Dear Delegates,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to WASMUN 2006 and the GA-ECOFIN Committee. To begin, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Vitaliy Pradun. I am a sophomore at the University of Washington majoring in political science. After graduating from college three years from now, I plan to go to graduate school for political science in order to eventually become a professor. Although I was always interested in foreign affairs and intended to study political science since high school, I did not realize just how fascinating and complex world politics is until I took my first international relations course. My interests in politics have to a large extent shaped my extracurricular involvement in college. I am a student senator and a member of the UW debate team. Over the last two years, I have held several positions within the residential government and interned as the Assistant-Editor for Real Change, a non-profit community newspaper exploring the issues of the poor and the homeless. As a past MUN delegate on both high school and college level, I also wished to make my own contribution to organizing conferences for others to participate in and enjoy. This year I am excited to serve as the Under-Secretary-General of Public Relations and Outreach for NWMUN 2006, UW’s college-level conference and, of course, your chair for WASMUN.
What makes me so excited? As many of you are first-time delegates, months from now, you will arrive to the WASMUN early in the morning. Instead of walking through the cozy hallways of your high school, you’ll be dwarfed by the huge buildings and lecture halls of a large public university. Instead of running into the same familiar faces, you will meet suited teens from all over the state busily bustling about or casually carrying on political conversations. Yet instead of feeling intimidated, you will be exhilarated. Just imagine—for at least two days out of the year, 400 to 600 high school students from all over the state, all sharing an interest in diplomacy and international politics will come together to share perspectives, experiences, and solutions both as individuals and nations that they represent. You will learn to listen, speak, persuade and be persuaded. The experience MUN provides is truly unique and cannot be reproduced in a classroom. It is an experience that will make a more confident discussant and public speaker, a more skillful diplomat and a more educated and thoughtful global citizen.
The topics that I have chosen for this committee are research and development for the developing world and the introduction of the genetically modified foods in the developing world. Provided the growing gap between the Global North (i.e. Europe, North America, and Northeast Asia) and the Global South (i.e. the developing nations) and the inherent climatological inequality between these two worlds, the issue of solving the problems of pestilence and hunger in the developing world cannot go unnoticed. It is therefore my hope that the following synopses will spark your interest in these areas and provide for a vibrant and fruitful discussion when I see you all at WASMUN 2006. If you have any questions before then, please feel free to contact me at
With greetings,
- Vitaliy Pradun
I. Overview of the Committee
ECOFIN, or the Economic and Financial Committee, is one of the committees within the UN General Assembly (GA). The GA is UN’s main deliberating body. It convenes every year from September through December and includes representatives from all member-nations. Each representative holds a single vote. The five permanent members of the Security Counsel do not hold veto power over legislation in the GA. Most decisions are reached by a simple majority. Although important decision, such as the approval of the UN budget and the admission of new members require 2/3rds majority, no such matters will come up in our proceedings.
The GA is unique in that it brings all member states in a single discussion forum. The body has been instrumental in debating global issues, initiating studies and proposing recommendations for solutions for maintaining international peace, security and prosperity. It is important to point out, though, that the decisions reached within the GA do not have power of enforcement behind them, as such powers are reserved only for the Security Counsel resolutions. The GA, however, can influence policy by making official recommendations to relevant bodies such as the Security Counsel. Some of its main duties, as quoted from the UN Charter are
- to consider and make recommendations on the principles of cooperation in the maintenance of international peace and security;
- to discuss any question relating to international peace and security and, except where a dispute or situation is being discussed by the Security Council, to make recommendations on it;
- to discuss and, with the same exception, make recommendations on any question within the scope of the Charter or affecting the powers and functions of any organ of the United Nations;
- to initiate studies and make recommendations to promote international political cooperation, the development and codification of international law, the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, and international collaboration in economic, social, cultural, educational and health fields;
- to make recommendations for the peaceful settlement of any situation
To save time and split up work, the GA is divided into six main committees which discuss only those issues pertaining to the committee’s mandate. Each nation sends separate delegates to each of the committees providing for representation of all UN members in all committees. Our committee, ECOFIN, as the name suggests, deals with economic and financial issues such as development and aid.
