WINDOWS ON TH SOUTH
CURRENT TRENDS, FERSPECTIVES AND EVENTS

ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL DRUGS MAY BE UNDERMINED BY GLOBAL PATENT AGREEMENT
A third of the world's population still has no access to essential drugs. In the poorest countries of Africa and Asia this figure rises to half. With the global agreement on intellectual property rights £¨TRIPS£© forcing countries to introduce new patent protection laws over the next decade, this situation could worsen, according to a new report from the London-based Panos Institute.

Developing countries have until 2005 to 2016 to implement TRIPS- compliant legislation on pharmaceuticals. So far many governments have drafted or enacted legislation that seems to prioritise patent rights over public health. Some countries are being pressurized into adopting policies that go further than TRIPS in protecting patents.

Patents give big international pharmaceutical firms monopoly over production those needed to treat HV/AIDS. There is concern that they may push up prices, and the TRIPS rules could thus limit poor countries' freedom to buy cheaper "generic" versions of patented drugs. For example, in January 2001, south African HIV/AIDS treatment activist Zackie Ahmat went to Thailand to buy 5,000 pills of the generic version of an anti-fungal drug patented by the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. He paid ¡ç0.21 a pill. The price of the patented version in South Africa was¡ç13.

The Panos Report, Patents, Pills and Public Health; can TRIPS deliver? Warns that patent legislation is not being debated widely enough in most developing countries, and the process of introducing it needs to be more consultative and transparent.

In Uganda, for example, American consultants were brought in to review the country's patent laws and make proposals for reform. The result was the drafting of laws which, according to local campaigners, are skewed in favour of business interests rather than social or development needs.

The principle of extending access to essential drugs in poor countries is widely supported, but the means of doing this is still hotly disputed, says the report. According to the World Bank, middle-income countries may benefit from increased foreign investment, but is the cost of drugs rises as result of patent systems spreading throughout the developing access to drugs, such as anti-AIDS drugs, where they are most needed. The World health Organisation suggests that implementing patent protection where it does not already exist would result in the average price of drugs rising, with projected increases ranging from 12 to 200 percent.

The pharmaceutical industry argues that patent systems promote innovation and investment in research and development. Without patents, new ones would not be developed to tackle diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. They believe the real barriers to making drugs more available are poverty, weak political leadership, lack of trained health personnel and poor health infrastructures.

The report examines alternative approaches and gives examples where differential pricing £¨where poorer countries pay considerably less for a product than wealthier ones£©and compulsory licensing £¨where a patent is overridden in return for a payment of a royalty£©have potential, although they are not free of problems.

Two countries highlighted in the report, show how differently patent protection can impact on the nation's public health;

Brazil is seen as a model for other countries of that can be achieved for public health by boosting local production of drugs such as the anti-AIDS drug AZT, lowering prices though competition and negotiating discounts on patented drugs. Between 1996and 2001 around 358,000 AIDS hospitalizations were perverted, saving around ¡ç1.1 billion.

On the other hand, Thailand's capacity to provide essential drugs for its people has been severely limited in the last decade due to relentless pressure from the US to tighten up its patent laws which, they complained, meant the loss of 30 million a year in sales for the American pharmaceutical industry, because it referred only to pharmaceutical processes and not products. The US went as far as imposing ¡ç165 millions' worth of sanctions on eight Thai products exported to the US. The US continued to exert pressure until the patent laws were changed and made even more restrictive than the international TRIPS agreement requires.

"This report should be a wake -up call to developing countries to look carefully at how they go about complying with TRIPS legislation and make sure that access to essential drugs is kept as an overriding right for the entire population -not just a wealthy few" says Martin Foreman, author of the Panos report.

