intellectual Property, Access to Medicines and Innovation, in Munich, on 9-10 December 2019. The Forum is designed to bring together policymakers from developing countries with established scholars, early career academics and PhD students across multiple disciplines, allowing cross-fertilization of ideas that advance both scholarship and practice in the field.
This call for papers will receive innovative ongoing and/or unpublished research from early career scholars and PhD students on substantive flexibilities in the IP system afforded by the TRIPS Agreement that are relevant to pursue public health goals. Case studies, comparative analyses, empirical and statistical studies, as well as legal reflections with a policy perspective will be considered.
South Centre Statement at the United Nations High Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage
Access to health is a human right and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is essential to achieve health for all. States should ensure through public funding, based on solidarity and the fair redistribution of wealth, that nobody is deprived from health care. Policies that promote competitive markets for pharmaceuticals, particularly in the area of procurement, regulatory approvals (including biologicals) and intellectual property, should be implemented. Governments should make use of the available space in the TRIPS Agreement to apply rigorous definitions of invention and patentability standards and use other flexibilities allowed.Below is the South Centre’s Statement to the UN High-Level Meeting on UHC held on 23 September 2019 at the UN headquarters in New York. The Centre noted the recognition, in the draft political declaration, of the responsibilities of governments as well as of their right to choose their own path towards achieving UHC.
Ensuring an Operational Equity-based Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement
One of the key provisions of the Paris Agreement that was adopted in December 2015 at the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is Article 14 on the global stocktake (GST). The GST is intended to be the mechanism by which the Convention Parties that are Parties to the Paris Agreement would be able to periodically take stock of the implementation of the Paris Agreement and to assess collective progress towards achieving the purpose of the Agreement and its long-term goals. This research paper discusses how equity as a principle and a concept played a key role in shaping the modalities for the GST, and looks in detail at the operational modalities for the GST that were agreed upon in Katowice in December 2018 in relation to how equity should be considered and made operational.
Developing Country Coalitions in Multilateral Negotiations: Addressing Key Issues and Priorities of the Global South Agenda
The recent increasing and unprecedented attacks on multilateralism and its institutions as well as the growing dangers of weakening international cooperation are regrettably leading to an enormous setback in the history of the international system. These developments could reverse decades of collective efforts to establish a more stable, equitable and inclusive path of development and social justice for all. An immediate impact is that international negotiations, which have increasingly become important for developing countries over the past decades, are now becoming even more complex. If the resurging path of unilateralism and protectionism adopted by some powerful countries is maintained, the risks of further deterioration grow even larger. The instabilities of the contemporary world pose serious risks to the achievement of the longstanding development goals of the Global South such as poverty eradication, the South’s ability to successfully address emerging challenges such as climate change, and to overall global stability, a pattern not seen since the Second World War. In this context, developing countries’ negotiating coalitions such as the Group of 77 (G77) + China and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), while respecting and adapting to the differences that might emerge within these large groups, need to remain together and ensure that their coalitions are preserved and strengthened. Working collectively will improve negotiating capacity and leverage and increase bargaining power of developing countries in the multilateral negotiations in order to get more balanced outcomes.
Least Developed Countries Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Initiative for Sustainable Development (LDC REEEI)
The Least Developed Countries Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Initiative for Sustainable Development (LDC REEEI) recognizes that while the energy challenges facing least developed countries (LDCs) are enormous so too are the opportunities. LDCs will work together to embark on transformative action, set their own course, and take charge of their own future though pioneering a model of energy and development that is in accordance with what both people and the planet need. The LDC REEEI can make a major contribution towards a future that delivers on aspirations for 100% energy access, renewable energy and best practices in energy efficiency and use – and in so doing provide leadership to help place us on path to a cleaner, fairer and more prosperous world for all. The climate action summit to be held in New York on 23 September, offers an opportunity to explore ways of supporting LDCs to implement REEEI. The South Centre is supporting LDCs’ efforts in this challenging journey.
Gender, Tax Reform and Taxation Cooperation Issues: Navigating Equity and Efficiency under Policy Constraints
This policy brief has sought to present a review of the state of thinking and research on a pressing issue of the day: tax reform and tax cooperation and its gendered impacts. There is undeniably widespread agreement amongst all the entities of global governance with responsibility for a role in macroeconomic, financial and trade policies that gender equality and women’s empowerment are important to sustained growth and development. Increasingly, these same voices are articulating and researching on how fiscal policy both on the budgetary and on the revenue side can be made more efficient, gender sensitive and gender responsive. Taxation is the latest area of focused attention in this regard. There is now a quite strong body of work, including case studies, that demonstrates how the tax system can work to the disadvantage of socio-economic development and social goals including gender equality and women’s empowerment.
USMCA debe ser enmendado para asegurar el acceso a medicamentos en México
El capítulo del U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)/Tratado entre México, los Estados Unidos y el Canadá (T-MEC) dedicado a los derechos de propiedad intelectual (DPI) otorga monopolios más prolongados y amplios a las empresas de medicamentos originales que los que están actualmente en vigor en México, a costa de los pacientes y los contribuyentes. Entre otras cosas, México tendría que conceder a las ampliaciones de la vigencia de las patentes períodos de exclusividad más amplios y prolongados, también para los medicamentos biológicos costosos, tanto por las demoras en la concesión de patentes como para aquellas que se encuentren en el proceso reglamentario de aprobación, y ampliar las normas de patentabilidad, por ejemplo, exigiendo la concesión de patentes para nuevos usos. México es, sin lugar a dudas, el país del T-MEC que se verá más perjudicado, pero si los miembros del Partido Demócrata de la Cámara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos pueden renegociar algunas de estas disposiciones para restablecer cierto equilibrio entre la necesidad de fomentar la innovación y la competencia, el Gobierno del presidente López Obrador y el Congreso de México todavía pueden cambiar la situación.
