Doha | Thursday
DEVELOPING countries emerged with several big gains from a just-concluded World Trade Organisation conference here, winning concessions on key points from the United States and the European Union.
Though they came to the Doha meeting deeply sceptical about the chances of making their voices heard, they nonetheless managed to make their presence felt.
Speaking for Africa, Kenyan Commerce Minister Mustafa Bello said at a final plenary session that the continent was ”satisfied with the conclusions that have been drawn.”
”Unlike in Seattle, Africa has been satisfied with all the stages of consultations.”
At a previous WTO conference in Seattle in December 1999 developing countries were angered at what they said had been their exclusion from critical discussions.
Unlike the Seattle meeting, which collapsed in failure, WTO ministers meeting here managed to overcome internal divisions in six days of gruelling negotiations to launch a new round of multilateral trade liberalisation talks.
By any account the sweetest victory for developing countries here was an agreement that a WTO accord on patent protection does not prevent them from manufacturing or importing cheaper, generic medicines to combat public health scourges such as Aids.
Western nations led by the United States and Switzerland had come to Doha insisting that WTO regulations on patent protection should not be weakened, arguing that to do so would discourage drug companies from investing in new medicines.
In the end a text approved here, while reiterating a commitment to the WTO copyright protection agreement, states that it ”does not and should not” prevent WTO members from taking steps to protect public health. That language is seen as giving developing countries greater freedom to override drug patents in a public health crisis.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Lafer described the text as an important step in responding to criticism levelled at the Geneva-based WTO.
”The declaration doesn’t change the Trips agreement at all, but provides a new view of it which is public health-friendly,” he said.
Trips is a WTO agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights.
Added Michael Bailey of Oxfam International: ”Doha sends a strong message that people’s health overrides the interests of big drug companies.”
Elsewhere, the text approved here opens the door to the eventual elimination of agricultural export subsidies offered by the EU and to a lesser extent the US.
In a section on agriculture, WTO members commit themselves to negotiations aimed at ”phasing out” export subsidies, which according to the World Bank distort trade and harm poor countries unable to compete with subsidized prices in global markets.
Developing countries here were also adamant in resisting EU demands that the new round encompass negotiations on the relationship between environmental protection and trade. Their fear is that the West will use alleged abuses of the environment in poor countries to block their exports.
While developing country officials were unable to head off such negotiations entirely, they managed to secure assurances in the text they would not irrevocably lead to tight links between trade and the environment.
On other fronts, developing countries succeeded in getting negotiations on steps to promote cross-border investment postponed until after the next WTO ministerial conference in 2003.
They have balked at Western pressure to open further their economies and financial institutions to overseas investors, asserting that their industries are not ready to compete with foreign rivals. – Sapa-AFP