The full Panos report and additional country studies can be downloaded from www.panos.org.uk. For further information contact Mark Covey, Media & Communications Officer on Tel +44 207 239 7622 or +44 208 960 1282 Email mark@panoslondon.org.uk

AIDS AND DISCRIMINATION
In the Asia and Pacific region, when a person known to have HIV/AIDS checks into a hospital, the patient's registration sheet may carry the code "SIDA," French for AIDS. Bed sheets can be similarly marked, and the AIDS patient may be separated from other sick people. Hospital staff may not even want to touch the patient-a social outcast. These subtle and less subtle forms of discrimination in the health services against people living with HIV/AIDS are rooted more in fear than in ignorance. At the end of 2001, according to UNAIDS, 7.1 million people in Asia and the Pacific were living with HIV, the virus that makes the human body's immune system defenseless against killer diseases.

"Hospital personnel know enough about AIDS. But out of lack of care and fear, doctors are afraid to treat AIDS patients. Moreover, intimidating media reports about AIDS reed into that fear," says Daniel Marguari, program manager of the Spiritia foundation, a Jakarta-based nongovernmental organization that advocates for the needs and rights of people living with HIV/AIDS.

There is also discrimination in the work place, where a person publicly identified with AIDS can be fired. When persons known to be living with HIV/AIDS want to buy food from a street vendor, the vendor often insists that these customers use their own plates, says Christin Wahyuni, a Spiritia program officer. The right to confidentiality is often denied to people with HIV/AIDS, including by the media.

Spiritia meets with health authorities, private companies, local officials, the media and people with HIV/AIDS to stress that they have the same rights as other people. The NGO also published a booklet, "Empowering Patients," about their rights in hospitals and consultations with doctors.

At the regional level, the Singapore-based Asia Pacific network of People Living with HIV/AIDS works in six ASEAN countries. It plans to publish the results of its survey on discrimination. An ASEAN formal session in November 2001 was addressed by a person living with AIDS in southeast Asia to emphasize empowerment of people with HIV/AIDS by their participation in decision-making processes that affect them. At a global level, the denial of equal treatment to people with AIDS and the discrimination and stigma they face is such a festering issue that it was a theme in the fourteenth annual International Conference on AIDS, held in Barcelona in July 2002.
By Warief Djajanto, ASEAN Features, Jakarta

ASEAN FARMERS GOING ON THE INTERNET
Many of the 200 million farmers and agriculture workers in the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations £¨ASEAN£©will soon have the opportunity of going Internet-a tool that promises to make farmers earn more and buyers pay less.

In November 2000, the 10 ASEAN member states signed off on a blueprint for development of e- ASEAN. This information structure will facilitate e-commerce, e-society and e-government; promote liberalization of investment and trade in information and communications technologies £¨ICT£©; and build technological capacity through human resources development. The hope is to "bridge the digital divide among its member countries and within each of them,"says ASEAN Secretary-General Rodolfo C. Severino Jr.

A challenge facing most ASEAN member states is how to provide ICT services to rural and agricultural communities. To help close that gap, in February 2002, an e-Farmers project was launched to make available an Internet -based trading e-hub that will link the trading needs of small farmers and large companies in many countries. The project is an ASEAN partnership with a private group incorporated in Singapore-the Agritani e-Hub Pte Ltd.

Jailani Mustafa, business architect of Agritani and principal adviser to the ASEAN e-Farmers task force, cited as an example a fruit farmer in Bandung, Indonesia, who may earn 700 rupiah £¨US¡ç0.07£©for each pineapple he grows. Malaysian farmers, with good market access through the Internet, can earn 21/2 times more than Indonesian farmers. That same Indonesian pineapple can fetch 30,000 rupiah £¨US¡ç3.00£©in Amman, Jordan, a more than 40-fold increase. Imagine that example multiplied in the US¡ç150-200 billion worth of annual trade in agricultural products in ASEAN countries, and one can see the potential impact of the e-farmers project.

Asian farmers get a low profit margin because of fragmentation and poor information. Small land holdings prevent the use of advanced technology for better output and better utilization of services; it is not efficient to run half -empty trucks of agricultural produce from farm to market. Just as important, farmers do not get real-time information on where they can get the best price, so demand and supply are mismatched. "middlemen take advantage. When you sell in small volumes, you can't demand a good price,"says Mustafa. Farmers can overcome that disadvantage by getting good information on the e-hub.

