WTO

More than 170 former heads of state and government and Nobel laureates, including former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown, former President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of France François Hollande and Nobel Laureates Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Professor Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, today called on President Biden to support a waiver of intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccines and pursue a people’s vaccine to end the pandemic in an open letter today.

One year on from the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the People’s Vaccine Alliance is warning that developing countries are facing critical shortages of oxygen and medical supplies to cope with COVID-19 cases yet the majority have been unable to administer a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In contrast rich nations have vaccinated their citizens at a rate of one person per second over the last month.

In reaction to the new trade facilitation agreement approved in Bali on Saturday, Romain Benicchio, Senior Policy Advisor with Oxfam, said:

The European Union is contradicting world trade rules by putting the interests of big drug companies before the 2 billion people in the world who cannot access essential medicines, according to a new report issued today by Oxfam International and Health Action International Europe.

The United States today has lost a battle in its dispute over cotton subsidies with Brazil at the World Trade Organization (WTO), said international organization Oxfam.

World trade rules will not be reformed in the interests of poor countries despite this month’s G8+5’s commitment to finalize the stagnant Doha trade talks by 2010.

The World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round was meant to rebalance decades of unfair rules in agriculture and address the needs of developing countries.

When trade ministers from 35 countries gather in Geneva at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for what is being billed yet again as a last-ditch attempt to forge a Doha trade deal, t