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By Cole Stangler, The Daily Poster

In May, the Biden administration made a bombshell declaration, endorsing a call to temporarily suspend intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines that health and trade experts say could greatly improve access to shots in the Global South — a move that appeared to mark a turning point in the global fight against the pandemic.

Months later, though, as the pandemic rages and the glaring gap in vaccine access grows, the effort remains blocked at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any waiver for vaccines needs the green light from the organization’s TRIPS Council — the commission in charge of IP rights — and unanimous support from all 164 members. But as delegations return to Geneva after summer break, a long-circulated proposal backed by India and South Africa has yet to gain traction.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration — which has deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry — has proven unwilling to share vaccine recipes with other countries, as The Daily Poster reported earlier this week.

“It’s really upsetting watching this process,” says Hu Yuan Qiong, policy co-coordinator and senior legal and policy advisor for Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign. “Viruses disregard whatever game we’re playing in human society, they just carry on and mutate.”

The deadlock is the product of multiple factors. Hostility from the United Kingdom and the European Union as well as criticism from Big Pharma have complicated efforts, but as experts tell The Daily Poster, so has the apparent unwillingness of the Biden administration to go beyond its four-month-old statement and actually start pressing for a waiver.

“I’ve been working on trade policy for a while and I know when the U.S. wants something, they get it,” Burcu Kilic, a trade policy expert at Public Citizen, tells The Daily Poster. “The U.S. should [play] a proactive role in this discussion.”

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COVID-19 Global Solidarity Manifesto To: Policy Makers

Petition Text

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the urgency of changing global structures of inequity and violence. We, people around the world, will seize this historical moment. We are building solidarity at every level: local, national, global. Despite the need to physically distance, we are building mutual aid groups, community networks, and social movements. We declare this manifesto today to offer a vision of the world we are building, the world we are demanding, the world we will achieve.

1. We demand strong, universal health care systems and health care as a basic right for all humans.

2. We demand an immediate global ceasefire in all conflicts and an end to the disease of war. We demand that every nation move at least half its military spending to provide health care, housing, childcare, nutrition, education, Internet access, and other social needs so we can truly protect people’s physical, psychological, and economic security, including through the closure of foreign military bases, the cessation of military exercises, and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

3. We demand that unsustainable capitalist economies, based on the fantasy of endless growth, be replaced with cooperatively based economies of care, where human life, biodiversity, and our natural resources are conserved and a universal basic income is guaranteed so that governments can work together to combat the existential threat of climate change.

4. We demand an immediate lifting of all sanctions targeting entire nations, which are impoverishing vulnerable populations and killing people by blocking access to medicines and medical supplies.

5. We demand that all workers be protected against COVID-19 and have their long-term occupational health, economic, and labor rights guaranteed.

6. We demand the full protection of all people, especially the most vulnerable, including women and other victims of intimate partner violence and child abuse, the elderly, the impoverished, prisoners and detainees, refugees and other displaced peoples, migrants regardless of immigration status, the homeless, LGBTQIA+ individuals, racial/ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and those disability or ability challenged, among others.

7. We demand that wealthy nations live up to their responsibility to provide medical aid (including through the World Health Organization) and debt relief to save lives in countries without strong public health systems because of long histories of colonialism, neocolonialism, and other exploitation, foreign and domestic.

8. We demand that governments and corporations respect privacy and not exploit the pandemic to expand repressive measures such as surveillance, detention without trial, and restrictions on basic human rights to assembly, free expression, self-determination, and the vote.

9. We demand that when governments implement economic stimulus programs and re-open their economies they prioritize the needs of people over the interests of corporate, financial, and political elites.

In a world where the gap between rich and poor is obscene, with the world’s richest 1% having more than twice the wealth of 6.9 billion people, a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power globally and within nations is imperative. Every human being must have the opportunity to live a healthy, creative, and fulfilling life, free of the ravages of poverty, exploitation, and domination.

Why is this important?

A group of around 50 people from more than 12 countries drafted the Manifesto in recent weeks. Many prominent people are supporting it. People in general are more awake to the absurdity of a planet in which the richest 8 people have more wealth than the poorest 3.8 billion than ever before as this pandemic spreads. We are circulating this widely in multiple languages to help frame the debate and actions moving forward, raising global demands that address the inequity resulting from decades of neoliberal economic policies and rampant and unbridled militarism.

Militarism and Foreign Policy Universal Healthcare