[Ip-health] Consumers International General Statement to 3rd Session of the WIPO PCDA

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

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Consumers International
General Statement for 3rd PCDA

February 20, 2007

Consumers International wishes to congratulate your Excellency on your
election to the Chair and giving us the opportunity to speak.  WIPO is
struggling to define and implement a development agenda.  One aspect of
this agenda should be the protection of consumer interests.

Consumers International asks the delegates to the PCDA to reflect on
the problems facing persons who lack access to affordable medicines.
In 2007, more than five years after the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and
Public Health, what has this body done to address the needs of the
poor?

We are not aware of any WIPO committee that has spent a single day to
examine how the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health has
been implemented.

We are not aware of any WIPO publications that provide accessible
information on how countries have implemented TRIPS flexibilities in
the area of public health.

We are not aware of any studies by WIPO to assess the impact of the use
of compulsory licensing on the pricing of or access to medicines.

While press reports about the use of compulsory licensing are filled
with factual errors when describing the nature of the TRIPS Agreement,
WIPO has been silent, and failed to educate, when that education would
benefit consumer, rather than right-owner interests.

Consumers International would also like the delegates to reflect upon
the problems of access to knowledge.

Since the development agenda proposals were first made in 2004, WIPO
has held countless meetings on a treaty for broadcasting organizations.
  This is a treaty seeking a rationale.  There is no evidence it is
needed.    It creates rather than solves problems.

WIPO has given only brief attention to the proposals by Chile and other
WIPO members to consider a treaty on minimum limitations and exceptions
for education, libraries and the handicapped.

WIPO has no publications that provide information on the success or
failures of the Berne Appendix.

WIPO=92s work should not only be about programs to promote and advertise
the benefits of strong intellectual property rights.  It should also
contain practical and useful programs to protect consumers,
particularly those who are poor which lay at the heart of the concerns
of the Development Agenda.





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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@keionline.org
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