Patents for pharmaceuticals and access to affordable medicines: towards an all-encompassing access paradigm for Africa
The connection between patents for pharmaceuticals and access to affordable medicines has elicited considerable attention and highly stimulating debates since the emergence of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) as part of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing WTO in 1994. The TRIPS Agreement is the first international convention to make it mandatory for all countries to make patents available in all fields of technology provided the invention to be patented meets the criteria for patentability. Consequently, countries like India, Brazil, China and Thailand that used to refuse to grant patents for pharmaceuticals were constrained to amend their patents laws to bring them in line with the WTO standard. Many developing countries did not even have legislation for a number of the intellectual property rights areas covered by the agreement at the time it was adopted. The TRIPS Agreement has been criticised as being a significant part of the global access to medicines problem and strong arguments have been raised for having more flexible standards for the protection of patents particularly in relation to pharmaceuticals. 
This thesis examines the WTO regime for patent protection in the context of pharmaceuticals and the existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement that countries seeking access to affordable patented pharmaceutical products might adopt. The effectiveness of the TRIPS compulsory licensing regime is examined, with particular focus on the limitations resulting from the TRIPS requirements for test data protection. The concepts of parallel importation and exhaustion of intellectual property (IP) rights are also examined with aview to ascertaining the extent to which they may serve as legal stratagems for developing countries seeking access to affordable medicines. The thesis argues that the existing frameworks for the right to health and the right to development in international law may provide a strong justification for the broad interpretation of the existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement without the need for going through the very rigorous process of amending it. The thesis considers the patents and access to medicines problem in the context of the special and highly complex challenges people in Sub-Sahara Africa are currently encountering. It recommends the establishment of an African Free Trade Area to make it easier for Africa as a continent to make better use of the TRIPS flexibilities. The thesis argues that more than ever before, the time has come for Africa to harness her resources to address her access to medicines problem through the use of all the available options in international economic law and international human rights law.
Strategic Patent Licensing for Public Research Organizations: Deploying Restriction and Reservation Clauses to Promote Medical R&D in Developing Countries
In May 2006, at the World Health Assembly, the governments of Kenya and Brazil called on fellow nations to promote the development of the public health tools necessary to build the research capacity of developing countries. That call was again made at the G8 Summit in June 2007, when the national science academies of the G8 nations and Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa signed a statement on the promotion and protection of innovation. Highlighting the need to balance the protection of intellectual property with the need to foster access to knowledge and remove barriers to innovation, the statement calls on world leaders to: Work with developing countries to build systems of science, technology and innovation for economic and social development, and to promote the education and training of their future leaders particularly in science, engineering, technology, and medicine.
Do Arab public opinion support policies of regional powers in MENA? View from Tunisia
ABSTRACT The Arab Uprisings and subsequent events continue to transform policies of regional and major powers toward the Middle East and North Africa. These powers have shown different approaches toward the Uprisings, ranging from support for the status quo to endorsing regime changes. Their policies have also exerted a significant impact on the course of events. Despite this growing importance and implications of policies of regional powers on the Uprisings and the Syrian conflict, we still do not know much about how the public assesses these policies and to what extent domestic cleavages shape these assessments. Using a nationally representative original survey conducted in 2014 in Tunisia, this study examines the perceptions of the policies of France, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia towards the Uprisings and the Syrian conflict. It finds that French and Turkish policies about the Uprisings have garnered substantial support among citizens, whereas most citizens negatively assess the Saudi policies. On the other hand, the majority of Tunisians negatively assess all these countries’ policies toward the Syrian conflict. Another major finding suggests that political identity reflecting secular/religious cleavages shapes how citizens view the policies of these three countries toward both issues, but its effect is higher in assessing the Uprisings.