Introduction
Ever since the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS)
came into force, NGOs, public health advocates, and transnational social movements
have argued that the agreement severely restricts access to life-saving drugs in the
developing world. In the late nineties, these elements of global civil society (GCS)
banded together to push for less stringent IPR enforcement for most countries in the
world. Soon afterward, both the United States and European Union began softening their
stance on the strict enforcement of TRIPS. In November 2001, at the Doha Ministerial
meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), member governments addressed this
concern by signing off on the “Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health”
or Doha declaration. This declaration stated that:
[T]he TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent members from
taking measures to protect public health. Accordingly, while reiterating
our commitment to the TRIPS Agreement, we affirm that the Agreement
can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of
WTO members' right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote
access to medicines for all.
The Doha declaration went on to delineate the various conditions under which countries
could use the “flexibilities” of TRIPS to address public health problems. In August 2003,
an additional WTO agreement was reached to clarify remaining ambiguities from the
These events were the culmination of a sustained campaign by global
civil society designed to scale back intellectual property restrictions on the production
and distribution of generic drugs to the developing world. A developing country delegate
1
“Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health,”
.
2
“Implementation of paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and public health”. 30
2005.
3
Convention