I applaud the President of Guyana for his position at the UN General Assembly when he called on the UN to lead a review on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Copyright Laws that prevent access to textbooks and educational materials in developing countries. Actually it is, indeed, such laws that stand as one of the major barriers for universal access to education and a major reason for sustained poverty in developing countries. IPR laws also continue to limit access to powerful medicines for many killer diseases, and materials, including seed, for agriculture. The way the world uses Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Laws today reinforces the stranglehold that developed countries exercise on developing countries.

The injustice that is created by many IPR laws must be recognized and addressed. I would hope that people could look at the matter rationally and see that whatever position we may take as individuals or as a nation, there are genuine concerns on how intellectual property right and the copyright laws, mostly being promoted by developed countries, are not always in the interest of developing countries.

I believe that intellectual property rights and copyright laws are generally good things that can benefit developing countries, just as they have been beneficial for development in developed countries. But traditionally and up to this time, these laws have generally been used by developed countries to promote their own interests and to subject developing countries to unfair trade practices. Unlike the claims being made by many of the politicians and commentators in Guyana and by developed countries, the Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Laws systems have thus far not resulted in shrinking poverty in developing countries, but as used today, these systems have contributed to developed countries having an upper hand over developing countries.

These systems must be reviewed and developing countries must ensure the laws benefit their people and do not serve to promote the interests of developed countries. As is right now, IPR laws optimally benefit developed countries and have been mostly detrimental to the interests of developing countries.

Guyana’s textbook dilemma is one that shows how these laws have benefited developed countries at the expense of developing countries. We are forced to procure books and educational materials at cost from publishers several times the cost of the “generic” production of such books.

It is not the first time that Guyana has faced this dilemma. Can anyone remember the controversy with the HIV medicines in 2001? Guyana dared to manufacture generic anti-retroviral medicines for persons living with HIV. We did at a mere fraction of the cost of the manufacturers in the developed countries. Remember when our people, like people in most developing countries, were dying because of AIDS and the medicines that could have saved their lives could not be accessed at the extortion prices offered by these manufacturers? Because we dared to manufacture medicines, disregarding the Intellectual Property Rights Laws we saved lives. But like we are being vilified in the textbook dilemma, we were vilified then too.

Guyana’s textbook dilemma is one that is being faced in many countries around the world, including in the USA. Indeed, in the USA, there is a Coalition for Affordable Books that wages a daily fight against the unreasonable prices charged by publishers for books in American schools and universities. But the dilemma is experienced in virtually all countries, developing and developed. And one truth we must face – in many countries the procedure and processes to overcome high prices create controversies and are not always in complaint with the laws.

Guyana is a signatory to the Declaration on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an agreement within the United Nations, which declare that there should be universal access to education and health by 2015. To make universal access to education a realistic goal, we need to ensure our school children and our students in vocational training centers and the universities and tertiary education centers have access to textbooks and educational materials at the most affordable cost.

Guyana’s public school system makes an effort to provide free books and educational materials to our children at the most affordable cost to Government. In many developing countries, governments have sought to overcome these barriers. These are not efforts aimed at breaking laws established to benefit rich developed countries. These are efforts to reduce poverty and provide universal access for education.

The Government of Guyana has used a method that bypasses the publishers of some of the textbooks. This was done in order to ensure that the Government is able to procure as many books as possible with the limited resources at its disposal. This approach has created a controversy and publishers have joined local politicians and commentators to launch an assault on the procedures utilized by Government. Here is the simple equation in the controversy: the Government of Guyana has taken a path to provide justice through the provision of universal education for Guyanese children (a moral-based and justice-based position) vs. the position of some politicians and commentators who argue that we are illegally denying rich companies in rich countries profits (legal-based mumbo-jumbo).

Indeed, when it comes to textbooks and educational materials and medicines and diagnostic commodities, the Intellectual Property Rights and Copyrights laws have been used to create a distortion in prices that have denied millions access to affordable textbooks, educational materials and medicines and diagnostic commodities. Further, these laws have led to deaths, illnesses and poverty in developing countries everywhere. But printing textbooks in Guyana outside the framework of IPR laws from developed countries have not led to a single death or anyone getting ill or led to any poverty in developed countries.

I strongly believe that intellectual property systems, as presently used around the world, are helping to keep poor countries trapped in poverty, bringing deaths and illnesses as part of the injustice of IPR as presently utilized. I believe that laws on patents and intellectual property rights are used in a manner that prevent access to books, educational materials, medicines, technology and research in developing countries.

This view was shared by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights established by DFID through the British Government in 2001. A similar Commission, the Commission on IPR, Innovation and Public Health established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002 concluded the same thing.

