[e-drug] Re: WTO meeting on essential medicines -Where are the NGOs? (contd)

["Rivera, Severina" <SRivera@oxfamamerica.org>]

E-drug: Re: WTO meeting on essential medicines -Where are the NGOs? (contd)
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 If the purpose of the WTO is to listen to the NGOs and try to "jumpstart"
the discussion by presenting the different points of view in the NGO world,
it defeats its own purpose by giving valuable space to the most powerful
industry lobby in the US--which already commands undue access to and
influence in the WTO.  This simply reinforces the power imbalance in the WTO
between NGOs and corporations.

I suggest that a better format would be to have Pharma respond from the
floor in.  If the concern is that industry will remain silent before NGO
fora like this--which is what they've done in the past--that's their choice
and their loss.  However, we all know they certainly have not been silent in
pushing their agenda at the WTO where they are accorded the full weight of a
powerful insider.  It may be naive to think that the NGOs will ever be given
equal opportunity of this sort.  The proposed format of this panel certainly
reinforces this skepticism.  

Severina
Severina Rivera
Oxfam America
SRivera@oxfamamerica.org

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