Σάββατο 18 Δεκεμβρίου 2021

 

The coronavirus pandemic has widened the gap between the Global North and the Global South

14 December 2021 by Eric Toussaint


“Pandemic, with On The Brink expansion” par olly-bh est sous licence CC BY-SA 2.0. Pour voir une copie de la licence, consultez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich

Confronted with the coronavirus pandemic that started end of 2019-beginning of 2020, the governments of long-standing imperialist powers (Western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia-New Zealand) and private pharmaceutical corporations have widened the gap between the Global North and the Global South.

Pfizer/BioNTech has delivered to Sweden alone nine times more doses than it has delivered to all the low income countries put together

The pharmaceutical corporations find it far safer and more profitable to give priority to supplying the rich countries that not only can pay high prices for the vaccines but are willing to make advance payments covering the production costs to come. This is clearly illustrated in the analysis of the distribution figures of the vaccines. Moderna has allocated 84% of its production to the US and the EU; Pfizer/BioNTech has allocated 98% and for Johnson & Johnson the equivalent figure is 79%. Pfizer/BioNTech has delivered to Sweden alone nine times more doses than it has delivered to all the low income countries put together. [1]

Mapping the vaccine doses clearly shows that part of the world is being left out. In Ocober 2021, of the 5.76 billion doses injected, only 0.3% have gone to the lowest income countries that have a total population of 700 million people (see: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations). Only 2.7% of the populations of the 27 lowest income countries have received a vaccine jab against over 60% in North America and Western Europe.

Of the 5.76 billion doses injected only 0.3% have gone to the lowest income countries that have a total population of 700 million people

The leaders of a handful of rich countries are opposed to lifting patents as requested by the Global South, particularly the European Union, Switzerland and Japan. As for the USA, President Joe Biden has said he is favourable to lifting the patents but has not taken any action towards requiring governments who are blocking the question in the WTO to do so.

 Thanks to the possession of patents and to governmental complicity, Big Pharma is garnering undue revenues

Big Pharma has formed a cartel to charge predatory prices for their vaccines, to maintain their patents and to push prices up sharply once the pandemic reaches a new level. They seek to maximize their profits, pay as little tax as possible and have a guaranteed income for at least 20 years

The prices asked by Big Pharma for Covid vaccines are exorbitant. Two examples: according to Public Citizen estimates, a Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine dose costs about $1.20 to mass produce; a Moderna vaccine dose costs $2.85 to mass produce. [2] In some countries the Pfizer/BioNTech dose is sold at $23.50 and the Moderna dose is priced as high as $37. The usual excuse for such prices is the costs of R&D and clinical trials. These arguments are not valid in the case of Covid vaccines as these costs have been financed by public authorities.

The decision by Northern governments to proceed to a third injection delights Big Pharma which sees more fabulous profits in gestation. If the patents on vaccines, tests and drugs are not lifted or actually abolished, the big private companies that dominate the pharmaceutical sector will reap colossal revenues for the next 20 years at the expense of the global population, state budgets and public health systems. The stakes are enormous because booster injections will be recommended and/or imposed. Imagine an annual injection for 20 years with a vaccine protected by a patent and therefore sold at a high price... Big Pharma shareholders may gleefully anticipate huge incomes.

In a well-documented report entitled “The Inside Story of the Pfizer vaccine: ‘a once-in-an-epoch windfall,’” the Financial Times explains that thanks to its agreement with the German company BioNTech this US company took the lead over its competitors Moderna, Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson in the production and selling of the vaccine. Like Moderna, it gave priority to the rich countries. By the end of 2021, it has covered 80% of the Covid vaccine sales in the EU and 74% in the US. It was very demanding towards the governments of countries in the Global South as it made changing their national laws a condition to supplying vaccines. “Before deals could be agreed, Pfizer demanded that countries change national laws to protect vaccine makers from lawsuits (…). From Lebanon to the Philippines, national governments changed laws to guarantee their supply of vaccines.” [3]

Pfizer had countries change their national laws to protect vaccine makers from lawsuits

The paper quotes Jarbas Barbosa, the assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization, who said that Pfizer’s conditions were “abusive, during a time when due to the emergency [governments] have no space to say no.”

