How can we reimagine intellectual property from a Global South perspective?
In the context of the campaign ‘‘Feminists for a People’s Vaccine’’ and along with our partners at Third World Network (TWN), we had the pleasure to host the talk: ‘‘COVID-19 – Women from the South Reimagining the Intellectual Property System’’.
On August 30th, we received three outstanding women lawyers from Malaysia, the US, and India who have spent 20 years confronting the control of the most powerful corporations over the supply and price of life-saving treatments as they speak to their experience of the intellectual property system. Priti Krishtel, founder of Initiatives for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a US-based organization that challenges the inequalities resulting from monopolies in access to treatments in the developing world, interviews Sangeeta Shashikant, from Third World Network (TWN). This pioneering South-South international organization works with developing countries to protect the rights of people in trade negotiations where rich countries openly operate under the influence of the pharmaceutical industry.
They were joined by Leena Menghaney, from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who has been challenging the grant of unfair patent monopolies that make treatments expensive and often out of reach for women with breast cancer, people living with HIV, Hepatitis C, and other diseases, for over 15 years.