Articles

The United States’ offer to least developed countries of a 10-year transition period to grant pharmaceutical patents is “unconscionable and indefensible”, according to six influential US non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In a letter dated 19 October to President Barack Obama, the NGOs conveyed this strong criticism in view of the public health and other developmental challenges facing least developed countries (LDCs).

Biraj Patnaik and Timothy A. Wise in this article underline perils of Weakening the Development Agenda for Africa in the run up to 10th WTO Ministerial at Nairobi.

The United States intends to pursue, after the Nairobi WTO Ministerial Conference, an aggressive trade strategy by forcing "differentiation" to deny special and differential treatment for China and India at the World Trade Organization (WTO), several people familiar with the development told the SUNS.

It is increasingly evident that the TiSA negotiations are an attempt to pressure developing countries to grant greater liberalisation in sectors of interest to the US and other industrialised countries, without the latter having to pay any price for it.

The Frontlines Initiative is a joint project of four national public sector unions - the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) - which joins forces with sister unions in Colombia to fight against the privatization of public services and to strengthen each other’s struggles to defend human and labour rights. The delegation in Colombia received an important briefing on the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), a proposed international trade treaty that, if ratified, will put public services in Colombia, Canada and 48 other countries at extreme risk.

Major developing countries - China, India, Brazil, and South Africa - unambiguously rejected on Friday (July 3), a proposal from Canada to set "new landing zones" in the Doha agriculture package without adhering to the existing mandates that were negotiated since 2001, trade envoys told the SUNS.

Today, 341 global civil society organizations – including development advocates, trade unions, farmers’ organizations, consumer and environmental groups from over 100 countries – sent a letter to WTO members today urging them to abandon the WTO expansion talks and instead focus on an urgent agenda to fix existing damaging rules in the WTO.

Today, Wikileaks released a second batch of the most updated draft texts on the proposed TISA, along with substantive analysis, on each of four cross-cutting annexes: Financial Services, Telecommunications, Electronic Commerce, and Maritime Transport. This follows on their release yesterday of texts on Domestic Regulation, the “Movement of Natural Persons,” Transparency, and Government Procurement, along with what WikiLeaks called the journalistic holy grail: the TISA’s Core Text.

WikiLeaks has published secret “core text” related to the controversial trade agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors between the US, EU and 23 other countries. Big corporations look to be the biggest winners in the deal.