What’s humanitarian got to do with patents?

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Humanitarian action is historically connected to the contractual aspects of patents, that is, the right conferred upon the inventor or his assignees to exclude others from using or marketing the invention without a license or other sort of permission.

Indeed, a debate exists since the end of the 19^th century concerning the patenting of medicines. Initially, from 1850 to the 1960s, at least in Europe, both food and pharmaceutical products were excluded from patenting rights. Early legislators believed that such rights would be in conflict with the public health interest. That is, the exclusive rights conferred upon inventors and their assignees includes setting prices, and thus the potential to bar access to products affecting the well-being of people on a large scale.

However, in the 1960s and 70s, pharmaceutical products became patentable, albeit  with special mandatory licensing clauses, still in an effort to protect the public health interest.

Today, pharmaceutical patents constitute the largest sector of patenting activity in both the United and Europe. And the situation feared by 19^th century legislators has in many cases played out, in the third world and to a lesser extent in the rest of the world.

Humanitarian organizations such as Doctors Without Borders together with many players across a wide spectrum of public and private activity relentlessly raise the issue of patented medicine to the forefront of public debate (DWB 2015). And it is probably fair to say that a long history of strife and betrayals of the public health interest now exists.

Reference

DWB (2015) - Doctors without Borders  – The cost of medicine: A special report
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/usa/files/fall_2015_alert.pdf

International Women's Day 2014 at the UN

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Today, March 8, was International Women’s Day, celebrated with a very special invitation at the United Nations, in NYC, for men and boys to hold up one half of the sky and walk side by side with women on the path to equal rights.

Why? Because: equality for women is progress for all

This is the message that was reported and substantiated in a UN panel session convened on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2014, and it is the new foundation upon which the UN will devise a second set of development goals to end world poverty, once the UN Millennium Development Goals of the year 2000 expire at the end of this year.

Indeed, it was an extraordinary victory for women worldwide that equality and the empowerment of women was included as Goal No. 3 in the UN Millennium Development Goals of the year 2000, considering that 188 nations ratified recognition of the role of women in economic development beyond childbearing. And it should be even more interesting and extraordinary to see how good men and boys will respond to an explicit HE for SHE program in support of equal rights for women for the purposes of fostering development for all.

Please feel free to listen to this important invitation in the speeches of H.E. Mr. John W. Ashe, President of the United Nations General Assembly, and Ms. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuke, Under Secretary and Executive Director of UN Women, directly at the UN Women Watch site: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/iwd/

You will also find in this webcast of the event plenty of additional data and information in the speeches of the other 3 members of this distinguished 2014 International Woman’s Day UN panel, including:

H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, who kept a promise to tell the world about female genital mutilations, and to speak in support of women activists seeking to put an end such practices;

Former US Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who called for Women Rights as Human Rights, 20 years ago; and 

Ms. Andrea Nunez, Vice President of the World YWCA Board, representing young women and civil society, working in the field to end child marriages and violence against women, and to support equal rights for women.

References

International Women’s Day at the UN (March 8, 2014)
https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/iwd/

UN Millennium goals

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/