By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) — The European Union (EU), United Kingdom, Japan and Australia are holding the world hostage by refusing to support a waiver of COVID-19 vaccine patents for the world to recover from the pandemic. The World Trade Organization (WTO) remains at an impasse for one year.

Then, India and South Africa applied for approval of a waiver over Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for COVID-19 vaccines so that they could produce the vaccines—especially Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines—to help their countries as well as many developing countries to recover faster from the pandemic.…

Viewpoint by Teresa Hackett

The writer is Copyright and Libraries Programme Manager at Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL). She oversees the development and delivery of a unique, copyright service for libraries in developing and transition countries, providing specialist resources in multiple languages, and individual assistance on legislative issues.

VILNIUS, Lithuania (IDN) — When members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) recently agreed to extend the transition period by which Least Developed Countries (LDCs) must apply WTO rules on intellectual property, it was a welcome decision.…

Viewpoint By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) — Indonesia’s popular tourism islands of Bali opened for tourism October 14, while Thailand announced that from November 1 vaccinated travellers from 19 countries will be allowed to visit the kingdom including its tourism island of Phuket. Both those countries’ tourism industry, which is a major revenue earner, has been devastated by over 18 months of inactivity that have impacted on the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people.…

Viewpoint by Shameran Abed

The writer is Executive Director, BRAC International. Originally founded in 1972 as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee and later known as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, BRAC’s operations have grown globally and with that growth, the organization is now simply known as BRAC.

DHAKA (IDN) — It is time we start treating extreme poverty as the global emergency it is. This International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, October 17, we are looking at 100 million more people being forced into extreme poverty by the end of 2021 as a result of COVID-19, joining nearly 700 million people who were living in extreme poverty before the pandemic struck.…

Viewpoint by Catrin Waters

The writer is a student at University of Virginia in the U.S. and a volunteer with the High Atlas Foundation, a U.S./Moroccan non-profit organization focused on sustainable development.

VIRGINIA, USA (IDN) — Before you read this, I challenge you to pause and ask your body the question: how do you like the thoughts I think about you?…

By Rachel Gisselquist

Rachel M. Gisselquist, a political scientist, is a Senior Research Fellow with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and a member of the institute’s senior management team. She works on the politics of developing countries, with particular attention to inequality, ethnic politics, state building and governance and the role of aid therein, democracy and democratization, and sub-Saharan African politics.…