WTO COVID-19 intellectual property negotiations heading over a cliff without major changes

Eleven days before the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Twelfth Ministerial Conference (MC12), an online press conference with Nobel Economics Prize laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, South African lawyer and health activist Fatima Hassan, and frontline nurse and Liberian health workers' union leader George Williams, who recently made waves by “applauding” pharma CEOs at Davos for making record profits. The press conference will be moderated by Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convenor of the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

Speakers will discuss how WTO talks have veered away from waiving WTO intellectual property barriers that have blocked billions of people’s timely access to life-saving COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. They will comment on negotiations over a text that would govern how countries can exercise flexibilities under existing WTO rules. They will outline a path by which WTO member states can salvage these negotiations and set a precedent that can help facilitate equitable access to tools to beat pandemics.

Online press conference (Zoom)

Wednesday 1 June 2022, 10:00hrs EST, 15:00hrs BST, 16:00hrs CET, 19:30hrs IST

Please register to attend

Speakers:

• Winnie Byanyima, UN Undersecretary-General, Executive Director of UNAIDS, and Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance

• Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, University Professor at Columbia University

• Fatima Hassan, Founder and Director of the Health Justice Initiative, Cape Town,  South Africa

• George Williams, General Secretary of the National Health Workers Union of Liberia, and a front line nurse from Liberia who recently applauded pharma CEOs at Davos for making record profits

MODERATOR: Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convenor of the People’s Vaccine Alliance.