Last year, he was also appointed by the Un to the position of “Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”.  (Yes, that’s his actual job title!  Fantastic isn’t it - I wonder how he fits it on his business cards?)

Anyway, on June 2 Grover presented his annual report to to the UN Human Rights council. (You can also download his accompanying speech here - most of the quotes below are from the speech.)

His report is an outstanding, scathing attack on the effects of the WTO’s TRIPs agreement, and other bilateral & regional FTAs in denying ordinary people around the world access to life-saving medicines.

He starts with some worrying statistics:

Nearly 2 billion people lack access to essential medicines, and massive inequalities still remain regarding access to health services and medicines around the world, which is partly due to high costs, Improving access to medicines could save 10 million lives a year, 4 million in Africa and South East Asia.

Then he sheets home the blame:

TRIPS and FTAs have had an adverse impact on prices and availability of medicines by creating obstacles for States to comply with their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to health. Similarly, the lack of capacity, together with external pressures from developed countries has created obstacles for developing countries and LDCs to use TRIPS flexibilities to promote access to medicines.

I am particularly concerned that the supply of generic medicines is now in doubt as countries that have been the generic producers have become TRIPS compliant and have had to introduce product patents.

Among a variety of evidence of how these agreements are blocking access to medicines, his report recounts a shocking story I heard in Thailand in 2007 when I was there filming Squeezed. The story is this:

Thailand also faced pressure following its attempts to lower prices of medicines through compulsory licensing. Between 2006 and 2007, Thailand issued compulsory licences for HIV and heart disease medicines in order to meet its obligations to provide universal access to medicines. In 2007, Thailand was placed on the Special 301 Priority Watch List. The position of the European Commission was also unwelcoming of the measures taken by Thailand. One of the affected companies withdrew seven pending applications for registration of new medicines in Thailand, thus effectively withholding them from the Thai market.

I always thought that this was extraordinary: a pharmaceutical company withholding its medicines from a market that’s in need (and willing to pay!) in “punishment” for a government taking steps to protect the health of its citizens!

Anyway, the impacts of TRIPs and the TRIPs+ provisions of mnay FTA are much wider - it’s worth having a look at the report to see just how wide.

Unforunately the recommendations which accompany the report are neccesarily conservative (nothing inthere about abolishing TRIPs altogether, I’m afraid.)  But it does recommend against TRIPs+ provisions for developing countries (like the ones that Australia includes in its FTAs):

Developing countries and LDCs should not introduce TRIPS-plus standards in their national laws. Developed countries should not encourage developing countries and LDCs to enter into TRIPS-plus FTAs and should be mindful of actions which may infringe upon the right to health.

Which is a start.

So, to pick up where I left off, I did promise a follow-up on the G20 meeting in April.  You don’t really remember it? Don’t worry: not that much ended up happening anyway.

Quick summary for those with not much time: The IMF won, ordinary people lost.

For a more in-depth analysis, the Bretton Woods Project has a good summary of what was decided (more money for the IMF and for its Special Drawing Rights) and and what was glossed over (real reform of the IMF, real money for the world’s poorest, and concrete commitments to slowing greenhouse emissions) at the meeting.

The Third World Network also offered some great analysis of the outcome - you can get a flavour of it with article titles like “A DEVELOPMENT-BLIND G20 OUTCOME THAT EMPOWERS AN UNREFORMED IMF” and “Reality behind the hype of the G20 Summit”

Online think tank Foreign Policy in Focus also featured a great analysis from  John Cavanagh and Robin Broad titled: “London Econ Summit: Born of Good Intentions, But Ends in Disastrous Results“.  Needless to say, they weren’t impressed at the outcomes either (note to John & Robin: don’t give away your punch-line in your title!)

And just released today (!) is a new report from organisations involved in the Put People First alliance in the UK, which finds that progress at the April G20 was insufficient to create “transformative” economic change.  The report argues that G20 leaders strengthened  institutions like the IMF which hace been responsible for overseeing the policies that caused the global financial crisis in the first place. But luckily there are a variety of positive recommendations for changes that governments should make at the next G20 meeting (in November), in areas like

• Delivering democratic governance
• Delivering justice and ending global poverty and inequality
• Creating a safer climate and a green economy

You can download the full report from the Put People First website here.

Please leave a comment if you’ve seen some other, incisive analysis of the meeting….

Update: Just remembered: if you want more analysis, check out G20 Voice, an initiative of Oxfam GB bringing together 50 bloggers to analyse the G20 meeting.

If you haven’t been following the discussion, below is a collection of some of the best or most important reports and articles I’ve seen in the lead-up to the G20 meeting, including the various issues around the financial/economic crisis which will be discussed there, and the various governments and non-government bodies that have opinions about it all.  In the next few days I’ll also post some of the best analysis following the summit about what gets decided.

