ACT UP PARIS
ACTION ALERT
17 OCTOBER 2001
ACTION ALERT: FAX MIKE MOORE, DIRECTOR OF WTO
Mike Moore, the Director of WTO, still refuses to give a reply to the joint open letter which was sent to him on September 19 asking for a protective moratorium in WTO for countries resorting to drug copies.
After our insistance that WTO reply to the NGO open letter, Mike Moore offered ACT UP-Paris a 5-minute phone conversation. We had to refuse this offer. Mike Moore needs to understand that he has to reply not just to ACT UP-Paris but to all the NGOs who are signatories to the open letter, and that he has to reply in a public, committing manner. It is in this regard that the signatories cannot be content with anything less than an official reply letter or a declaration to the media, about the matter of poor countries¼ right to access HIV/aids generic medicines.
Meanwhile, the stakes involved in the Doha Trade Ministerial Conference are getting higher all the time.
On the one hand, covert negotiations are ongoing in Geneva, between countries and with the WTO, to strike deals on what the Doha Ministerial will end up deciding. More than a month has elapsed since the TRIPs Council opened the rounds for pre-Doha negotiations : there are now only four weeks left until the conference itself. The longer the WTO delays responding to the joint open letter, the less chance there is that the deals being struck before Doha take the demands of fight-against-aids organisations into account.
Moreover, the decisions made at the WTO conference will have consequences on the related decisions of many other bodies, first among which the Global Fund against AIDS, TB and Malaria. If the Doha Ministerial fails to affirm the right to access generic medicines, this essential path of access to treatment for people with aids living in poor countries will be considered closed in all the international bodies, and the Global Fund will pass the US proposal that the Fund not finance HIV drugs, on the basis of the exorbitant prices that proprietary drug manufacturers are in effect still charging in most poor countries.
For all these reasons we cannot accept the policy of Mike Moore of deliberately ignoring civil society and people with aids. Mike Moore must be made to respond officially to the joint open letter.
With this in view, ACT UP-Paris is launching a campaign of phone calls and fax sends to the WTO Secretariat in Geneva until an official response is given. This campaign will begin with an initial telecommunication phase starting tomorrow Wednesday the 17th and continuing until the end of the week. A second phase will start next week if no reply has been received by then.
It is essential that Mike Moore understand that it is the entirety of the open letter¼s signatory organisations which await a response from his institution on a matter so critical as that of access to treatment. That is why we propose you to contact WTO *this week* by faxing, in your organisation¼s name, demands of reply to the open letter ´ Qatar:WTO must not be allowed to block access to treatment ª, or even simply by refaxing the text of the open letter. The numbers for Mike Moore¼s secretariat are : FAX : +41 22 739 54 60 ; telephone : +41 22 739 51 00.
For its part, ACT UP-Paris will effect the campaign every day between 13:00 and 17:00 GMT (14:00 and 18:00 Continental European Time).
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