Archive - Feb 2007 - Article

The Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Margaret Chan, has sent a letter to Thailand's Health Minister expressing regret for the embarrassment caused to his government by remarks she was reported to have made in Bangkok that were critical of the compulsory licenses granted by the government for three medicines.

The success of the Doha Development Agenda services negotiations will result from the number and quality of 'revised offers' which eventually come forward, said services negotiations chair Fernando De Mateo...

Southern African countries have shown willingness to experiment with liberalising the agriculture sector, but food security experts feel that some form of government intervention is still required to prevent hunger in the region.

Developing countries welcomed, at a WTO General Council meeting on 7 February the full resumption of multilateral negotiations on the Doha Work Programme and stressed on a multilateral process that fully observed the principles of transparency and inclusiveness in achieving an outcome.

Developing countries Wednesday welcomed the 'full resumption of multilateral negotiations' in Geneva on the Doha work programme and development agenda, and made clear that 'any outcome must be the product of a multilateral process that is inclusive and transparent.'

At a meeting of the Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services at the WTO on Friday 2 February, WTO members reiterated that services is central to the 'triangle' of issues on market access in agriculture and NAMA negotiations.

This publication is an initial report on the spread of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) throughout the Asia-Pacific and their impacts on agriculture and food sovereignty, in the context of the current state of play of the WTO, and the devastating legacy of agricultural liberalisation through World Bank/International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programmes.

The prospects of forward movement in WTO talks seems bleak if developed countries do not give a clear commitment to drastically reduce their support to the farm sector.

The current efforts towards a breakthrough in the stalled Doha negotiations at the World Trade Organisation have focused firstly on getting the United States to make a new offer to put a maximum limit on its total 'trade-distorting' domestic support (TDS) in agriculture that is more acceptable than its previously announced offer.

New disciplines are urgently needed to restrict the developed countries' wrong use of Green Box subsidies that are presently permitted under WTO rules, otherwise these subsidies will continue to distort agricultural production and trade, at the expense of developing countries.