General Assembly Resolution #41 “Access to Life-Saving Drugs” (Category: Social Justice; Strength: Significant) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.
The Assembly of Worlds,
Recognizing GA#41's intention in attempting to navigate global health crises in an often profit-driven world;
Concerned about the amount of power that the target resolution gives to pharmaceutical manufacturers over the governments of member nations and their ability to promptly respond to a world health crisis;
Alarmed by GA#41's strict requirements for the suspension of patent rights to life-saving drugs, which are allowed "only in the most extraordinary of situations" such as "imminent or unfolding public health catastrophes", a legal roadblock when faced with a crisis requiring more immediate response, especially since such patent waivers are only to be granted after “every other venue of… negotiations… have been exhausted”;
Arguing that such requirements are an undue restriction of the actions of national and international health services, and that these requirements, rather than providing access to life-saving medication, restrict access to it, by granting pharmaceutical companies or other patent-holding entities the rights to potentially restrict access to life-saving drugs in less dire circumstances, such as by making such drugs prohibitively expensive, and that it is in the best interest of member nations to retain the power to suspend patent rights as such to protect their own citizens;
Outraged that even in the event such patent rights can be waived, Clause 3 requires that the patent holders be compensated for their losses, and directly from the General Assembly’s funds as specified by 3a, a waste of the Assembly’s funds that allows predatory pharmaceutical companies to profit off of emergency patent waivers designed to combat catastrophic health crises, made all the more serious by the prohibition of private donations to help cover the costs of such compensation;
Abrogates GA#41 “Access to Life-saving Drugs”