II. Topic 1 – Research and Development for the Developing World
Statement of the Problem
It is quite apparent that the staple of wealth and prosperity for the modern societies is their scientific and technological advancement. The poverty and pestilence in the Global South could the attributed in part to the lack of precisely these attributes. It has been empirically demonstrated that poverty not only leads to insufficient healthcare and inadequate treatment of epidemics common in climatologically disadvantaged areas of the Global South, but the social and economic implications of pandemics, including an eroded labor force, short lifespans, and the precious resources’ being diverted towards pestilence relief contribute to creating poverty in the first place. Millions of people worldwide die each year from well-known diseases such as AIDS and malaria but also obscure diseases prevalent only in the Global South, such as the Chagas disease. Although grassroots movements work to bolster healthcare infrastructure and alleviate the symptoms of the epidemics, the long term solution could only be achieved with the advent of vaccines to ultimately wipe out these diseases. As the developing countries lack the infrastructure, facilities and the tremendous financial resources required to develop vaccines to address these problems, research and development (R&D) for pharmaceuticals is concentrated almost exclusively in the Global North and done by large multinational corporations such as Pasteur-MérieuxConnaught and Merck.
The way pharmaceutical companies operate and make profits is by investing in R&D, developing a product, in this case, being a vaccine, and then earning back both their investment and the additional profit from marketing their vaccine. Having invested so much money and time into R&D, the companies often end up developing a product for which no competition exits. If they thus hold a monopoly on the only vaccine for a certain disease, they do not have to worry about being outbid by the competition and can instead charge as high a price for their product as the consumers will be willing to pay. The problem with the developing world is that neither its governments nor its people would be able to afford to buy the vaccines at market prices (i.e. prices comparable to those that consumers in the developed countries usually pay) even if the vaccine were developed. Vaccine corporations, therefore, as rational economic actors motivated by profit maximization do not find developing vaccines for the diseases of the developing world a profitable venture. The corporations ultimately see vaccines as a market good rather than a public good or something that everyone should be entitled to. If someone needs medicine but cannot afford it, they simply see no incentive to develop it.
However, although many diseases are prevalent mostly in the developing world, when they spill over into the Global North, finding cures for them again becomes profitable for pharmaceutical corporations. Antiretroviral drugs treating HIV are being developed mostly for this reason. Yet even here the research concentrates on HIV strands prevalent in the Global North, and although the drugs already exist, pharmaceutical corporations refuse to sell them below market prices to the developing countries most afflicted by these diseases. To prevent developing countries’ copying their drugs and selling generic brands at affordable prices, the drug companies maintain a stringent set of intellectual property laws which give them the sole right for the production and distribution of their drugs.
History of the Problem
Although epidemic diseases ravaged humanity for centuries, it is only recently that scientists have reached a level of technological sophistication that made the production of vaccines possible. In the late 20th century, with the advent of drugs like the antiretroviral drugs which proved to be too expensive for those who needed them, a controversy opened between those who felt entitled to being able to acquire medicine at the prices they could afford and those who sought to protect their inventions.
The evolution of intellectual property rights arose of this controversy. In other words, having devoted billions of dollars and years of research on certain drugs, the pharmaceutical companies believed themselves justified in holding the only legitimate claim to production and distribution of their product and preventing others from simply copying their drugs and selling them off as generics. The problem became especially acute when the generic industry blossomed, as the developing nations, unable to afford brand-name drugs, sought to reproduce them more cheaply and distribute them to their citizens. In 1995, the multinational drug companies finally promulgated the TRIPS agreement which all current and new member-nations were required to sign. Under TRIPS, all inventions are protected by 20 year patents, which guarantees that no other agent can replicate, produce, and sell these products legally until the patent expires. To boot, many governments of the developing nations have been offering drug corporations patent extensions in return for their investment, which precludes these drugs’ ever becoming affordable in the foreseeable future.