To access the e-hub, farmers can join a cooperative and do not need to be computer-literate. Trained personnel of a cooperative or a local farmers' bank can help member -farmers get access, link them to buyers and arrange all the details from insurance and shipping go financial settlement. In the province of Jambi in Indonesia, several site involving hundreds of farmers' cooperatives have been identified as part of the e-hub with the support of a joint government /non-government task force. Thai farmers have also begun to use the e-hub. Cambodia and Malaysia were slated to joinin late 2002.
From ASEAN Features, Jakarta

FOREIGN INVESTMENT DOWN IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
After a decade of unprecedented growth, the flows of foreign direct investment £¨FDI£©into Latin America and the Caribbean fell from US¡ç105 billion in 1999 to US¡ç80 billion in 2001. Preliminary data for 2002 show no sign of a turnaround. However, as a region, the 10 per cent decline in 2001 compares favorably to a 50 per cent reduction in global flows.

A structural factor in the region has been the completion of economic reforms, which attracted much of the wave of FDI during the 1990s. Actions like the privatization of large state-owned firms in energy and basic services triggered FDI of US¡ç18 billion in 2000, but only US¡ç1.35 billion in 2001. also, transnational companies' purchases of large national companies had generated an annual average FDI of US¡ç43 billion in 1999-2000. but only US¡ç25 billion in the newly enlarged organizations.

The percentages of regional FDI flows in different countries during 2001 were Mexico, 35 per cent £¨up from at average 18 percent for 1995-2000£©; Brazil, 32 per cent £¨down from 35 per cent£©; Central American and the Caribbean, 6 per cent £¨unchanged£©; Chile, 6 per cent £¨down from 8per cent£©; and Argentina, 4 per cent £¨down from 17 per cent£©.

The report reviews elements that could encourage capital inflows and strengthen regional development as well; calls for making FDI policies more active, more explicit and stronger in their "development dimension"and their link age to national strategies; traces the growing role of transnational firms in the region's economy; and notes such disadvantages as the enclave -like style of most transnational firms and their weak impact on competitiveness. A special chapter within the report focuses on Argentina.

These data and findings are in a recent report on foreign investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is available in Spanish £¨go to £©and forthcoming in English.
From ECLAC

UNCTAD CALLS FOR NEW POLICIES FOR AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT
How are multilateral financial institutions tackling the problems of poverty in Africa? This is the question asked in a new study by UNCTAD titled From Adjustment to Poverty Reduction; What is New?

After almost two decades of structural adjustment programmes, poverty in Africa has risen, slow and erratic growth are the norm, rural crises have intensified, and de-industrialization has damaged future growth prospects. The study looks at the effects on economic growth and income distribution of the packages on offer from the multilateral financial institutions. It concludes that these packages need a careful, frank and independent assessment if they are to deliver on their promises. The study also cautions that any fresh policy initiatives must be matched with adequate external resources, debt reduction and better market access if they are to succeed.

The study examined 27 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers £¨PRSPs£©prepared on African countries, and describes four policy approaches which seem to characterize them/
There continues to be a need for structural reforms designed to accelerate the integration of the region into the global economy through liberalization, deregulation and privatization, as the key to sustained and rapid growth.
But stabilization and adjustment policies may have a temporary adverse impact on the poor, thus requiring safety nets and targeted spending programmes to mitigate that impact.
There is a need to achieve policy "ownership"lased no wide-ranging consultations with civil society and the poor, but ownership should go beyond the design of safety nets and extend to macro-economic policies and develop ment strategies.

According to the study, inflation is not the principal economic challenge in most African countries. Instead, macroeconomic policies should be designed with growth and the goal of raising productive investment in the forefront. The study also warns against "quick poverty fixes"that redirect public spending to social sectors at the expense of other types of public investment, and notes that social impact analysis has not yet been included as an integral part of PRSP.

Rapid trade and financial liberalization is still expected to increase the access of the poor to financial and other assets that could allow them to escape from poverty. But any explanation of how this happens is missing from the PRSPs. The study argues instead for proper sequencing of reforms in line with institutional capacities, effective regulation and management of capital movements, and limited, time-bound protection for certain industries to allow active nurturing of the industrial sector.

