At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020 and in the midst of concerns over the availability of affordable vaccines, medicines and other medical products, India and South Africa had tabled a proposal in the World Trade Organization (WTO) seeking a temporary waiver on these products from certain obligations under the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
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Their contention was that the application and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) were “hindering or potentially hindering timely provisioning of affordable medical products to the patients”. They, therefore, argued that “rapid scaling up of manufacturing globally” was “an obvious crucial solution to address the timely availability and affordability of medical products to all countries in need”, and for doing so, IPRs must be waived for at least three years. By submitting their proposal, India and South Africa had, thus, taken a firm position that when lives are at stake, these products should be treated as global public goods.
