AFRICA-EUROPE FAITH AND JUSTICE NETWORK
RESEAU FOI ET JUSTICE AFRIQUE-EUROPE

174, rue Joseph II
B-1000 Bruxelles - Belgique
Tel. 32-2 234 6810 Fax 32-2 231 1413
aefjn@aefjn.org http://www.aefjn.org

AEFJN is a network of 41 catholic religious and missionary Institutes with members in Africa and Europe, promotes equitable economic relations between Africa and Europe, providing information and analysis on economical policies that affect Africa adversely and seeks to influence positively the policies of national governments and the European Union Institutions.

Two years ago, during the WTO ministerial meeting of November 2001 at Doha (Qatar), WTO member states agreed that developing nations would have easier access to cheap essential medicines. For this the developing countries could apply "compulsory licenses", that made it possible to by pass patents granted on the ground of "public health emergency situations".

But the Doha agreement only applied for those developing countries that had the means to produce themselves the needed medicines. For countries without production capacity and had to import generic medicines, a solution had to be negotiated by the end of 2002. However, fearing that major producers of generic medicines such as Brazil and India would cut out a major chunk of the market of the pharmaceutical market in developing countries, the USA (holding most patents on medicines) has blocked an agreement.

Yesterday, August 27th, the five protagonists: the USA and Brazil, India, South Africa and Kenya, reached an agreement at the WTO in Geneva that still has to be ratified by all the WTO member countries. Though we had no time yet to analyze in detail the agreement, there are 3 major shifts that make this a most welcome agreement:

1. The agreement gives all developing countries the right to produce or import cheap (generic) medicines in order to assure their national public health.

2. The agreement is not limited to a specific list of major diseases, as the USA had demanded because it feared that too many patents on medicines would be by-passed. African countries and major producers of generic medicines now agree that the exemption may only be used to "protect national public health and not for industrial or commercial aims".

3. The second fear of the pharmaceutical industry was that generic medicines produced in developing countries would find their way to the markets in developed countries. To avoid this the agreement states that medicines produced under the agreement will be of another distinct "color, shape and package then the patent protected medicines" and contains a list of "best practices" which pharmaceutical producers must abide by to avoid that essential medicines needed in developing countries are not diverted to markets for which they are not destined.

African countries in particular had been demanding for over a year that the Doha Declaration on Public Health be implemented. AEFJN, and many other NGOs, have supported strongly the African position. Most recently in our letter action in the running up of the forthcoming Ministerial Conference of the WTO at Cancun (10-14 September), in which we asked our national Trade ministers and the European Union's Commissioner for Trade to support the African position at the WTO.

We scored one point! But WTO is not a charity! The question now is what African countries will have to concede at Cancun in order to compensate this "gesture". The issue of investments seems rather blocked; the issue of "special and differential treatment" for developing countries looks not too bad; but on the issues of GATS and Agriculture negotiation will be a tight battle!

Luc Coppejans, MAfr
AEFJN, Bruxelles, July 2003.