PHA-Exchange> FW: Trade and Health WHA resolution, FYI

Thu Jun 1 06:12:30 PDT 2006

Dear colleagues,

I am forwarding you an article published by IP-Watch on the World Health
Assembly resolution on trade and public health (see below). The resolution
was adopted on the 27 May 2006. The resolution calls on countries to
consider new laws and policies to address negative impacts of trade policies
on public health.

Best wishes,

Davinia

Davinia Ovett

Programme Officer

3D -> Trade - Human Rights - Equitable Economy

Maison des Associations, 15 rue des Savoises

1205 Genève, Switzerland

Tel: +41 22 320 21 21

Fax: +41 22 320 69 48

Email:  <mailto:dovett at 3dthree.org> dovett at 3dthree.org

Website:  <BLOCKED::http://www.3dthree.org> www.3dthree.org

  _____  

Update on Trade and Health WHA resolution, from
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=319
<http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=319&res=1024_ff&print=0>
&res=1024_ff&print=0  

27/5/2006

World Health Assembly Adopts Resolution Tying Public Health To Trade Policy

The World Health Assembly today adopted a resolution that urges member
states to improve coordination at the national level between international
trade and public health, requesting the World Health Organization (WHO) to
help its member states to do this.

The resolution calls for governments to promote a better dialogue on trade
and health, and gives health ministries a place at the table with other
government agencies involved in trade issues, establishing mechanisms to
enable this. It also calls on countries to consider new laws and policies to
address negative impacts on public health from trade policies, as well as
potential opportunities. 

The agreement was reached on the final day of the 22-27 May
<http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/2006/wha59/en/index.html>  assembly
of the 192 member states of the World Health Organization. The agreement
came after several developing countries agreed to rework or drop their
proposed changes to the draft resolution in order to comply with concerns,
including from Australia and the United States. 

India modified its proposal for more explicit reference to flexibilities for
developing countries from international trade rules on intellectual property
rights, Turkey dropped an effort to add text on transition countries, and
Venezuela abandoned the prospect of creating an intergovernmental working
group on trade and health. 

The new resolution – International Trade and Health (EB117 R5) - was
unanimously agreed to at the January WHO Executive Board meeting, and it
came as a surprise to many delegates that three countries suggested
amendments to the draft resolution when the item was discussed on 26 May.

India suggested adding a new paragraph urging member states, “to reflect all
the flexibilities permitted under international trade agreements in national
laws to address public health concerns.” It also suggested adding
“multi-stakeholder” in to make the resolution read: “to promote
multi-stakeholder dialogue” on trade and health. 

The United States said the issue of flexibilities in the World Trade
Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS) was already “more than adequately covered” in other
resolutions, including the research and development resolution that also was
adopted today (see related story). It proposed deleting the Indian
paragraph.

Australia also said that India’s proposal was already dealt with other
places in the resolution. Moreover, it said that the TRIPS Agreement offered
the member countries the opportunity “to take up flexibilities but does not
require them to do so.”

As a compromise, India proposed adding its point, in a somewhat watered-down
version, to another paragraph referring to trade agreements, then reading:
“using the flexibilities inherent in them.” The US suggested adding,
“considering where appropriate” to be added before this. This was agreed and
the resolution was adopted. 

The final version (not yet available) urges WHO member states “to adopt,
where necessary, policies, laws and regulations that deal with issues
identified in that dialogue and take advantage of the potential
opportunities, and address the potential challenges that trade and trade
agreements may have for health, considering where appropriate using the
flexibilities inherent in them.”

Venezuela agreed before the final day’s debate to drop its suggestion to set
up an intergovernmental working group on the issue, sources said. On 27 May,
the WHO secretariat distributed a new draft including the changes but in the
meantime Venezuela had withdrawn its proposal. Therefore, there was no
discussion of the Venezuelan proposal on 27 May. 

Turkey also agreed to drop a suggestion to add to a paragraph on the
challenges and opportunities of trade, “also taking into account the special
problems of countries through which health goods and services transit.”
After some debate involving the United States seeking clarification, Turkey
withdrew its proposal “for the sake of consensus,” it said. 

Two WHO sources told Intellectual Property Watch that the 26 May discussion
of the draft resolution showed that there was “very good support across the
board,” and many countries were already doing what the resolution suggested.
The member countries are now looking to the WHO to help increase their
capacity in this area, they said. The comments also showed that this is a
new issue for the World Health Assembly but not for the individual countries
making up the assembly, they said.

The idea for the resolution came from Thailand at the May 2005 Executive
Board meeting. Some members had argued that trade issues should remain
primarily with the World Trade Organization, but acknowledged that
governments want advice from the WHO as well, the WHO officials said. 

  _____  

This work is licensed under a Creative
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/>  Commons License. All of
the news articles and features on Intellectual Property Watch are also
subject to a Creative <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/>
Commons License which makes them available for widescale, free,
non-commercial reproduction and translation.

Tove Iren S. Gerhardsen, the author of this post, may be reached at
tgerhardsen at ip-watch.ch. 

You can subscribe for automatic notifications of these stories, via the RSS
feed <http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-rss2.php>  or via the e-mail alerts
<http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/subscribe.php> . Subscribers can choose the
frequency of notifications as well as particular topics of greatest interest
to them.

-- 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20060601/439730fa/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2020 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20060601/439730fa/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 4641 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20060601/439730fa/attachment-0014.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 934 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20060601/439730fa/attachment-0015.gif>