Editorial.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is carving out a role for itself in the global governance of intellectual property. Trade related Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPs, establishes standards of rights that all WTO members must abide with in seven fields of intellectual property. TRIPs came into effect in 1995 and will soon have to be fully implemented by developing countries; failure to comply will result in trade sanctions. The primary and immediate beneficiaries of the implementation of the TRIPs Agreement are likely to be pharmaceutical companies and technology and information developers in the industrialised countries. For African countries, and African rural women in particular, the costs of TRIPs will well outweigh the benefits. Transnational corporations, for example, will gain expanded market control, but Africa is not bound to attract investment, technology transfer or experience economic growth.

In this issue, FEMNET examines TRIPS with special regard for rural women in Africa and their wealth of biological diversity.

The 1995 World Summit on Social Development (WSSD) and the Fourth World Conference on Women drew attention on the structural causes of poverty and the feminisation of poverty because of the policies of international financial institutions. Governments agreed that that over the past decade, the number of women living in poverty had increased disproportionately in relation to the number of men and committed themselves to address the needs of women living in poverty

Yet differences between men's and women's needs have not fully been recognised in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) and have frequently not been taken into consideration in their design.

In December 1999, the International Monetary Fund CIMF) and the World Bank introduced the Poverty reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to poor and highly indebted countries. The PRSP is a strategy that links economic growth and poverty reduction priorities to existing financial resources and the national budget. The PRSP is led by national governments, developed by the direct input of national and local institutions, and produced through a participatory process.

PRSPs must mainstream gender to achieve their poverty reduction goals. However, most PRSPs in Africa have hardly acknowledged gender' inequalities. This is mainly due to the fact that the macroeconomic framework of the PRSPs fails to acknowledge women's triple work burden (productive, community, and reproductive) in national production. Subsequently, they not recognise approaches to reduce this burden, economic rights commensurate with...