The Financial Times further explains that “negotiations with South Africa were particularly tense. The government complained that Pfizer made what its former health minister Zweli Mkhize called ‘unreasonable demands,’ which it said delayed the delivery of vaccines.” The paper further reports that “at one stage, [Pfizer] had asked the government to put up sovereign assets to cover the costs of any potential compensation, something it refused to do. The Treasury rejected the health department’s request to sign the deal with Pfizer, according to people familiar with the matter, arguing it was equivalent to ‘surrendering national sovereignty.’ But Pfizer did insist on indemnity against civil claims and required the government to provide finance for an indemnity fund. The South Africans said to me: ‘These guys are putting a gun to our head,’ says a senior official familiar with African vaccine procurement efforts. ‘People were screaming for a vaccine and they signed whatever was put in front of them.’”

The South Africa’s Health Justice Initiative is about to file a lawsuit to enforce the publication of the contracts signed between Pfizer and the South African government.

“We want to know what else they played hardball on,” says Fatima Hassan, founder of South Africa’s Health Justice Initiative. “A private company can’t have so much power. The contract should be open. They would tell the story of what Pfizer has managed to extract out of sovereign countries around the world.”

In August 2021, less than 2% of the 1.3 billion of Africans had been entirely vaccinated, compared to over 60% in Western Europe and North America

The outrageous attitude of governments in the most industrialized capitalist countries who deliberately deepen the gap with people in low-income countries finds a telling illustration in the third jab. Up to November 2021, those governments had had a third vaccine jab administered to 120 million inhabitants in rich countries while the total figure of vaccines administered in low-income countries only amounts to 60 million. [4] This is public health apartheid.

Moreover, Amnesty International is right to denounce AstraZeneca, BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer for those “six companies at the helm of the global Covid-19 vaccine roll-out are fuelling an unprecedented human rights crisis because of their refusal to waive intellectual property rights and share vaccine technology, with most of the companies failing to prioritise vaccine deliveries to poorer countries.” [5]

 COVAX is not a solution

Among the companies that finance and influence COVAX we find the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Blackberry, Coca Cola, Google, UBS (the largest private Swiss private bank and the world’s largest wealth and asset management bank), the financial companies Mastercard and Visa, and Shell oil

Governments in countries of the South who wish to give their population the possibility of getting vaccinated will have to contract debts since COVAX-type initiatives are blatantly wanting and actually reinforce the hold of the private sector. COVAX is run jointly by three bodies: 1. The GAVI Alliance, which is a private structure that brings together companies and States, 2. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which is another private structure that also includes capitalist companies and States, and 3. The WHO, which is a UN specialized agency.

Among the companies that finance and influence GAVI we find the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Blackberry, Coca Cola, Google, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers, the Spanish bank Caixa, the Swiss bank UBS (the biggest asset management bank in the world), financial companies such as Mastercard and Visa, the aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, the American multinational consumer goods corporation Procter & Gamble, the British multinational consumer goods company Unilever, the oil company Shell International, the Swedish musical streaming company Spotify, the Chinese company TikTok and the car manufacturer Toyota. [6]

The entity which co-directs COVAX is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which was founded in 2017 at Davos on the occasion of a meeting of the World Economic Forum. Among the private companies who finance and strongly influence the CEPI we find, once again, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested $ 460 million.

The membership of the COVAX initiative reveals much about the unwillingness of the various WHO member States to take responsibility for the struggle against the pandemic, in particular as regards public health. Such an attitude is typical of the damage done by the neoliberal groundswell that has swept the planet since the 1980s. The Secretariat General of the United Nations and the leadership of the specialized agencies within the UN system (for example the WHO in the area of health and the FAO for agriculture and food) have been moving in the wrong direction for the past thirty to forty years by relying more and more on private initiatives directed by a limited number of big global companies. Heads of State and of government have moved in the same direction. In fact it can even be said that they made the first move. In so acting, they have allowed major private companies to be associated in decisions and derive advantages from the choices that are made. [7]

The membership of the COVAX initiative reveals much about the WHO member States’ unwillingness to take responsibility for the struggle against the pandemic, in particular as regards public health

Remember that over 20 years ago researchers and social movements specialized in care proposed that the public authorities should invest sufficient amounts to create effective remedies and vaccines against the “new generation” viruses stemming from the increase in zoonoses. The overwhelming majority of States have chosen to rely on the private sector and have given them access to the results of research conducted by public entities, when they should have invested directly in the production of vaccines and treatments within the framework of a public health service.

As we have seen, the COVAX initiative is not the solution that is needed.

COVAX had promised to supply, by the end of 2021, 2 billion doses to the countries of the South who request them and who are associated with the initiative. In reality, figures show that at the beginning of September 2021 only 243 million doses had been shipped. [8] As a result the goal of 2 billion doses has been pushed back to the first semester of 2022.

All the major powers of the North have fallen short of the promises they made.

