Development and Health in Poor Countries: Role of Interntional Organizations and Switzerland

The study tries to better understand three fields which seems to be essential with respect to the problem of a facilitated access to medicines : 1. the ambiguous position of intellectual property (IP) rights in the more general framework of human rights ; 2. the mechanism which enabled the progressive shift of global agreements negotiated at WTO to bilateral or multilateral agreements negotiated outside WTO ; 3. the role of the main parties involved in the protection of IP, in particular WTO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the actions of NGOs active in the field of human rights. The relations between these three fields will have to be looked into and subsequently the role of Switzerland will have to be made explicit by examining the positions of its representatives in the international organizations concerned. [CSS-Romande]. URL:[http://www.css-romande.ch/downloads/trips+/cssr_AdpicPlus_en.pdf].