The 164 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) achieved an “unprecedented” set of results at the last minute, said WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “We worked day and night, but we don’t go home empty-handed,” she added.
At the end of the 12th ministerial conference of the WTO, ministers and delegates adopted agreements on the WTO response to the Covid-19 pandemic and on the preparation for future pandemics, on the response to food insecurity, on exemptions for the purchases of goods by of the World Food Program, a ministerial decision on the TRIPS (intellectual property) agreement and an agreement on fisheries subsidies, the WTO announced in a statement.
Started on Sunday and extended by one day, the WTO ministerial was dominated by uncertainties until the end.
Particularly awaited, the decision of the ministers on the response to the pandemic, with exceptions to the rules of trade and intellectual property, to facilitate access to vaccines and other medical products: “The declaration you have adopted will allow access to medical products and their more predictable components during this pandemic and future ones, ”Okonjo-Iweala said. Less satisfied, the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which, while acknowledging some changes to the text compared to more restrictive versions, said on the whole it was “disappointed” by the fact that it was not possible to achieve “a real renunciation of intellectual property, covering all medical instruments and all countries “.
Source: Ansa
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