The WIPO Development Agenda: Progress and Challenges in 2025
By Nirmalya Syam
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Development Agenda (DA), adopted in 2007, seeks to align intellectual property (IP) policies with the development priorities of member States. Enduring challenges persist despite some progress including the adoption of treaties to facilitate access to copyright protected works for visually impaired and print disabled persons, and the recent treaty on IP, genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, and the adoption of several projects for implementing different DA recommendations. DA projects, however, have had limited impact on mainstreaming a development orientation in WIPO, there is limited promotion of use of IP flexibilities for development, and WIPO’s technical assistance continues to lack a development orientation. There is also a sustained absence of consideration and reporting of development related issues across WIPO bodies. Divergent interpretations of “development”, weak coordination and monitoring systems, and governance inequities have hindered the DA’s transformative potential. This brief examines these issues and advances recommendations to address the challenges to establish an effective DA.
Statement to the 25th Session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development
South Centre
13 – 17 May 2024
The 25th Session of the UN Working Group on RtD is taking place at UN Geneva this week. Realizing the human right to development supports the achievement of the 2030Agenda and the enjoyment of all human rights.
STATEMENT OF THE SOUTHCENTRE AT THE SUMMIT OF HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT OF THE G77 PLUS CHINA
Havana, Cuba, 09.16.2023
This summit can contribute to consolidate the cooperation mechanisms between G77 member countries and the Non-Aligned Movement for the reform of the United Nations system and the global financial, trade and fiscal architecture where the interests and rights of developing countries are respected. It is also necessary to make effective the financial and technology transfer obligations of developed countries in the fight against climate change, including the operationalization of the loss and damage fund agreed at COP27.
The South Centre, as an intergovernmental organization created by and for developing countries, has benefited from strong cooperation with the Group of 77+China since its inception. We remain firmly committed to such cooperation in a variety of areas where the Group focuses its efforts.
Graduating from the LDC Group: Challenges Facing Bangladesh
by Mustafizur Rahman
A significant number of LDCs will be graduating in the near term future. On graduation these countries will face formidable challenges as they will lose the benefits accruing from LDC-specific international support measures. Bangladesh is the first major LDC which is slated for graduation, to take place in November 2026. This article examines the various graduation challenges facing Bangladesh, and articulates some of the strategies that the country needs to pursue in order to graduate with momentum and make graduation sustainable.
WTO Public Forum 2022 Working Session: Mainstreaming Development in the WTO
30 September 2022
WTO Room E
Time: 11:30-12:45 CEST
The Global South has a fundamental interest in the WTO. In framing the future of trade, reforming and strengthening the organisation requires mainstreaming development in the WTO. The primary question is how to ensure that the broader development dimension of the multilateral trading system is advanced and not simply relegated to polarising conversations about special and differential treatment. This session explores ways in which the multilateral trading system can meaningfully address the needs of developing countries including LDCs. These include assessing different approaches to build greater equity in the trading regime, considering ways to improve the capacity for developing countries to benefit from trade, establishing a deeper role and voice for developing countries including LDCs in developing balanced trade rules, and examining how they can exercise their right to fully participate in the consensus-based decision-making processes of the WTO.
STATEMENT OF THE CHAIPERSON OF THE SOUTH CENTRE BOARD, THABO MBEKI: COUNCIL OF MEMBER STATES, 24 FEBRUARY 2022
Once again the health, economic and social crisis caused by COVID-19 forces us to hold this meeting virtually. The deterioration of the situation in developing countries, to which I alluded two years ago, has only worsened. The gap between the countries of the North and the global South has widened. The lack of solidarity and selfishness of the countries of the North has led to the inequality in access to vaccines that we all know today.
If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that we must completely rethink the value we place on the health sector. The billions needed to prevent and respond to health crises are nothing compared to the billions lost in business closures, job losses and economic paralysis that are the cost to the global economy of a health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic.
The South Centre, in this second year of the pandemic, has continued to adapt and innovate in its ways to support and accompany developing countries in this challenging context.
China seems to be preparing to play a bigger role in global economic affairs, but not at the cost of giving up its developing country status. After years of being rather low key in economic and social affairs at the United Nations, it looks as if China is now ready to upgrade its role in the future. (more…)
The economically successful developing countries are characterised as having a strong “developmental state”. But this role of the state is coming under attack in new global rules being created. Two new trade agreements involving the two economic giants, the United States and European Union, are leading a charge against the role of the state in the economy in developing countries. Attention should be paid to this initiative as it has serious repercussions on the future development plans and prospects of the developing countries. (more…)
Development-led Globalization Requires De-colonizing the MDGs
By Manuel Montes
The big attraction of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), or at least the first seven of these, was their near universal acceptability. It mobilized both resources and politics, both nationally and internationally, in pursuit of reducing poverty, hunger, gender inequality, malnutrition and disease.
50 years of Development Planning in Africa: Retrospect and Prospects
By Carlos Lopes
A new era of development planning is emerging in Africa, says the new head of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, in this wide-ranging review. He gave this opening speech at the 50th anniversary conference of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP).
