Delegates met at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva to resume the second round of negotiations for the 2022-23 biennium of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (WIPO-IGC).
Read MoreIndigenous peoples and many other local and marginalized communities have been proverbial guinea pigs for researchers, being ‘used’ as research subjects whose rights were abused without consequences.
Read MoreOn February 14th 2022, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey announced the signing of term sheets for a $1-billion federal investment and a $1-billion federal loan guarantee for the Muskrat Falls Project.
Read MoreDelegates met at the World Intellectual Property Organization to resume the first round of negotiations for the 2022-23 biennium of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC).
Read MoreIndigenous peoples and Indigenous traditional knowledge may hold part of the important keys to fighting climate change for the benefit of the planet.
Read MoreCanada lacks a comprehensive federal Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) system for governing genetic resources and the associated traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples, despite years of advocacy.
Read More“Dealing with health and economic challenges of COVID-19 has made one point abundantly clear for African countries – that we need broadband, faster, cheaper and expanded to the last mile of the populations.”
Read MoreMedical racism against Indigenous peoples is a fact in the Canadian healthcare system. As a result of this experience, many Indigenous peoples lack trust in the healthcare system, and they limit their engagement as much as possible.
Read MoreWith the world on edge as COVID-19 progresses, the scientific community has sprung into gear in search of an effective treatment. Amidst this development, traditional knowledge plays a significant role in scientific endeavours.
Read MoreIn the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world continues to overlook the epidemic raging on in some of the poorest regions of Africa since 2013: the Ebola outbreak.
Read MoreThe COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly having an effect on the human population around the world, but its impact on the environment, especially in terms of conservation, is less publicized.
Read MoreAs an African and a Canadian, I inhabit an observatory. I am a resident in two worlds of blunt contrasts. On a good note, those contrasts offer privileged lessons on the richness and complexity of the human experience, of our world.
Read MoreThe triumph of capitalism and its impact, post-cold war, is manifest in diverse ways and sites in the global south, especially Africa. Perhaps the most prominent consequence of the post-cold war capitalist strangle-hold is the phenomenon of globalization. In its legal and economic gradient, globalization has yielded unprecedented spate of legal harmonization and capitalist structuring, opening up of markets under the trade liberalization mantra.
Read MoreThe WIPO IGC is tasked with the mandate to engage in text-based negotiations for the effective protection of genetic resources (GRs), traditional knowledge (TK), and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs). The need for a special international regime of protection for TK/TCEs is based on many gaps in the global intellectual property and knowledge governance order.
Read MoreOne of the major innovations of the IGC, in its long-running search for international legal instruments for the effective protection of TK/TCEs (Traditional Knowledge / Traditional Cultural Expressions), is the idea of tiered or differentiated approaches to TK/TCEs. The essence of looking at TK/TCEs on a tiered basis is the recognition that some TK/TCE categories are diffused to some degree.
Read MoreOn August 27, 2018, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) reconvened in Geneva for its 37th session. The August 27-31 meeting is the third under the 2018-2019 biennium of the IGC and also the first opportunity for the experts to further advance negotiations on two texts for traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) under the current two-year program.
Read MoreAfter six days of deliberations (June 24-29, 2018) to secure a mature text for the protection of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, delegates left the negotiations with mixed feeling while remaining resolute on the progress made. The mixed feeling arose from the decision of the United States and its ally, Japan, not to support the transmission of the resulting text of the negotiations: REV 2 to the 40th IGC as a consensus document pursuant to the ongoing mandate of the IGC for the current biennium.
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