"There are many steps that can be taken to ramp up vaccine production and broaden distribution. These include… temporarily waiving intellectual property barriers..."
"this is not the beginning of the end; it is only the beginning of an endless wait: There aren’t enough vaccines to go around in the richest countries, let alone the poorest ones."
"Governments should support India and South Africa’s proposal to waive some aspects of global intellectual property (IP) rules to enable large-scale manufacturing" - @hrw
European Citizens' Initiative registered to, "Ensure that intellectual property rights, including patents, do not hamper the accessibility or availability of any future COVID-19 vaccine or treatment;"
"we need as many factories producing as fast as possible — without the need to ask permission from large pharmaceutical corps… Ensure… human rights held above property rights" - @Oxfam
"Govts & intnl partners must unite around global guarantee which ensures that, when a safe & effective vaccine is developed, it is produced rapidly at scale & made available for all people…"
This thread is for those who say, "oh, but even if the EU, UK and US stopped blocking wider production & other sites started preparing to produce vaccines today, it would take months for them to bring doses online."
We're wasting time. Every day is more deaths.
"We must explore every option for increasing production [of vaccines], including voluntary licenses, technology pools, the use of TRIPS flexibilities & the waiver of certain intellectual property provisions." - WHO chief
✅ Condemned 7/10 killings by Palestinian armed groups;
✅ Questioned legality of some Israeli airstrikes;
✅ Condemned Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians & called for targeted sanctions on those responsible;
1/n
Belgium has also:
✅ Expressed support for the International Criminal Court’s role and its ongoing investigation on the situation in Palestine, which includes jurisdiction over the current hostilities between the Israeli government and Palestinian armed groups.
2/n
In addition, the Belgian federal parliament has introduced a bill to ban trade with settlements in occupied territories.
3/n
Convincing people that they have fundamental rights takes no effort at all.
Convincing them that others have fundamental rights is the hard part.
I want to write about these things in ways that might encourage new people to warm to the idea of universal human rights.
I don’t feel you can do that by using language and tropes that immediately spark “culture war” reactions - those cliché phrases that close minds instantly.
That’s been the purpose of my newsletter over the past year: to find language that brings people closer to understanding the fundamental rights that bind us together.
Dans l'après-midi du 2 octobre 2018, l'éminent journaliste #saoudien et chroniqueur du Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi s'est rendu au consulat saoudien d'Istanbul pour obtenir les documents nécessaires pour son mariage. C'est la dernière fois que sa fiancée l'a vu.
Des agents saoudiens l’ont assassiné à l'intérieur du consulat et ont découpé son corps en morceaux.
Il ne s'agissait pas simplement d'une opération véreuse. En 2019, une enquête de l'ONU a mis en évidence "une coordination, des ressources et des finances gouvernementales importantes" derrière l'assassinat.