For example, on 21 October, the European Union along with Iceland and Norway had only delivered 52 million doses (10%) out of the 500 million they had promised. [9]

According to an official assessment in December 2021, COVAX has so far only delivered about 600 million doses in 144 countries or territories, a long cry from the initial objective of two billion in 2021. To date, 9 doses have been administered for 100 inhabitants in low-income countries (as defined by the World Bank). In comparison, the world average is 104 per 100 people. This figure rises to 149 for high-income countries. Africa is the continent with the lowest rate of vaccination (18 doses for 100 inhabitants). [10]

C-TAP (Covid-19 Technology Access Pool) is another disappointing WHO initiative. C-TAP includes the same protagonists as COVAX. It was created to pool intellectual property, data and fabrication processes by encouraging pharmaceutical companies who hold patents to cede to other companies the right to produce the vaccine, medicines or treatments by facilitating technology transfer.

Yet so far not a single vaccine producer has shared patents or know-how via C-TAP. [11]

So far not a single vaccine producer has shared patents or know-how via C-TAP

Faced with the failure of COVAX and C-TAP, the signatories of the Manifesto End the system of private patents! launched by the CADTM in May 2021 are right in saying that:
“Initiatives such as COVAX or C-TAP have failed miserably, not only because of their inadequacy, but above all because they reflect the failure of the current system of global governance in which rich countries and multinationals, often in the form of foundations, seek to reshape the world order to their liking. Philanthropy and burgeoning public-private initiatives are not the answer. They are even less so in the face of today’s global challenges in a world dominated by States and industries driven solely by market forces and seeking maximum profits.” [12]

The signatories of the Manifesto advance eight principal demands:

  1. The suspension of private patents on all technologies, knowledge, treatments and vaccines related to Covid-19.
  2. The elimination of trade secrets and the publication of information on the production costs and public investments used, in a clear and publicly accessible manner.
  3. Transparency and public scrutiny at all stages of vaccine development.
  4. Universal, free and open access to vaccination and treatment.
  5. The expropriation and socialization under popular control of the private pharmaceutical industry as a basis for a universal public health system that promotes the production of generic treatments and medicines.
  6. Increased public investment and budgets for public health and community care policies, including more staff, higher salaries and improved working conditions in these sectors.
  7. The introduction of taxes on wealth (wealth and income of the richest 1%) to finance the effort against the pandemic and to ensure a socially just and ecologically sustainable exit from the various crises of global capitalism.
  8. The suspension of sovereign debt payments for the duration of the pandemic and the cancellation of illegitimate debts and those contracted to finance the fight against the virus.

Debt payments should be suspended for the duration of the pandemic while illegitimate debts and debts incurred to finance the response against the virus should be cancelled

Among the signatories are Noam Chomsky and Nancy Fraser from the United States, Naomi Klein from Canada, Arundhati Roy and Tithi Bhattacharya from India, Silvia Federici and Cinzia Arruza from Italy, trade union leaders, association leaders, more than eighty parliamentarians (from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain,...) including the President of the Senate of Bolivia and 22 members of the European Parliament. [13] More than 250 organizations worldwide have also signed. [14]


Translated by Christine Pagnoulle in collaboration with Vicki Briault

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Footnotes

[1Amnesty International report « A DOUBLE DOSE OF INEQUALITY, PHARMA COMPANIES AND THE Covid-19 VACCINES CRISIS », published 22 September 2021, https://www.amnesty.be/IMG/pdf/20210922_rapport_vaccins.pdf
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/covid-19-big-pharma-fuelling-unprecedented-human-rights-crisis-new-report.

[2Public Citizen, “How to Make Enough Vaccine for the World in One Year”, published 26 May 2021, www.citizen.org/article/how-to-make-enough-vaccine-for-the-world-in-one-year/

[3Financial Times, The inside story of the Pfizer vaccine: ‘a once-in-an-epoch windfall’, 1 December 2021. https://www.ft.com/content/0cea5e3f-d4c4-4ee2-961a-3aa150f388ec.

[4Figures provided by the Financial Times in the article mentioned.

