By Andrew M. Mwenda
September 24-30, 2003
CANCUN, Mexico: An estimated 50,000 delegates met in this beautiful resort for the fifth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation from September 8 - 10, 2003.
They included 3,000 representatives of non-government organisations from the west and 60 NGOs with 180 representatives from Africa.
Pitifully, however, the Third World presence in these trade negotiations showed the limitations these countries face in participating gainfully in international trade.
First, most third world countries are limited by lack of technical staff to deal with different aspects of trade negotiations for their benefit.
The European Commission alone sent here 613 technical staff to negotiate for them. The African Union had only 10 delegates.
Note that the EU figure does not include delegates who represented the nation states of Europe: Britain, France, Germany etc. Italy alone sent 106 delegates.
The Japanese trade delegation was composed of 700 technical staff, the United States over 400 hundred. Some observers even joked that the United States delegation has a technical staff for every comma, or full-stop that appeared in the final document.
On their part, Uganda had 37 representatives, some from government, others from NGOs; most of them with limited technical expertise for the specific trade issues at play. Kenya had 45.
The salvation for the Third World therefore, is to work as a block, bringing their numbers together, given their shared marginalisation in the international trading system; speak with one voice on matters that concern them.
Some countries like India and Brazil had large and technically competent delegations and have for some years been trying to mobilise the Third World around a common position in key issues like agricultural subsidies, trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), etc.
So, given the help that Brazil and India are offering, what is Africa’s problem?
It begins and ends with the continent’s beleaguered politics.
The Americans are arm twisting African leaders with promises of money and protection, and also some mild threats to get them to support positions that favour American corporations but undermine long term trade interests for these countries.
Sadly for Africa, the Americans talked to presidents like our own Yoweri Museveni.
Consequently, sources said, President Museveni gave the Uganda delegation instructions to “ally with the Americans” on key negotiation issues because “these Americans have been helping us.”
Helping who? Uganda? Well, apparently the Americans have helped Mr Museveni to stay in power, and so he wanted the interests of all Ugandans to be subverted so that he could protect his job.
Sad indeed, because the most contentious issue at the negotiations was the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS).
The third world countries were saying their people are dying by the day from HIV/Aids, malaria etc. Treatment is very expensive, and the only way to make it cheaper is by allowing able Third World countries with cheap labour to manufacture anti-retroviral drugs at prices affordable by poor people.
The Americans opposed this, arguing that if the patents for their pharmaceutical companies were not respected, and Third World manufacturers got to make generic drugs at cheaper prices, they would run down US profits and reduce money going into research.
Put differently, the US was arguing that to protect corporate profit, people should continue dying until the period for the patents expired, before they could be saved.
Museveni was in June hosted to a dinner by the American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association in Washington DC, at the end of which he promised that “Uganda will support the US on the issue of TRIPS.”
Museveni claims that what is important for Africa is market access, which once given, will enable Africans earn high incomes by exporting to the rich west, and therefore be able to afford these drugs.
It is true that market access is very important for African countries.
Equally true, however, is that market access and access to affordable drugs are not mutually exclusive. In fact, many African delegations argued for both.
In any case, it was of great strategic importance in such negotiations, that Africa places many issues on the table hoping that if it could not win all of them, at least it could win some.
Besides, if we postponed access to affordable drugs and argued for and got market access, how would a diseased and dying population produce for the western markets?
However, before Museveni could get his day, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) hit the west and Asia.
America was under threat, but the patent holder for the drug that treats SARS was unable to provide the quantities and within the time the US needed the drugs.
A deal was struck with the Canadian patent holder to have American companies produce generic drugs to meet the shortfall in the US, and the country learnt the importance of flexibility of intellectual property rights.
On August 30, the Americans and their allies announced a deal with the Third World on this issue; a deal in which America still wanted agreements specifying the diseases whose drugs could be manufactured through secondary patents.
However, the experience of SARS showed that it was not strategic for countries to commit themselves on the issue of disease. For anytime a new disease emerges that is not on the list, countries will be unable to respond promptly to save their people if they wait for the patent holder to give them permission to manufacture generic drugs.
From the point of view of the poor to access cheap, generic drugs in a timely way, this is the best option.
That the president of Uganda, a country acclaimed for success in combating HIV/Aids got into bed with Americans to deny his poverty-stricken population access to affordable medicines is a very sad thing indeed.
While the American pharmaceutical companies sent their own staff to beef up their government’s negotiating team, Museveni was not thinking about his poor voters but American corporations.
Actually he was thinking of how he can play puppet to the Americans in order to get them to help him stay in power, including getting a third, sad term.
I do not blame America because it has a right to promote the interests of its people and corporations: what do you expect from a pig but a grunt?
But Museveni humiliated us as Ugandans.
All the African delegations and the delegations of other Third World countries are wondering what is wrong with Uganda.
The much-acclaimed deal on TRIPS still has many problems and civil society organisations put up a new fight for the Third World, a fight that makes one wonder why young white liberals fight more for Africans than Africans themselves.
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