Enjoy:

Background:

- Nobel Prize Winner and former World Bank cheif economist Joseph Stiglitz has been leading a commission which has been looking at hw to reform the global economic system.  The grandly named Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System released its report about a fortnight ago.  The Commission has made some exciting, far-reaching and possibly (hopefully!) world-changing recommendations for new global institutions.  You can read the full report here (PDF), or a summary article from Stiglitz in The Guardian here: Reform is needed. Reform is in the air. We can’t afford to fail. There’s more extended coverage of the report from the Third World Network here and here.

- The Africa Progress Panel is Chaired By Kofi Annan, and brings together a variety of political leaders and experts on development including Michel Camdessus (former Managing Director, IMF), Goodall Gondwe (Minister of Finance, Malawi), Gilbert Houngbo (Prime Minister, Togo), Trevor Manuel (Minister of Finance, South Africa), Simon Maxwell (Director, Overseas Development Institute), Festus Mogae (former President of Botswana), Linah Mohohlo (Governor, Bank of Botswana), Todd Moss (Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development), Benno Ndulu (Governor, Central Bank of Tanzania) and Ngaire Woods (Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford).  The panel has just issued its report ahead of the G20 meeting, warning that “reform of global governance will fail if poorest countries are sidelined.”  The report, New Multilateralism is available here.

- From 25 to 27 of March, the UN held an Interactive Thematic Dialogue of the UN General Assembly on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development at its headquarters in New York.  The Dialogue brought together many of the key players in the international development world - you can find a good summary of the meeting here, or read some of the more in-depth reports, including from UN Conference on Trade And Development, the World Bank, and the International Labour Organisation, or watch some of the hours of video on the Dialogue home page, including this excellent one of Joseph Stiglitz’s presentation (Real Player software needed).

What should be done (articles from the Guardian):

• Jeffrey Sachs, the Earth Institute, Columbia University; Nariman Behravesh, IHS Global Insight; Gerard Lyons, Standard Chartered; Heiner Flassbeck, UNCTAD; Alistair Milne, Cass Business School; Kevin Watkins, UN: various responses.

• Mark Weisbrot: The G20 should end rich-country rule

• Howard Davies: More & Better Regulation

• John Kay: Restore Narrow Banking

• Aditya Chakrabortty: Give up our blind faith in economic growth

• Jeremy Seabrook: an opportunity to redress the inequalities that exist between rich and poor

• Will Hutton: Everything must be re-examined.

On the Summit:

• From the Bretton Woods Project, read an overview of official standpoints and proposals of participating countries ahead of the London summit (PDF)

• Or check out the leaked G20 draft communiqué.

• Or an interesting historical perspective from Dani Rodrik.

On the Protests (from London’s Guardian - again!):

• We were right the whole time!

• Some background

• Coverage from the weekend protests

• Perspectives from various activists

• That spoof of the Financial Times

More places to look for more analysis of the crisis and the G20 summit:

• Rethinking FInance: Alternative Voices for a New Financial Architecture

Phew!

The report is only 27 pages long, so if you have a change, please read through it.  Otherwise, here’s the main thrust, from the Executive Summary:

This report examines the empirical evidence of the impact of free trade agreements on jobs. Using studies and statistics collated here for the first time, the report shows how past trade liberalisations caused huge job losses in both Africa and Latin America, the two continents that bore the brunt of early experiments in structural adjustment and other free trade policies. Findings from those experiments reveal a pattern of deindustrialisation, job losses and falling wages whose impact continues to be felt to this day, condemning whole generations to unemployment and poverty and stifling hopes for sustainable development.

In sub-Saharan Africa, trade liberalisation led to job losses across a wide range of countries, including Kenya, Malawi, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe and Morocco. Zambia saw unemployment double as the formal sector lost tens of thousands of jobs. Nor were these short-term losses: even today the vast majority of Zambian workers are forced to eke out a living in the informal economy, and 95% do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the $2 a day poverty threshold. Industrial employment in Ghana fell by 17% during the first eight years of trade liberalisation reforms, and by 22% for women.

Latin America experienced a similar loss of industrial and manufacturing jobs as a result of trade liberalisation. Unemployment in Latin America increased from 7.6 million to 18.1 million over the 1990s, almost entirely through the loss of existing jobs. Trade liberalisation in Brazil alone reduced net employment by 2.7 million jobs between 1990 and 1997. In Mexico, the trade liberalisations which saw the rise of the maquila sector brought huge job losses in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, as well as a catastrophic decline in the value of wages. In real terms, the minimum wage dropped to just one fifth of its 1976 value by 2000.

