Trade Agreements and Human Rights

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Trade Agreements and Human Rights
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Why is trade a human rights issue?

• Trade sanctions can (arguably) be a means of
  enforcing human rights
• Yet embargos often can contribute to violations
  of rights, too (e.g., Cuba)
• Trade and investment flows affect the economy,
  can provide solutions for human rights challenges
• Structure of trade relations determines who
  benefits how is trade conducted?
• Free trade is a loaded term

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Does free trade benefit human rights?

• Free trade removal of tariffs and barriers and
  other market distortions
• In theory, this should produce
• Reduced prices
• Wider consumer choices
• How does this mesh with human rights reality?
• In practice, a lot of what gets called free trade
  is not
• Bottom line look beyond the label free trade
  to actual policies
• Should everything be a commodity?

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Trade Agreements in the Americas

• NAFTA 1994
• US- Chile 2003
• CAFTA 2005
• US- Peru 2007
• Agreements with Colombia, Panama (yet to be
  ratified)
• FTAA originally scheduled for January 1, 2005
  stalled

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Trade Agreements in the Americas

• Human rights concerns
• Lack of parity (e.g., agricultural subsidies) gt
  dumping
• Facilitate development model that creates jobs
  and economic growth, but at what cost? Who
  benefits?
• Concerns about labor, environment
• Establish institutions that circumvent democratic
  checks and balances
• Investor-state arbitration (Chapter 11 of NAFTA,
  Chapter 10 of CAFTA)

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Free Trade, Intellectual Property, and Human
Rights
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Intellectual property

• Why is this a human rights issue?
• History of IP
• WTO TRIPS Agreement 1994
• Doha Declaration 2001
• TRIPS-plus provisions in free trade agreements
  began after Doha

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What are TRIPS-plus IP provisions?

• Extension of patents
• Test data exclusivity
• _______________________________
• Longer periods of market monopoly

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HIV/AIDS in CAFTA countries

• Prior to CAFTA 1 in 6 people who need
  antiretrovirals received them
• Generic treatment 230 per patient, per year
• Brand-name drugs 2,000-2,500 per patient, per
  year

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Edgar
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Who opposes IP rights in FTAs?

• Amnesty International
• Oxfam
• Doctors without Borders
• World Health Organization
• 11 members of US Congress in January 2005 The
  test data secrecy/market exclusivity rules will
  slow the introduction of generic drugs, decrease
  competition, raise prices, and hinder access to
  life-saving medicines in the DR-CAFTA countries.
  
• 13 members of US Congress in November 2005
• Ministers of health in 10 South American
  countries in May 2006

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What do defenders of TRIPS-plus say to such
critiques?

• USTR CAFTA expressly states that nothing in the
  agreement will affect a countrys ability to take
  measures necessary to protect public health.
• Argument that CAFTA/AFTA increase access by
  encouraging major pharmaceuticals to register
  drugs in small markets

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Whats at stake?
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Their lives are not for sale