Minutes - TRIPS Council - View details of the intervention/statement

H.E. Ambassador Dr Pimchanok PITFIELD
Tanzania on behalf of African Group
4; 5; 6 REVIEW OF THE PROVISIONS OF ARTICLE 27.3(B); RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TRIPS AGREEMENT AND THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY; PROTECTION OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND FOLKLORE

111.  First, I want to join other colleagues who have spoken before me to welcome you and to congratulate for your election to preside this important Council. I also want to assure you of the African Group's commitment to work with you in your endeavors during your tenure. 112.  The position of the African Group on this particular agenda item has not changed and I think most of the delegations know, so I wanted just to reiterate that we continue to uphold our position. I wanted actually to insist our long-standing call that we would want the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to also be invited to our Council so that they can share their experience of the Nagoya Protocol implementation and their other experiences related to this particular agenda item.

The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
17. The Chair proposed to address these three agenda items together. She recalled that one tool for the review under item 4 was the information provided by Members in response to lists of questions on Article 27.3(b). She said that the latest Annual Report on Notifications and other Information Flows circulated by the Secretariat illustrated that responses to that checklist had been rather sparse recently. So far, only 28 Members had responded to the lists of questions on Article 27.3(b), with Saudi Arabia being the most recent Member to respond in 2021. The Chair thus encouraged Members to submit responses to these checklists, and to update their previous submissions if they were out of date.
18. The Chair noted that two long-standing procedural issues had been discussed extensively on the record at every regular meeting of the Council for almost ten years. The first was the suggestion for the Secretariat to update three factual notes on the Council's discussions on the TRIPS and CBD and related items; these notes were initially prepared in 2002 and last updated in 2006. The second was the request to invite the CBD Secretariat to brief the Council on the Nagoya Protocol to the CBD, initially proposed in October 2010.
19. The Chair noted that delegations' positions on these issues were well-known and had already been extensively recorded in the Council's minutes. She therefore suggested that delegations focus their interventions on suggestions on how to resolve the differences and on how make progress on substantive issues.
20. The representatives of India; Bangladesh; Indonesia; Peru; South Africa; China; Tanzania, on behalf of the African Group; Ecuador; the United States of America; Japan; Nigeria; Thailand; Korea, Republic of; Canada and Brazil took the floor.
21. The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
IP/C/M/108, IP/C/M/108/Add.1