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

Ambassador Gail Mathurin (Jamaica)
J.ii (ii) LDC priority needs for technical and financial cooperation
98. The Chairperson recalled that paragraph 2 of the TRIPS Council's 2005 Decision on the "Extension of the Transition Period under Article 66.1 for Least-Developed Country Members" provided that "with a view to facilitating targeted technical and financial cooperation programmes, all the least-developed country Members would provide to the Council for TRIPS, preferably by the 1 January 2008, as much information as possible on their individual priority needs for technical and financial cooperation in order to assist them taking steps necessary to implement the TRIPS Agreement". At the Council's meeting in October 2007, Sierra Leone and Uganda had presented communications identifying their priority needs for technical and financial cooperation (IP/C/W/499 and 500, respectively). Since these communications had been discussed at the Council's meeting in March 2008, Uganda had followed up its initial needs assessment by translating it into a national capacity building programme referred to as the Uganda Trade and Intellectual Property (UTIP) programme, which it had presented to the Council (IP/C/W/510). In their original communications, Sierra Leone and Uganda had requested that consultations be set up with their developed country partners and relevant international organizations on how the priority needs that they had identified could best be met. As had been foreshadowed by her predecessor, such consultations, set up by the Secretariat, had been held the day before the Council's meeting.
IP/C/M/57