World trade body clinches accords on fishing, e-commerce, food insecurity, COVID-19 vaccines

By Peter Kenny

GENEVA (AA) – After intense talks, the World Trade Organization finalized a package of agreements on fishing subsidies, e-commerce, food insecurity, and COVID-19 vaccines among its 164 members on Friday.

“Not in a long while has the WTO seen such a significant number of multilateral outcomes,” said WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the end of the meeting.

“You're not going home empty-handed,” she said in the early hours on Friday after she had extended the meeting for two days and delegates worked through the night to reach their deals.

Ministers dealt with each agreement area separately, but were unable to finalize their accords and embarked on talks cutting across all segments with trade-offs to get their final pact.

"You stepped up and delivered in every area we've been working on," she said, telling members they had "reinvigorated the organization."

However, several NGOs criticized the outcome of the meeting for failing to deliver an effective pandemic intellectual property waiver proposed by India and South Africa.

It was Okonjo-Iweala's first ministerial meeting at the helm of the WTO after the December 2017 ministerial conference in Buenos Aires had failed to lock in any strong agreements.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced several postponements of the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), which was initially supposed to be held in Kazakhstan in June 2020.

The WTO said the agreements include a declaration on the WTO response to the COVID-19 pandemic and preparedness for future pandemics and an agreement on fisheries subsidies along with a declaration on the emergency response to food insecurity.

- Food purchases

The meeting also decided to exempt World Food Program’s food purchases from export prohibitions or restrictions and agreed on the extension of a work program on electronic commerce, and the TRIPS Agreement (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) on intellectual property.

United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai said: “Through difficult and protracted discussions, members were able to bridge differences and achieve a concrete and meaningful outcome to get more safe and effective vaccines to those who need it most.

“This agreement shows that we can work together to make the WTO more relevant to the needs of regular people.”

After the meeting, Christos Christou, the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), expressed disappointment with an inadequate outcome on waiving intellectual property for COVID-19 medical tools.

“This agreement fails overall to offer an effective and meaningful solution to help increase people's access to needed medical tools during the pandemic, as it does not adequately waive intellectual property on all essential COVID-19 medical tools, and it does not apply to all countries,” said Christou in a statement.