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Ro Khanna, the dynamic progressive US representative from California, was inspired to enter politics by the legacy of his grandfather, Amarnath Vidyalankar (1901–1985), the legendary Indian trade unionist, independence campaigner, and parliamentarian. Though he was born and raised in the United States, Khanna traveled frequently to India as a youth, and he speaks movingly of how “our family’s values come from my grandfather’s embrace of a Gandhian worldview” in particular, Mahatma Gandhi’s belief “in the oneness not of merely all human life but in the oneness of all that lives.”
Director-General of the World Trade Organisation Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. | Photo Credit:
REUTERS
The proposed relaxations in the norms of the agreement are aimed at ensuring quick and affordable access to vaccines and medicines for developing countries.
WTO Chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has urged the proponents of the proposal for temporary waiver of certain provisions of TRIPS agreement for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 to submit the revised document “as soon as possible” so that text-based negotiations can begin. Welcoming the statement of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the issue, the Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has said she “warmly” welcomes Tai’s willingness to engage with proponents of a temporary waiver of the TRIPS agreement to help in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says a proposal by South Africa at the World Trade Organisation to waiver specific Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) obligations related to the manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines is now supported by over 100 countries.
The President said this when he responded to oral questions in the National Assembly on Thursday.
“We want to manufacture vaccines locally against the pandemic. It is for this reason that South Africa and India proposed the Trips waiver at the World Trade Organisation to enable the manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries.
“The proposal is now supported by more than 100 countries. SA welcomes the statement by the United States that it will support the Trips waiver on intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines,” he said.
ChinaVaccine IP waiver could take months for WTO to negotiate-experts
David Lawder
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Nursing student Erika Lohr vaccinates a patient as California opens up vaccine eligibility to any residents 16 years and older during the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Chula Vista, California, U.S., April 15, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake
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Now that the U.S. President Joe Biden has backed a proposed waiver for COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property rights, the next stop is for the World Trade Organization to hammer out a deal - a process that could take months.
Not only are the negotiations expected to be lengthy, they are also likely to result in a waiver that is significantly narrower in scope and shorter in duration than the one initially proposed by India and South Africa, trade experts said.