Despite this evidence of the impact of previous trade liberalisations, some politicians are still calling for the swift conclusion of the Doha round of negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Yet the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has calculated that millions of jobs are at risk in developing countries as a result of the new trade liberalisation which the Doha round would require. Even the EU’s own assessment predicts that a conclusion to the Doha round along the lines currently proposed will cause significant job losses across the agricultural, industrial and service sectors of the developing world.

. . .

Free trade is no answer to the current economic crisis. At a time when unemployment levels are already rising sharply as a result of the global recession, further trade liberalisation will only exacerbate the threat to jobs. The free market approach undermines the possibility of decent work and of achieving sustainable development. War on Want believes that states must retain the policy space and levers of control in order to govern markets, manage international trade and provide decent work for all.

Download the full Trading Away Our Jobs report here.

Now China has taken the lead, calling for a new global currency which seems to closely resemble the Bancor - JM Keynes’ 1940s proposal for a global reserve currency to solve large global economic credit & debt imbalances.

Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan released an essay on Monday calling for a similar system:

“A super-sovereign reserve currency managed by a global institution could be used to both create and control global liquidity.  This will significantly reduce the risks of a future crisis and enhance crisis management capability.”

It is of course an excellent idea - if only the US had agreed to Keynes’ proposal in 1944 in the first place!

The report says that

Liberalisation of overseas markets has been pushed aggressively by the industry’s lobbyists via free trade deals, firstly at the World Trade Organisation and more recently at the bilateral level.

It highlights two major impacts:

Firstly, the entry and presence of foreign banks is associated with the ‘cherry-picking’ of richer customers (both individuals and large businesses) and a decline in services and credit for poorer customers and smaller businesses. Rural communities are especially affected; foreign banks rarely have a meaningful presence outside large urban areas.

Secondly, the entry and presence of foreign banks produces a discernible and negative shift of credit away from productive activities (investment in agriculture, industrial production or local services) which can boost local development, and towards personal consumption, via credit cards and credit for items such as cars and mortgages.

You can dowload the full (52 page) report here or get a 2-page briefing here.

This groundbreaking move will result in the tripling of sales of cocoa under Fairtrade terms for cocoa farmers in Ghana, both increasing Fairtrade cocoa sales for existing certified farming groups, as well as opening up new opportunities for  thousands more farmers to benefit from the Fairtrade system.

Given that it sells 300 million of these is the UK & Ireland each year, this is a big step forward.  According to the Independent, Cadbury’s move will improve the livelihoods of forty thousand cacao farmers in Ghana.

We’ll be getting in touch with Cadbury in Australia to find out when they’ll be following suit….

Professor Frank Garcia from the Law Faculty, Boston College; Director, Law & Justice in the Americas Program will be speaking on “The Doha Round and its implications (success or failure) for developing countries”

The Doha Development Round, the current trade negotiation round of the World Trade Organization Negotiations, commenced in 2001. The aim of the negotiations is to lower the trade barriers around the world, allowing for an increase in global trade. These negotiations were frustrated by differing opinions on the effects the proposed provisions will have on developed and developing countries. Professor Garcia will speak about the implications of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations for people in developing countries, with a focus on the impact that negotiations will have on human rights.

Professor Frank Garcia has been a member of the Boston College Law Faculty since 2001. He earned his B.A. in Religious Studies from Reed College in 1985 and his J.D. from the University Of Michigan Law School in 1989. Professor Garcia was a Fulbright Scholar and professorial fellow at the Law Institute of the Americas, SMU School of Law, and is the Associate Director of the Caribbean Law Institute, at Florida State University College of Law. Professor Garcia has researched and published widely in the field of international trade, focusing on the theoretical, practical, human rights and social issues underpinning international trade and globalisation. His recent work, focussing on the ‘fairness’ of international trade regimes and publications include “Trade-Based Strategies for Combating Child Labor”, “Protecting the Human Rights Principle in a Globalizing Economy”, and “Why Trade Law Needs a Theory of Justice”.

Venue:  Monash University Law Chambers,  472 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
RSVP:  castan.centre@law.monash.edu.au; 9905 3327

The course will run in Melbourne (Carlton) on Monday evenings from April 14 to June 15 2009.

Understanding Globalisation is a 10-week course which examines the agreements, institutions and philosophies of the global economic system in an approachable, easy-to-follow way. Taking an Australian and global perspective, Understanding Globalisation will bring together 15 Australian and international experts in politics, economics and development to support participants in exploring the complexities of globalisation.

Through lectures, workshops and other activities, the course examines the relationships between the global economy and the current global financial, food and climate crises and equips participants to track future developments in globalisation and the global economic system.

For more information, download an information booklet and application form here or apply online now.

Please email us if you have any questions about the course.