COVER STORY
WTO delivers breakthrough deals In a time of pandemic and war-related doom and gloom, a striking moment of real multilateral triumph must be celebrated, says Lansana Gberie
I
N the early hours of June 17, after several sleepless nights, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the World Trade Organisation’s Director-General, stood up and, her voice rising to a crescendo, told exhausted delegates words few had envisaged would be uttered at the end of the organisation’s 12th Ministerial conference (MC12): “You stepped up and delivered in every area we have been working on.” She then listed a package of agreements now known as the Geneva Package — covering, among others, a waiver of intellectual property protections to boost countermeasures against Covid-19, a longillusory agreement on fisheries subsidies, and a decision addressing food insecurity. These achievements demonstrated, OkonjoIweala said, that the WTO “is, in fact, capable of responding to the emergencies of our time”.
waters. In other words, this agreement, as well as helping to protect the livelihood of First, there was an agreement about the millions of small-scale and artisanal fishing communities in Africa and elsewhere, will definition of fish. It was no mean feat. For the past 21 years since fisheries negotiations also help protect ocean health. The WTO Director-General writes it were launched at Doha, this was one of the is the first such pact in WTO history “with fraught issues. Fish, the agreement now a primarily environmental objective at its states, “means all species of living marine core”. This alone would count as a major resources, whether processed or not”. The achievement. old canard that it includes “aquatic plants” had been quietly jettisoned, almost without Second, the WTO’s Trade-Related notice. Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights always a safe gamble. Only this time pessimism lost.
The agreement on fisheries also includes a curb of around $22 billion in annual government subsidies to fishers from wealthy countries who ravage African
(TRIPS) waiver decision will contribute to diversifying the vaccine manufacturing capacity of countries, and Africa stands to benefit from it. Request for the waiver had
She hailed a world in which WTO members “can come together, across geopolitical fault lines, to address problems of the global commons, and to reinforce and reinvigorate this institution.” WTO agreements are reached through consensus and are binding on members. Multilateralism, under attack on multiple fronts, had been given a lifesaving shot in the arm. The triumphant outcome at MC12 was anything but anticipated. In fact, on June 13, a day before the conference opened, Nick Dearden, a columnist for the UK’s Guardian newspaper, wrote that delegates arriving for that conference would find the organisation in an “existential crisis”. Amid a pandemic, Dearden bemoaned, WTO members were still cavilling about temporarily waiving property rights of pharmaceutical companies to allow developing countries to produce Covid-19 vaccines; and many of them were still confused about a “common approach” to the growing global food crisis. It was time, he wrote, to “bury” the organisation. Pessimism about the WTO is nearly
18
Lansana Gberie: Chair of crucial TRIPS Council negotiations
AFRICA BRIEFING JULY - AUGUST 2023