We are very familiar with the medicine issue. The only reason medicine prices have fallen today was the emergence of the generic medicine advocacy and the injustice of the developed countries IPR system. India has played a pioneering role in manufacturing medicines that are made accessible to millions of people around the world at a fraction of the cost charged by manufacturers in developed countries. The developed countries, with full support from the manufacturers, attempt to use the intellectual property rights laws to stymie the production of generic medicines.

Consider the most well-known examples – the case of anti-retroviral medicines to fight HIV. Before 2001, millions of people in developing countries were dying because citizens nor their governments in developing countries, including in Guyana, could not afford the “extortionary” prices charged by the manufacturers in developed countries. Then the medicines for a combination treatment cost about $US15,000 per year for one patient. The copyright and intellectual property laws, as exercised by the developed countries brought death to our doors, in every developing country – an undeniable fact.

Where is the justice in such laws? Countries like India and Guyana openly flouted those restrictions. People will recall that because of India, developing countries gained access to generic medicines for HIV which started out as breaking the laws to provide universal access to medicines and health. Today, millions of persons who live with HIV are not dying of AIDS because we dared to oppose the deathly impact of developed countries IPR system. Similarly, people with TB and malaria and the NCDs, like hypertension, heart diseases and diabetes are not dying prematurely as much as before because of powerful generic medicines.

In 2001 at the DOHA meeting of the WHO, the price distortions that prevented access for medicines for poor people or people in poor countries were controversial areas for discussion and the fight for justice. Developing countries did not fully win the fight, but gained concessions that saw the agreement on TRIPS. This agreement essentially allowed the legal production of generic medicines where clearly limited access to medicines was creating an unfair and unjustified health emergency.

It is the reason why Guyana has succeeded in preventing thousands of deaths of persons living with HIV and prevented the deaths of mothers and babies. Guyana itself started the production of ARVs for HIV in 2001. We had broken the laws as contrived by the developed countries system for Intellectual Property Laws, but in the process we saved lives.

The situation is not different with the school books dilemma. The cost of school books from the publishers is nothing short of extortion. And the call made by the President for a review of how those laws are causing limited access to textbooks and educational materials is exactly the advocacy that many of us in health led before 2001. The changes that allow greater production of generic medicines and saw such medicines manufactured in India, Brazil, South Africa, Uganda, Thailand, China etc. were because we demonstrated unequivocally that the unfair use of Intellectual Property Rights Laws and Copyright were killing people and leading to greater poverty.

In the WHO and PAHO, I was a robust voice and within WTO, Minister Clement Rohee ably represented Guyana. Globally, I was one of the CARICOM persons, together with persons like Sir George Alleyne and Dr. Edward Greene who energetically and passionately demonstrated the inequity and injustice of the laws that limited access to powerful live-saving medicines. The TRIPS agreement became an example of how we can stand up against those laws that contribute to injustice.

It is time that we take a position similar to the TRIPS for Medicine for textbooks, educational material, agricultural products etc. to ensure that we have a fairer system. Praise must be accorded to Guyana’s position at the UN.

Intellectual Property Rights, Copyrights and Patent Laws are needed. But the present systems are skewed towards the benefits for developed countries and often the benefits that can accrue to developing countries are not manifested because developing countries are not in a position to take full advantage of the laws.

For those attacking the Government of Guyana for the position it took on the textbooks dilemma, why no word on how the developed countries continue to wholesale take properties without ever acknowledging or rewarding developing countries for the profits they accrue from things they take from us?

Let me give an example of a Once Upon a Time Story. Anyone remember curare? Curare was used to create one of the first anesthetic medicines ever made and sold, manufactured by Squibb. Curare was taken from curare gums that indigenous Indians in Guyana’s rainforest used to hunt. Guyana or Guyana’s indigenous people never got even an acknowledgement from anyone in the developed world, but because of curare many persons got rich and developed countries accrued much benefits.

This is one of thousands of examples of how IPRs have been used to deny justice to developing countries. Let us build IPRs around the world to help equitably every one, in developing countries and in developed countries. While some want to scream to high heavens that we might be denying rich people in rich countries more profits, can we see that more children of poor people in poor countries are getting universal access to education, changing their circumstances and reducing poverty because we challenge the injustice of developed countries versions of IPR and copyrights?

The truth is that developed countries need to pay more attention to rigid IPRs and to balancing their commercial self-interest with the need to promote health and education and reduce poverty in developing countries. IPR must be used as strategic tools for an enlightened approach to reduce poverty through transfer of technologies in education, health, agriculture and other sectors to combat poverty and achieve greater levels of justice. IPR must not be used to promote profit gouging by developed countries through the backs of the poor in poor countries.

Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, Minister of Agriculture, Guyana