What is the Doha Agenda?
After the failure of Seattle, the WTO trade ministers met in Doha, the capital of the Gulf State of Qatar, in 2001 for their 4th Ministerial Conference. Access was strictly controlled amid high security following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington and there was no possibility of a repeat of the demonstrations which disrupted Seattle. Three Documents were agreed in Doha. The first was an interpretative Declaration on TRIPs and Public Health, to reassure developing countries that the TRIPs Agreement on intellectual property did not prevent them from taking measures to override the patent system for medicines required to deal with public health crises. Although this did not amount to a re-negotiation of TRIPs, it was an important and welcome clarification. However the question of how to deal with imports of non-patented medicines still remains unresolved, despite setting a deadline of end 2002, because of blocking by the US at the request of its major drugs companies. Thi
