GENEVA
\nAfter all-night talks, members of the World Trade Organization early Friday reached a string of deals and commitments aimed to limit overfishing, broaden production of COVID-19 vaccines in the developing world, improve food security and reform a 27-year-old trade body that has been back on its heels in recent years.
\nWTO Director-General Nzogi Okonjo-Iweala, after a pair of sleepless nights in rugged negotiations, concluded the WTO\u2019s first ministerial conference in 4-1\/2 years by trumpeting a new sense of cooperation at a time when the world faces crises like Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine and a once-in-a-century pandemic that has taken millions of lives.
\n\u201cThe package agreements you have reached will make a difference to the lives of people around the world,\u201d said Okonjo-Iweala, landing what she called an \u201cunprecedented package of deliverables\u201d after 15 months in the job. \u201cThe outcomes demonstrate that the WTO is in fact capable of responding to emergencies of our time.\u201d
\nThe agreements could breathe new life into a trade body that faced repeated criticism from the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, which accused the WTO of a lack of fairness to the United States, and was caught in a growing economic and political rivalry between the U.S. and China. In recent years, Washington has incapacitated the WTO\u2019s version of an appeals court that rules on international trade disputes.
\nThe WTO operates by consensus, meaning that all its 164 members must agree on its deals \u2014 or at least not get in the way. The talks at times took place in backrooms or in side chats because some delegates didn\u2019t want to be in the same space as their counterparts from Russia \u2014 as a way to protest President Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, which has had fallout far beyond the battlefield, such as on food and fuel prices.
\nAmong the main achievements Friday was an accord, which fell short of early ambitions, to prohibit both support for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and for fishing in overtaxed stocks in the world\u2019s oceans.
\nIt marked the WTO\u2019s first significant deal since one in 2013 that cut red tape on treatment of goods crossing borders \u2014 and arguably one of its most impactful.
\n\u201cWTO members have for the first time, concluded an agreement with environmental sustainability at its heart,\u201d Okonjo-Iweala said. \u201cThis is also about the livelihoods of the 260 million people who depend directly or indirectly on marine fisheries.\u201d
\nThe WTO chief said the deal takes a first step to curb government subsidies and overcapacity \u2014 too many operators \u2014 in the fishing industry.
\nMore controversial was an agreement on a watered-down plan to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, which ran afoul of advocacy groups that say it did not go far enough \u2014 and could even do more harm than good.
\n\u201cThe TRIPS waiver compromise will contribute to ongoing efforts to concentrate and diversify vaccine manufacturing capacity so that a crisis in one region does not leave others cut off,\u201d Okonjo-Iweala said of the waiver of intellectual property protections.
\nU.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai hailed a \u201cconcrete and meaningful outcome to get more safe and effective vaccines to those who need it most.\u201d
\n\u201cThis agreement shows that we can work together to make the WTO more relevant to the needs of regular people,\u201d she said in a statement.
\nHer announcement a year ago that the U.S. would break with many other developed countries with strong pharmaceutical industries to work toward a waiver of WTO rules on COVID-19 vaccines served as an impetus to talks around a broader waiver sought by India and South Africa.
\nBut some advocacy groups were seething. Aid group Doctors Without Borders called it a \u201cdevastating global failure for people\u2019s health worldwide\u201d that the agreement stopped short of including other tools to fight COVID-19, including treatments and tests.
\n\u201cThe conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful,\u201d said Max Lawson, co-chair of the People\u2019s Vaccine Alliance and head of inequality policy at Oxfam.
\nHe said the European Union, United States, Britain and Switzerland blocked a stronger text.
\n\u201cThis so-called compromise largely reiterates developing countries\u2019 existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances,\u201d Lawson said.
\nBig pharmaceutical companies weren\u2019t happy that the vaccine waiver was approved, arguing that it sends a negative message to researchers and innovators who developed COVID-19 vaccines with blistering speed.
\n\u201cThe decision is a disservice to the scientists that left no stone unturned and undermines manufacturing partnerships on every continent,\u201d said Thomas Cueni, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.
\nIndian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, whose tough negotiating stance had frustrated some developed countries during the talks, said the ministerial meeting was a \u201cbig boost for multilateralism\u201d and showed progress on issues \u2014 like fisheries \u2014 that have been lagging for decades.
\n\u201cIndia is 100% satisfied with the outcome,\u201d he told reporters in Geneva. \u201cI am not returning to India with any worries.\u201d
\nThe meeting also agreed to lift export restrictions that have weighed on the U.N.\u2019s World Food Program, which is trying to offset the impact of rising food prices and fallout from the war in Ukraine on shipments of wheat, barely and other food staples from the country that is a key producer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GENEVA After all-night talks, members of the World Trade Organization early Friday reached a string of deals and commitments aimed to limit overfishing, broaden production of COVID-19 vaccines in the developing world, improve food security and reform a 27-year-old trade body that has been back on its heels in recent years. WTO Director-General Nzogi Okonjo-Iweala, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8620,8621,215,8619],"class_list":["post-266628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-covid-vaccines","tag-fisheries","tag-food","tag-wto"],"yoast_head":"\n