The study welcomes the attention given to raising standards of education and health care. However, the recommendation to combine fully funded primary education and basic health care with across-the -board user fees for higher levels of education and health care suggests a misplaced faith in markets as the fairest way to deliver on these goals. The study shows that increased public expenditure across all levels remains the surest way of reducing income inequality, although differentiated subsidies and user fees and a progressive tax system would ensure that the rich pay more for the provision of such services.

The new approach puts considerable emphasis on improving governance as a prerequisite to sustained growth. But the UNCTAD study says there should be no illusions about the pace at which institutions can improve, nor any doubt that imposing a common institutional standard on countries with varying conditions is likely to be counterproductive. And the idea that fighting corruption by diminishing government resources and responsibilities will bring the desired improvements is off-target, the study contends. It calls for a focus on quality government, not smaller government.

The study recommends considerable pruning of the political conditionalities that have increasingly been attached to aid and debt reduction in recent years. An average of 114 conditions are attached to multilateral lending to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, of which almost three quarters relate to governance. It is difficult to reconcile countries' "ownership"of their policies of economics and governance with these conditions, which go well beyond the original rationale of protecting the financial integrity of the multilateral financial institutions.

Access to developed countries' markets remains essential if African economies are to grow out of poverty. Despite some recent initiatives, trade barriers are still excessive. The financing gap facing African economies is just as daunting. The recent pronouncements at the International Conference on Financing for Development and at the G-85 Summit promise a reversal of the decline in resources, but fall well short of the additional ¡ç10 billion needed in annual aid to kick-start African growth. And the debt overhang persists despite the long-standing efforts of the international community to design acceptable programmes and timetables. The study calls for a fresh and bolder approach on all fronts, with growth rather than charity as the motivation for recasting international rules of engagement in the fight against poverty.

ANCIENT SOUTH-SOUTH TRADE BETWEEN EGYPT, INDIA AND JAVA
Building ruins. Teak, coconuts and batik cloth from India. Metal and sail cloth from ships. Imported sapphire and beads. Stores of peppercorns from the East. Inscriptions and other written materials in 11 different languages. A discarded customs archive written on potsherds.

These are among the artifacts uncovered at the site of the ancient intercontinental port of Berenike on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, as recently reported by archaeologists after eight years of excavations. These findings confirm historical accounts of a robust seaborne trade across the Indian Ocean which reached to India and as far east as Thailand and Java. The remains are described as the most extensive so far found of the ancient world's east-west maritime commerce.

Berenike lasted as a maritime center, including periods when it thrived and declined, from the third century B.C. until about 400 A.D. From Berenike, ships went southward to Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya for ivory, tortoise shell, drugs and slaves. Other ships sailed east to take on frankincense and myrrh at south Arabian ports at Muscat and Sur. Bigger ships as long as 180 feet carried up to 1,000 tons of cargo on monsoon winds along the 3,500-mile round trip to and from India, and even beyond. Finding large quantities of teak, a hardwood native to Indian in Berenike, archaeologists assume that it came from ships built of teak in India, probably damaged and dismantled at Berenike.

The Indian Ocean route rivaled the better known Silk Road which ran over land from China through Samarkand and Baghdad to Tyre and Antioch on the Mediterranean's eastern coast. Involving less cost and hardship than the Silk Road, the sea route was sometimes its only reliable alternative when rivals blocked its path. Located about 600 miles south of Suez near the Egypt-Sudan border, Berenike was the greatest, but only one, of the Red Sea ports that hosted the cargoes, crews and merchants of ocean commerce. Two other likely ports are being studied by archaeologists at Myos Hormos and Nechexia.

One of the archaeologists studying the area, Dr. Willeke Wendrich of the University of California at Los Angeles., described the long-lasting South-South trade route as highly productive. He said, "We talk today about globalism as if it were the latest thing. But trade was going on in antiquity at a scale and scope that is truly impressive."