Webinar: Enhancing Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance in Developing Countries
18 November 2024
Virtual event
Time: 3-4:00 PM CEST / 9-10:00 AM EDT / 7:30 – 8:30 PM IST
The South Centre will organize a webinar during the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2024 to highlight essential strategies and success stories in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance and stewardship across developing countries, focusing on bridging gaps in data collection and accuracy. Challenges such as limited funding, technical infrastructure, and trained personnel hinder effective AMR surveillance.
The webinar will explore cost-effective digital solutions, regional collaboration, and resource-efficient strategies to help build resilient AMR surveillance systems, enhancing sustainable antimicrobial stewardship (AMS), combating AMR, saving patient lives, and improving global public health outcomes.
The webinar will have two sessions, designed to provide practical insights and evidence-based recommendations to improve AMR surveillance, policy, and clinical practices, particularly in resource-limited settings.
Towards a Balanced WIPO Design Law Treaty (DLT) for Developing Countries
By Nirmalya Syam
The WIPO Design Law Treaty (DLT) aims to harmonize and simplify global industrial design registration procedures, encourage digital applications and reduce costs. While the reforms required by the DLT could boost efficiency, they will mainly benefit enterprises from developed countries with resources to secure global design rights. This policy brief highlights the key concerns for developing countries, particularly the treaty’s potential impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and indigenous communities. It advocates for critical adjustments in the DLT negotiation texts to allow for policy space in the DLT – binding technical assistance, flexible grace periods, enabling disclosure of the origin and source of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions used in designs that are sought to be registered, and optional divisional and electronic filing provisions.
Group of 77 and South Centre convening on the Future of Antimicrobial Resistance Response in Developing Countries
Meeting Report
October 2024
On 25 September, the South Centre with the Group of 77 and China discussed solutions for tackling Antimicrobial Resistance and ensuring access to antibiotics and diagnostics.
Statement by the South Centre at the 2024 Social Forum of the Human Rights Council
31 October 2024
At the Human Rights Council Social Forum, South Centre Senior Programme Officer Abdul Muheet Chowdhary presented key international tax reform inputs to the upcoming Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) for “The Contribution Of Financing For Development To The Advancement Of All Human Rights For All”.
Can international law promote innovation from genetic resources and benefit sharing while recognizing the rights of traditional knowledge holders?
By Henry de Novion
Indigenous peoples and local communities have been innovating for millennia and contributing to the development of new products and processes. For international law to promote innovation, it is indispensable to promote indigenous peoples and local communities’ rights to prior informed consent, to benefit sharing, and to guaranteeing their territories, culture, and existence.
A RAFT FOR THE FUTURE: Can the Pact for the Future Deliver the Multilateral Titanic?
South Centre Statement
24 October 2024
The South Centre participated in the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS) event evaluating the Pact For The Future. The Pact is a crucial step but needs a concrete roadmap with clear actions & timelines to find solutions central to developing countries.
Statement to the 10th Session of the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development
28 October 2024
The South Centre is participating in the 10th Session of the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development at UN Geneva, exploring innovative solutions for the full realization of the Right to Development in the Global South.
Science in crisis times: The crucial role of science in sustainability and transformation
PLOS Sustainability and Transformation Journal
Authors: Paul Shrivastava, Louise Jackson, Thaura Ghneim-Herrera, Patrick Caron, Carlos Correa, Carlos Alvarez Pereira, Timothy Coombs, Oluchi Ezekannagha, Nick Ishmael-Perkins, Melissa Leach, Sélim Louafi, Gary E. Machlis, Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Alexander Müller, Janos Pasztor, Vivi Stavrou, Camilla Toulmin, and Sonja Vermeulen
In an era marked by the convergence of complex crises, the role of science in sustainability and transformative changes has never been more critical. A recent article in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation Journal, titled “Science in Crisis Times: The Crucial Role of Science in Sustainability and Transformation,” delves into this pressing issue. Authored by a distinguished group of experts, including former MAK’IT Scientific Officer Thaura Ghneim-Herrera and South Centre Executive Director Carlos M. Correa, the article draws from the insights of the 2022 MAK’IT conference “What Role for Science in Crisis Times? Outlook in the Health, Environment, and Agriculture Interconnected Areas”, held in University of Montpellier with the support of the South Centre, which brought together 18 international experts.
STATEMENT BY DR. CARLOS CORREA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE SOUTH CENTRE, TO THE MINISTERS AND GOVERNORS MEETING OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL GROUP OF TWENTY-FOUR (G-24)
21 October 2024, Washington D.C.
The South Centre participated in the G-24 Annual Meeting of Ministers and Governors in Washington D.C. See our statement:
The Implications of Treaty Restrictions of Taxing Rights on Services, Especially for Developing Countries
By Faith Amaro, Veronica Grondona, Sol Picciotto
Taxation of cross-border services has been identified as a high priority issue in the United Nations (UN) negotiations to establish a new global framework for tax. This paper analyses the defects of international tax rules as applied to services, and their exploitation by multinational enterprises (MNEs), focusing on the impact on developing countries. Services have become increasingly important for economic development, but international tax rules favouring delivery by non-residents act as a disincentive to the growth of local services providers, particularly disadvantaging developing countries which are mainly hosts to MNEs. We analyse the restrictions on source taxation of services in tax treaties, particularly those based on the model of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and show that their spread has been accompanied by a widening deficit in services trade of developing countries, while the weakening of their attempts to protect their tax base through withholding taxes has resulted in increasing losses of tax revenue. The paper combines detailed qualitative analyses of tax treaties with quantitative estimates of their effects on trade and tax revenues for services of five developing countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya and Nigeria. Our analysis suggests that a new approach is needed for taxation of services, breaking with the residence-source dichotomy, and adopting formulary apportionment. This could be based on the standards agreed in the Two Pillar Solution of the OECD/Group of Twenty (G20) project on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) and developed now through the UN.
Summary of Carlos Correa’s intervention at the 25th Meeting of COMSATS Coordinating Council
Below is the summary of South Centre Executive Director Carlos Correa’s intervention at the 25th Meeting of the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS) Coordinating Council.
