Vaccine ‘apartheid’ is galvanizing calls to overhaul the TRIPS regime →

A campaign to strike a more equitable balance between intellectual property protection and access to pharmaceuticals coalesced in a WTO ministerial declaration issued 20 years ago this month. But stark disparities in access to COVID-19 vaccines have spotlighted the limitations of the hard-won concessions outlined in that agreement, including the strict barriers still in place to accessing the full range of knowledge and technology needed to produce and distribute the shots.

As a result, more than 100 nations have united behind a proposal to temporarily waive protections on COVID-related products in a bid to increase vaccine production. While opposition from Europe has stalled the waiver proposal, it has also galvanized calls for a broader reconsideration of an intellectual property regime that critics say never fulfilled the promises made in Doha. Read more.

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