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This book offers an analysis of the interpretation of the WTO TRIPS Agreement and its impact on the right to health. It furthers understanding of WTO jurisprudence and researches the topic in a broad framework of international law. It examines the extent to which the patent protections in the TRIPS Agreement are consistent with the right to health, and in particular with access to medicine. It helps to underpin an understanding of the relationship between human rights law and intellectual property law – specifically between the right to health and patent protection. It usefully analyses the relationship between TRIPS and the right to health and develops an understanding of interpretive techniques for use within WTO dispute settlement.
We are considering the relationship between human rights and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS). Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have always reflected a balancing of general public interests and private stakeholder interests, and in this sense IPRs take into account social welfare concerns as well as those of individual inventors and artists. While the balance struck in the TRIPS Agreement is flawed, it is capable of flexible interpretation and amendment. Human rights represent the values for establishing a global constitutional balance between the interests of the public and the private holders of IPRs. We are collectively at a somewhat early stage of analyzing from a legal standpoint the relationship between human rights and the TRIPS Agreement. The observations in this paper reflect the preliminary nature of this inquiry. From a legal perspective, the sources of human rights relating to TRIPS are customary international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and various other human rights instruments including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (lCCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The Report prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, entitled "The impact of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights on human rights", insightfully surveys the relevant human rights instruments and their potential application to TRIPS issues. The idea or concept of human rights as it applies to the field of IPRs involves something beyond the specific norms we may identify in human rights instruments or customary law. Human rights involve the shared perceptions of individuals regarding basic questions of right and wrong, fairness and equity. When an overwhelming part of the world's public perceives a situation as unjust, and expresses its concern, that shared perception itself becomes a part of our human rights dialogue, and informs public policy makers in their actions. Human rights take on character, and become appropriately multidimensional in the context of specific cases, and reflect the spirit of the times. Lawyers may incline to be dismissive of public perception because the legal profession is by nature analytical, and the lawyer prides him or herself on objectivity and precision. Yet laws do not operate in clinical isolation from events, and events (particularly those of great moment) are rarely analytical and precise. One does not stop a war on a legal technicality. In the combating of social wrongs, it is the shared perception of the public, and the willingness of the public to take on the responsibility for setting things back in their proper order, that matters. Meetings in the TRIPS Council on access to medicines that ultimately resulted in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health flowed largely from efforts by developing WTO Members to deal with public health problems affecting their people. The TRIPS Council did not begin taking access to medicines issues seriously because the OECD governments became more enlightened about the consequences of TRIPS and patents. Rather, this took place because the worldwide public did not accept that the rights of pharmaceutical industry patent holders should take precedence over the rights to life and health of millions of individuals. The human rights dimension will play a substantial role in the response of the WTO and other multilateral organizations to public health issues. It is precisely because fundamental human rights are at stake, and that these rights are paramount in public consciousness, that the legal situation will adapt.
When does international law allow a State or group of States to adopt trade measures in order to “coerce” another State to comply with its international obligations to ensure respect for human rights? In answering this question this book draws together complex areas of international law which include the rules prohibiting interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States, the rules regulating extra-territorial exercises of jurisdiction, the law of State responsibility and the international legal rules requiring the protection of human rights and regulating international trade. The literature on “Trade and ...” issues invariably focuses on a limited number of these areas, or approaches the issues from an international relations or economic perspective. This book will assist specialists in international human rights law and international trade law, academic and government lawyers who advise on or implement international trade policy and those studying the use of human rights related trade measures.
This book explores the interface between intellectual property and human rights law and policy. The relationship between these two fields has captured the attention of governments, policymakers, and activist communities in a diverse array of international and domestic political and judicial venues. These actors often raise human rights arguments as counterweights to the expansion of intellectual property in areas including freedom of expression, public health, education, privacy, agriculture, and the rights of indigenous peoples. At the same time, creators and owners of intellectual property are asserting a human rights justification for the expansion of legal protections. This book explores the legal, institutional, and political implications of these competing claims: by offering a framework for exploring the connections and divergences between these subjects; by identifying the pathways along which jurisprudence, policy, and political discourse are likely to evolve; and by serving as an educational resource for scholars, activists, and students.
This book has a simple objective: to present the fundamentals of international human rights treaty law in a way that can be helpful to the national leader, official, or legal adviser whose duty it is to help put a human rights treaty regime into the law and practice in his or her country. It is a book of international law, as provided for in the principal international and regional human rights treaties and draws upon the jurisprudence and practice of their monitoring organs.
This book analyses the relationship between the TRIPS Agreement and the right to health and relevant human rights norms by using the tools of treaty interpretation of public international law.
Incoherence is a term that is all too often associated with the public international law regime. To a great extent, its incoherence is arguably a natural consequence of the fragmented nature of both the development and overall scope of the discipline. Despite significant achievements since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a coherent human rights regime that is properly integrated with other branches of public international law is still lacking. This book explores this incoherent approach to human rights, including specific challenges that arise as a result of the creation and regulation of legal relationships between parties (state and non-state) that sit outside of the human rights framework, with a view to considering how it may be remedied. Divided into three parts, the collection provides a critical exploration of various challenges and barriers related to the absence of human rights in some instances, contemporary emergence of rights, and a lack of rights fulfilment in others. These three situations are considered within the wider context of, and difficulties facing, a human rights-based approach to international law. Each of the three parts aligns with one of the three prime responsibilities and duties of states in respect of international human rights: to promote, to protect and to fulfil. The contributions represent different perspectives in international law and human rights and how the global agenda of promoting human rights, the rules-based international order and multilateralism requires further strengthening – the lens of incoherence providing a means to understand particular inconsistencies. Chapters focus upon subjects including international investment law, international financial contracts, the arms trade, indigenous peoples’ rights, rights of peasants, the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the right to food and transitional justice. Presenting a critical exploration of key contemporary challenges and the implementation of human rights law in different contexts, the collection will be of interest to a wide-ranging audience of international law and international relations scholars and practitioners, and students of law, politics and globalisation across the world.
At a time when human rights are coming under increasing pressure, in-depth knowledge and understanding of their foundations, conceptual underpinnings and current practice remain crucial. The second edition of Walter Kälin and Jörg Künzli's authoritative book provides a concise but comprehensive legal analysis of international human rights protection at the global and regional levels. It shows that human rights are real rights creating legal entitlements for those who are protected by them and imposing legal obligations on those bound by them. Based, in particular, on a wide-ranging analysis of international case-law, the book focuses on the sources and scope of application of human rights and a discussion of their substantive guarantees. Further chapters describe the different mechanisms to monitor the implementation of human rights obligations, ranging from the regional human rights courts in Africa, the Americas and Europe and the UN treaty bodies to the international criminal tribunals, the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council. The book is based on an understanding of human rights as legal concepts that address basic human needs and vulnerabilities, and highlights the indivisibility of civil and political rights on the one and economic, social and cultural rights on the other hand. It also highlights the convergence of international human rights and international humanitarian law and the interlinkages with international criminal law as well as general international law, in particular the law of state responsibility.