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

H.E. Ambassador Dr. Lansana GBERIE
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

69.   I would like to start by congratulating you Chair for your leadership, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the WTO and the entire membership for the adoption of a Ministerial Decision on TRIPS during the MC12. 70.   Reverting to agenda items 4, 5, and 6, the African Group has a long-standing position which is well known to the Council of which I will not go through. I will direct myself only issue of the CBD Secretariat. 71.   The African Group has been urging Members to allow the CBD Secretariat to be invited to share their experience in the TRIPS Council. Our call is in line with Article V of the Marrakesh Agreement which directs WTO Members to effectively cooperate with other international organizations on matters related to the WTO. The African Group has been mindful of the critical importance for WTO bodies to cooperate with other relevant international organizations and we have exercised due restraint from objecting such arrangements in the past in other bodies. Therefore, we would like to once again urge other Members to exercise a similar approach on the CBD Secretariat to be invited and share their experience in this body.

The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
20. The Chair proposed to address these three agenda items together. He 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). He said that the Annual Report on Notifications and other Information Flows that had been introduced by the Secretariat at the Council's last meeting 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 submit responses. The Chair thus encouraged Members to submit responses to these checklists, and to update their previous submissions if they were out of date, noting that the e-TRIPS Submission System provided an easy and convenient online tool for drafting and submitting responses.
21. The Chair indicated two long-standing procedural issues which had been discussed extensively on the record, at every regular meeting of the Council for almost ten years. The first one 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.
22. The Chair noted that the delegations' positions on these issues were well-known and had already extensively recorded in the Council's minutes and therefore suggested that delegations focus their interventions on suggestions on how to resolve differences and make progress on substantive issues.
23. The representatives of India; Tanzania, on behalf of the African Group; Bangladesh; Brazil; South Africa; Indonesia; Sri Lanka; Egypt; Peru; the United States; Canada; China; Japan; and Chile took the floor.
24. The Council took note of the statements made and agreed to revert to these matters at its next meeting.
IP/C/M/105, IP/C/M/105/Add.1, IP/C/M/105/Corr.1