WT/GC/W/920  
 
21 December 2023  
(23-8711) Page: 1/2 
  Original: English  
 
  
REVISED SUBMISSION BY TRIPS WAIVER CO -SPONSORS FOLLOWING THE  
GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING OF 13-15 DECEMBER 2023  
The following communication, dated 19 December 2023, is being circulated at the request of the 
delegation of South Africa  on behalf of the  65 Co-Sponsors of the IP/C/W/669/Rev.1 proposal and 
Brazil; Colombia: Paraguay and Sri Lanka .  
 
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1.1.  The most solemn obligation of every government is to protect the life and health of its people.  
1.2.  The Director General of WHO decl ared the situation a Public Health Emergency of International 
Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020. The need for scaled -up access to diagnostics, treatments, 
vaccines and personal protective equipment (PPE) ( "health products ") was manifest.  
1.3.  The co -sponsors  approached Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) with a 
straightforward request to temporarily waive certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade -Related 
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to support the global C OVID -19 pandemic respo nse. 
This was in recognition that the intellectual property system is meant to provide a balance between 
providing incentives for bringing about innovation and rewarding creativity and promoting the 
broader public interest. In the area of public health, in tellectual property objectives must also be 
balanced against realising the right to health, of which access to medicines and other health products 
is a central part.  It was also in recognition that allowing legal monopolies may delay access to the 
requisit e health products becoming available, as evidenced by disputes on infringement of 
intellectual property rights even at the height of the pandemic and that health products would be in 
global short supply drawing from the experience of previous pandemics and  health emergencies. 
The co -sponsors believed that pooling financial and scientific resources is the only option for 
accelerating progress towards new vaccines, treatments and diagnostics.  
1.4.  Developing countries including the LDCs were gravely concerned. Mu ch of the latest technology 
used to develop and manufacture necessary health products was owned and controlled by 
companies, governments and other institutions based in developed countries. Without access to this 
technology, the prospects for manufacturing  and distributing health products would be restricted. 
Access to health products would be at the discretion of pharmaceutical companies from a handful of 
high-income countries.   
1.5.  The COVID -19 pandemic offered WTO Members an opportunity to act in solidarity by adopting 
a multilateral solution to help bolster the capability of developing countries to respond to a health 
crisis. Co -sponsors advocated for a multilateral solution so as to restore faith in multilateralism and 
avoid Members adopting self -help measu res, thereby fragmenting the intellectual property  system. 
An undesirable outcome that a time -bound and limited waiver could have helped prevent.  
1.6.  The WTO failed to deliver comprehensively on the pandemic and even when it delivered on 
COVID -19 vaccines, th is was too little too late. Rather than heed the call of the co -sponsors, 
opponents advocated for voluntary arrangements and donations as the solution to equitable 
distribution. In reality, however, an inconsequentially small number of voluntary licenses w as availed 
and had strict conditionalities that did not assist to respond to the global cris is. And there were no 
voluntary licenses or any licensing arrangements when it came to the most -used vaccines in 
developed countries.  WT/GC/W/920  
 
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  1.7.  In addition, waiver opponents  indicated that Covax would deliver equitable access. By the end 
of 2021, when vaccines were needed the most, Covax only delivered about 500 million vaccines , i.e, 
approximately 25  per cent of what it was expected to deliver in 2021. Notably, Covax then cu t its 
vaccine delivery forecasts by 25  per cent (from 2 billion doses to 1.4 billion doses). This pattern 
continued through 2022, until the effort wound down, falling far short of its promises on total 
quantity of vaccines delivered. Furthermore, these vac cines were received long after they were 
useful for developing countries.  
1.8.  The countries of the African Union (AU) collectively have a population that is three times larger 
than the countries of the EU. Yet the African Union Vaccine Acquisition Trust, a va ccine procurement 
platform, had only been able to purchase 100 million doses from Pfizer/BioNTech and Johnson and 
Johnson in the initial phase of the pandemic. By contrast, the EU, in the same period, had been able 
to purchase nearly 1.5 billion doses from  AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson and 
Johnson, or approximately 15 times the number of doses compared to the AU. In addition, countries 
that have robust genomic sequencing and epidemiology were faced with travel bans and punished 
for thei r transparency.  
1.9.  The COVID -19 virus is still with us and this is the time the world needs therapeutics and 
diagnostics to ensure better management of its impact. Yet again the WTO is failing, it has delivered 
a limited TRIPS decision that covers vaccines, that came too late and offered too little to be useful. 
If WTO Members were serious about providing an effective solution in the context of global solidarity, 
they needed to extend the TRIPS decision to diagnostics and therapeutics within six months as 
promised. However, over a year after the deadline, the key countries are further stalling any possible 
outcome, ensuring that the world remains vulnerable not only to this pandemic but future 
pandemics. Resilience for future pandemics can only come through ad dressing concentration of 
production, and building adequate manufacturing capacity, especially in regions with limited 
production.  
1.10.   Failure to agree on a multilateral outcome to address intellectual property  barriers, cast a dim 
light on the ability of the WTO to act in solidarity during an international emergency as recognized 
by the WHO. The fundamental global barriers that prolonged this pandemic remain in place, 
threatening us in the next pandemic. The co -sponsors remain committed to address ing the concerns 
of developing countries including LDCs in the context of health emergencies such as pandemics  by 
advancing policy space for Members, along with full utilization of existing flexibilities in the TRIPS 
Agreement . 
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