Imbalances In Global Economy Have Not Improved In 50 Years, Developing Countries Say 18/06/2014 by Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)By Catherine Saez To mark the 50th anniversary of the funding of the Group of 77 developing countries. the group published a declaration reaffirming the needs of developing countries. The group, they said, was established to address imbalances in the global economy which still prevail today. The declaration [pdf] by the Group of 77 plus China underlines the importance for developing countries to make use of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for public health and access to medicines. The declaration also calls for developed countries not to take action against developing countries making use of such flexibilities, including trade measures. The group further calls on developed countries and international organisations “to provide adequate financial assistance to support the transfer of reliable and affordable technologies and to promote capacity-building, taking into account national priorities.” The declaration covers a wide range, calling for more South-South cooperation, reform of the international financial architecture, and for the international community “to redress the democratic deficit in global economic governance.” They also ask that developing countries have a “rightful place” and participation in governance and decision-making institutions, and stressed the importance of the “central role of the United Nations in global economic governance.” Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Related "Imbalances In Global Economy Have Not Improved In 50 Years, Developing Countries Say" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Miles Teg says 26/06/2014 at 9:46 am Beggars at the table, and a long walk away from Bandung… let’s see the 80s saw Surendra Patel still pushing for progressive policies at UNCTAD in the form of the Technology Transfer Agreement… decades later, after having being technologically colonized by WTO, the G77C asks for benevolence from the war-mongering democratic nations who spread death (ask Mandela about retrovirals) and destruction (chaos is fine in the South, Nobels go to warmongering Presidents and regional groups)? And UNCTAD is a shadow of its former self, wracked still by the Reagan Heritage Foundation study with John Bolton politics still ruling the roost. The UN WHO cannot save the 40 million invisible (mainly black) Americans without healthcare just like it must shut up on the decimation of the most effective and efficient health care system in the world – the UK NHS. Perhaps UN leaders need to include in their CVs whether they have a backbone or not – elementary evolutionary stuff, Watson! What institutional forms has the South developed to tackle these issues? Come on, one would have thought the South moved away from ‘the European Sahib is benevolent’ and built strong intellectual basis to lead this fight to deal with the rich country Think Tanks (or Tink, Thank$)… but they are still asking for capacity building and resources… hard to break the beggar habit, eh? Why can’t the South enforce rights that it has legally secured at the WTO under TRIPs? What point unity if it does not improve institutions and power base? The rich countries have the EU/OECD, etc and military and financial might. And the South does not know how to handle diversity enough to push through people-centred policies by building institutions capable of sustaining a long term agenda. How often it defends what it opposed. The South opposed TRIPs, but defends it in the face of Free Trade Agreements – ain’t that quaint. Is that not a measure of subjection? And the UN has fallen far from grace – UNCTAD tolerates a little dissent to keep the natives happy but it will be reined in if it ever did something progressive. It allowed itself to be dumped as the ‘trade is development’ forum by the formation of the WTO and did not even put up a good fight to defend its turf. Washington spoke and it cowered, just like Ban Ki Moon is doing now allowing the UNFCCC to be abused by the rich countries – a bureaucrat not a leader as the record aptly shows. The UN needs to take itself more seriously if it is to be more than the soft glove over the imperial fist… and the South, still mainly on the same agenda after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis… seriously??!!!! Reply