[5Amnesty International, “Covid-19: Big Pharma fuelling unprecedented human rights crisis”, published 22 September 2021, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/covid-19-big-pharma-fuelling-unprecedented-human-rights-crisis-new-report

[7The major agribusiness corporations had invited themselves to the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 whereas in fact they are one of the causes of, and not a solution to, the worldwide food and environmental crises. A number of movements have pointed this out. See The Guardian, “‘Corporate colonization’: small producers boycott UN food summit,” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/23/small-producers-boycott-un-food-summit-corporate-interests. See also the news report by Democracynow.org from New York: https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2021/9/23. See also (in French) CCFD-Terre Solidaire, “Food system summit : alerte sur un sommet coopté par le secteur (...)” https://ccfd-terresolidaire.org/nos-publications/edm/2021/317-juin-2021/food-system-summit-7109

[11See page 5 of the Amnesty International report https://www.amnesty.be/IMG/pdf/20210922_rapport_vaccins.pdf cited above

[12From the Manifesto “End the System of Private Patents!” https://www.cadtm.org/End-the-system-of-private-patents

[13List of the first 360 signatures of people who support the End the Private Patent System Manifesto! #FREECOVIDPATENTS
https://www.cadtm.org/List-of-the-first-360-signatures-of-people-who-support-the-End-the-Private

[14List of signatory organisations: End the private patent system! For a pharmaceutical industry under popular control and a free, universal and public vaccination system https://www.cadtm.org/List-of-signatory-organisations-End-the-private-patent-system-For-a

Eric Toussaint 

is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France.
He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.
See his bibliography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ric_Toussaint
He co-authored World debt figures 2015 with Pierre Gottiniaux, Daniel Munevar and Antonio Sanabria (2015); and with Damien Millet Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, Monthly Review Books, New York, 2010. He was the scientific coordinator of the Greek Truth Commission on Public Debt from April 2015 to November 2015.


from 
https://www.cadtm.org/The-coronavirus-pandemic-has-widened-the-gap-between-the-Global-North-and-the

Παρασκευή 17 Δεκεμβρίου 2021

 

The new, young and radical feminist movement, at the forefront of popular resistance in Greece!

15 December 2021 by Sonia Mitralias


What has happened in Greece over the last two years is worthy of attention: never before in the history of the country has the issue of women’s rights had so much attention in the press, been the subject of such passionate public debate and occupied the forefront of the political scene.

It all started when the Mitsotakis government tried to align itself with the most reactionary and obscurantist neoliberal forces on the planet, launching a frontal assault on women’s human rights. Fortunately, this did not take into account the revival of the feminist movement, which took up the challenge - and this is how it went!

 The case of the “unborn child”

Encouraged by the victory of the right wing “New Democracy” party in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church invented, on the first Sunday after Christmas, a day dedicated to the “unborn child”. They said this decision was taken in order to protect the life of the child before birth and solve the demographic problem of the Greek nation!

36 years after the legalization of abortion in Greece – thanks to a very progressive law, passed in 1986 after an assiduous struggle lasting nearly ten years by the feminist movement – the Greek Orthodox Church thus gave the signal for a frontal attack on this hard-won right.

A few days before New Year in 2020 and on the day dedicated to the “unborn child”, the front page of a sports magazine (!) caused a tsunami of indignation on social media. On its cover was depicted a large hand, holding a ridiculously small foetus in its palm, while underneath it was written in bold capital letters, the sentence: “LET ME LIVE”.

Despite the reactions of social media, the Minister of Development – the notorious racist and former neo-fascist Adonis Georgiadis - was quick to congratulate the magazine, saying that Greece having twice as many abortions (300,000 per year, according to his exaggerated claims) as births would cause the country to lack nearly a million children, and would pose a problem for the survival of the Nation.

A few days later, giant posters appeared in the Athens metro with the same message and the same foetus. And authorship of this anti-abortion campaign was claimed by a long list of fundamentalist Orthodox Christian associations...

But the retrograde and obscurantist Orthodox Church did not act alone; it enjoyed the support of many ministers and senior government officials. After another public outcry, the Ministry of Transport quickly ordered the removal of the posters. But these attacks on abortion rights were only the prelude to what would follow.

Influenced by regimes like Orban’s in Hungary, the Mitsotakis government took a first step to give itself a pro-natalist profile and decided to rename the “General Secretariat for Gender Equality” – an institution also born from the second wave feminist movement – as “Secretary General for Demographic and Family Policy and Gender Equality”.

 The return of the father’s law

But other attacks would follow. The New Democracy government clearly showed this by adopting in May 2021 a law on joint parental authority which reformed key articles of the Civil Code in terms of family law.

It was truly a crucial moment for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. This bill came into being after having been long demanded by a very chauvinist and aggressive lobby of neoliberal, violent and vulgar fathers. The latter joined forces with the N.D. government on the basis of their common interests and around a pro-family discourse.

