What is needed to protect African women's IPRs?

The Review of TRIPs Article 27.3(b) should withdraw the obligation to provide any form of intellectual property on plant varieties or any other life forms.

The full-scale Review of the entire TRIPs Agreement should invite a broad assessment of the costs and benefits of the agreement to developing and least developed countries. Particular attention should be paid to the application of TRIPs to biological diversity and how it will affect the economic resource base, indigenous knowledge, ethics and the terms of access to scientific information, as well as the control of society's food and medicine.

The strengthening of IPR regimes should be pro-actively thwarted by other legal instruments related to biodiversity such as the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the Food and Agricultureal Agency of the United Naitons (FAC) Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources. Moves to construe IPR as a tool for benefit sharing with the South or as an option for indigenous peoples are based on faulty assumptions and a narrow assessment of the implications.

The integration of gender analyses, perspectives and impact assessments in all WTO policies, should occur through the use of gender desegregated data and gender and trade indicators. The WTO should institute a comprehensive training and sensitisation programme to raise awareness and understanding of gender issues.

An independent focal point should be established to monitor the coherence and contradiction between the policies and practices of the WTO, IMF, and World Bank with regard to the programmes and operations of specialised UN agencies such as FAC, World Food Programme, the WHO, etc. It should also work to ensure the emerging cross-conditionalities between the international finance institutions (IFIs) and the WTO do not expand the power of international trade institutions above internationally agreed conventions such as those on human rights, Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and others.

The general assembly of the United Nations (UN) should establish a commission to examine the implications of incorporating agricultural trade (in terms of food security) and intellectual property rights (in terms of access to biological resources and technology) under the umbrella of the WTO.

The UN Economic and Social Commission (UNECOSOC) should carry out a comprehensive social and gender sensitive review of the current process of trade liberalisation, trade expansion...