Professor Aisling McMahon:

I will respond to some of the points made on the voluntary issue.

It is very important to state that the TRIPS waiver was actually proposed in 2020, apparently in response to the lack of voluntary agreements and support for various voluntary initiatives. In particular, it is very important to note that the Covid-19 technology access pool, C-TAP, which the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence previously considered, was an initiative set up by the WHO to facilitate the sharing of intellectual property rights, data, IP, etc., to upscale vaccine and other health technology production for Covid-19. That initiative was one with great promise. It was the idea that industry and states would come together in solidarity. The reality is that industry did not sufficiently support that for vaccines at any stage. It was precisely because of that lack of voluntary support for these types of global initiatives that India and South Africa had well-founded fears, sadly, that low- and middle-income countries would fall behind. In an ideal world, voluntary agreements would have been the solution if there was sufficient engagement at that stage, but there was not.

The TRIPS waiver was proposed and has arguably been a leverage to encourage voluntary agreements. Of those that have happened, we cannot prove that the waiver was definitely what led to them, but certainly waivers and compulsory licensing have been used as leverage in the past. As Mr. Eynikel pointed out previously, many of the voluntary agreements, which are good to have and it has to be commended when such agreements are set up, are fill-and-finish agreements, which means the technology, the know-how, is not necessarily being transferred. The issue with that is we are not building long-term capacity in low- and middle-income countries.

COVAX has been mentioned. While it is a good system for short-term supply, COVAX does not allow countries to upscale their own manufacturing capacity, which is also a real issue. It is the same with some of these voluntary initiatives. It is important that we recognise the waiver debate is in a context in which we have not had sufficient support for those initiatives.