Thus, the government revised what had been the quintessence of family law and is still very progressive today, achieved in 1983. This law was a real anti-patriarchal revolution because it replaced the right of the father - progenitor - (paternal power) by parental authority.

Now, after the dissolution of marriage, unlike the 1983 law, the new law imposes compulsory joint parental custody, so the child is forced to spend 1/3 of their time with the parent with whom they don’t usually live, even if they don’t wish to do so. Even when the father is violent, the child’s desires are not taken into account. To remove communication from an abusive parent, you need a final judgment. This can last for years or never happen, because going to court in Greece is difficult - it costs money and a lot of stress and women from single-parent families are vulnerable, poor and destitute, being in a situation of incredible distress, accentuated even more by the austerity policies imposed in the name of debt and the pandemic. All this means that an abusive father can harass, rape and dispose of the child as he pleases, but also use the law to blackmail, indict, perhaps even criminalize mothers who simply want to protect their children and who risk their safety and their lives.

The draft law was severely criticised by Greek lawyers for its legal weakness and the violation of human rights and the Istanbul Convention it entailed. It was also rejected by all women’s organizations and the feminist movement, which faced a hate campaign led by the unleashed and misogynistic fathers’ lobby, supported by almost every major media outlet in the country.

When the law was passed by the majority – against most of the opposition parties in the Greek Parliament – the fanatics of the fathers’ lobby celebrated on social media and made physical threats against the country’s judges and prosecutors to force them to apply the law in favour of fathers: for example, the “Equal Parental Rights”" group wrote: “we direct the heavy artillery against the JUDICIARY, we load, we start and we wait! Let those of our members who disclose what is happening in our group, inform the Union of Judges and Prosecutors that they are now in our sights.”

In short, these masculinist groups have become extremely dangerous: Their anti-feminism, their culture of virility, the reconstruction of a hegemonic masculinity constitute ideological gateways to the most extreme right and sooner or later they will move increasingly to violent action at the social and not merely familial level.

 The eruption of Greek #MeToo and the awakening of consciousness

The picture is bleak, but in mid-January 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, more than three years after the emergence of the #Metoo movement in the United States, the Greek #MeToo burst onto the forefront of the country’s social and political scene.

The Greek #Metoo was triggered by the revelations of Sofia Bekatorou,43, a two-time Olympic sailing medallist (gold and bronze), who publicly claimed to have been raped at the age of 21 by a senior official of the Greek Sailing Federation. Addressing all women who have been sexually assaulted, she sent the message: “Break the silence, speak!”

This year also, the emergence of the Greek #MeToo has helped to mature feminist consciousness in the face of the most atrocious form of gender violence, femicide. The murder of Eleni Topaloudi in November 2018 in Rhodes – a 21-year-old student, raped, tortured by two young men, thrown into the sea while still alive - helped introduce the term “femicide” into everyday language.

But it was also this year - especially this summer - that throughout the country, from Athens to Thessaloniki, from Crete to the Cyclades islands, there were successive murders of women by their partners. However, this time, the difference with the very recent past was eye-opening: the media talked about it rather extensively, tongues were loosened, political parties were abandoning their usual silence, and above all, women were taking to the streets, feminists in the lead, to shout their anger and call for solidarity!

 The renewal of the feminist movement

Here is another example of the revival of feminism: Last June, an advertising spot asked women... to procreate, especially those who had “aged” and had been too preoccupied with their careers and thus neglected interest in their fertility. It was an advertisement for the “1st Panhellenic Fertility Conference” which was supported by the church, assisted reproduction companies, the “Secretary General of Population and Family Policy and Gender Equality”, the public broadcaster (ERT) and the President of the Hellenic Republic herself. But, after a new public outcry, President Katerina Sakellaropoulou was forced to withdraw her support for the Conference and almost all official participants did the same... the conference was cancelled. It was a total fiasco!

Eventually, the Mitsotakis government was able to pass its joint parental authority bill – narrowly – but even the pro-government media admitted that it was a Pyrrhic victory. Feminist resistance has sown trouble even within the Council of Ministers and caused dissension even in the parliamentary group of New Democracy. It was the first time since its formation in 2019 that the right-wing government has undergone a crisis and, by common admission, responsibility for this absolute novelty lay with the feminist movement.

The conclusion is not difficult: 2021 has seen the birth in Greece of a renewal of the feminist movement, young, radical but also unitary, which already occupies the forefront of popular struggles against the Holy Alliance of neoliberal reaction and nationalist and orthodox obscurantism. The event is significant, almost historic, in a conservative and disoriented Greek society, which is always seeking a left worthy of its name.

What comes next promises to be exciting..

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