EU must urgently reconsider opposition to TRIPS waiver - Mary Robinson

•  Former President Mary Robinson and Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire call on President Biden to waive intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines 

Today, former Irish President and UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson called on EU’s leaders “to put the collective right to safety for all ahead of everything else - and come together to end this pandemic”. Robinson’s comments come after news that US President Joe Biden is considering supporting a patent waiver of intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines at the international level. 

The waiver of intellectual property rules, known as the TRIPS waiver, would allow for a scale up in manufacturing globally, overcoming artificial supply constraints while helping to reduce further distribution crises.  

Jim Clarken, Chief Executive of Oxfam Ireland said: “The continuance of monopoly control by a small number of vaccine makers, and the resulting global vaccine inequality, is leaving millions of lives hanging in the balance by putting corporate profit before people. 

 “Oxfam fully support Mary Robinson’s call for EU leaders to urgently reconsider their opposition to the TRIPS waiver - and offer their full support . By doing this, the European Union will not only save millions of peoples’ lives, but also mitigate the risk to our economies and the current backslide in workplace gender equality.” 

Earlier this week, the former Irish President added her name to an open letter to Biden. The letter was sent to the White House as news spread about the pausing of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine – which will severely hinder vaccine roll out plans across the world, including in Ireland.  

Alongside Robinson, Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire and more than 150 former heads of state and Nobel laureates, called on President Biden to support the TRIPS waiver and pursue a people’s vaccine to end the pandemic.  

While there have been some welcome steps to increase the supply of vaccines to poor countries, including from Ireland, they remain insufficient when compared to the scale of the Covid-19 threat. 

In February, Oxfam Ireland, along with a number of organisations, networks and health professionals wrote an open letter to Micheál Martin, urgently requesting Ireland’s support for this temporary emergency waiver, which is currently supported by more than 100 nations. 

Clarken concluded: “To control the virus, the simple reality is, enough vaccines need to be produced in different geographies, priced affordably, and allocated globally. Low-income countries should not be forced to wait for vaccines to trickle down to them.

 “Ireland has a well-deserved reputation of supporting the human rights of the world’s poorest people. At this critical moment in history, we should reaffirm our values and leadership on the world stage by, as the letter to Biden states, choosing ‘to put the collective right to safety for all ahead of the commercial monopolies of the few’. 

 “Covid-19 is a public health crisis, and as such demands a global solution. It is time to break from old ways, and pave new ones that we can all have an equal footing on."

END 

Contact 

Caroline Reid | caroline.reid@oxfam.org | 087 912 3165 

Editor's Notes 

• See Mary Robinson's op-ed in the UK Times here.
• The full letter to President Biden and list of signatories can be found here. 

The letter specifically asks President Biden to support a proposal from the South African and Indian governments at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily waive intellectual property rules related to Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. At the current pace of vaccine production, most poor nations will be left waiting until at least 2024 to achieve mass Covid-19 immunisation.

The leaders also called for the intellectual property waiver to be accompanied by the open sharing of vaccine know-how and technology, and by coordinated and strategic global investment in research, development, and manufacturing capacity, especially in developing countries, underscoring that threats to public health are global and require global solidarity-based solutions.       

Former leaders who signed the letter included Gordon Brown, former UK prime minister; François Hollande, former French president; Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the USSR. 

The letter, which was coordinated by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 organisations including Oxfam, UNAIDS, Global Justice Now and Avaaz, warned that at the current global immunisation rate, it was likely that only 10 percent of people in the majority of poor countries will be vaccinated in the next year.  

• The open letter sent to Micheál Martin in February by an Irish Coalition can be found here.