A lot of headway, nevertheless, has been made on patents. At a WTO Doha conference in 2001, it has been concluded that developing nations should still be able to provide treatment for their citizens even if they cannot afford to purchase name-brand drugs at market prices. This opened the way for the empowerment of the so-called compulsory licenses or permissions granted to governments to override brand patents and either produce or import genetic drugs. Although a nation need not be experiencing a health crisis to secure a compulsory license, obtaining them remains very difficult and requires long and strenuous effort by the government and various departments within an applicant nation. Also, states are afraid that if they override company’s patents, the companies will refuse to invest in them in the future. The fact still leaves a lot of headway to be achieved on making compulsory licenses a viable tool for providing affordable medicine to the developing nations.
Finally, in terms of the actual advances in R&D, the most exciting news is a recent announcement that research for a viable malaria vaccine due out in 2011 is in the works as a joint public-private sector project. With an expected price of $10 a dose, though, the vaccine will prove too expensive for those who need it most and the possibility of curbing malaria on a large scale will depend on further revision of prices and compulsory licenses.
Past UN Action
UN has provided a consistent effort in palliating diseases in the developing world. The statistical reports of its many agencies and commissions have assisted policy-making organizations such as WTO in their treatment of developing nations and their health sectors. The World Health Organization has been running a successful policy in testing generic drugs for safety. It has also assisted governments in building up their infrastructure in order to address health problems on a macro scale. Particular attention has been devoted to AIDS with initiatives like Three Ones and Three by Five under the auspices of a newly integrated agency, UNAIDS. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have approved numerous loans to health sectors in the nations of the Global South. However, the long term solutions are ultimately outside of the framework of UN’s specialized agencies and require direct action taken by its member nations.
Proposed Solutions and Bloc Positions
It is important to realize that the pharmaceutical companies are not represented in the UN. Therefore, any discussion that takes place within UN’s fora must utilize the nations of the Global North as middlemen between the pharmaceutical corporations stationed within their borders and the member-nations from the Global South. It is furthermore important to realize that regardless of where pharmaceutical companies are based, national governments have little control over them. In other words, even if the General Assembly convinces the US that Merck should develop a vaccine for the Chagas disease, the US would have no way of coercing Merck to do so.
Yet, as established before, if what prevents Merck from developing a vaccine for the Chagas disease is the lack of a financial incentive, what the US government could do is indeed provide that incentive. In combining the public (i.e. the government) and private (i.e. the corporations) sectors, it could, for example, impress upon Merck that if it invested in developing the vaccine, the US would assure a market for it, or in other words offer to buy a substantial amount of doses at market prices. The drugs would then be resold to the developing nations at more affordable prices. As a far more impressive extension of this solution, it has been argued that the UN could create a vaccine fund to which all member-states contribute money as a certain percentage of their GDP. The fund then places orders for any given vaccine and offers a large enough profit margin to induce corporations to invest in R&D for that vaccine. Once the fund has acquired the vaccine, it can, again, sell it at cheaper prices to the developing nations. The plan can also acquire and resell existing or future pharmaceuticals, such as antiretroviral drugsor the awaited malaria vaccine. Alternatively, the money in the fund could be used to fund research in the developing nations in the first place. Solutions like these could also lead to an eventual phasing out of the patent and compulsory license system because since the corporations are financially rewarded just by inventing a vaccine, they no longer need to fear losing out to generic producers who will underbid and push them out of the market.
Although the project is sound, it should be noted that it places the financial burden on the nations of the Global North, as nations like US, Japan, and Germany would end up having to finance the fund. For issues like these, bloc positions thus typically result at the North-South divide. The developed nations would naturally balk at having to shoulder the financial burden of bringing vaccines to the world because they could spend those same funds on strengthening their own security, improving their own domestic programs or providing aid to their own strategic partners. Although statesmen are often compassionate people, it is, after all, their duty to promote their nation’s interests above those of other nations. So what is governments’ incentive for providing incentives to corporations at their and their tax payers’ own cost? Those of you representing the developing nations hence have the difficult task of convincing the nations of the Global North that relieving the developing world of the epidemic diseases is indeed in their and common global interest. Potential arguments include economic growth and greater future trade possibilities and reducing the amount of the so-called failed disease and poverty-ridden states, a breeding nest for terrorism.
III. Topic 2 – The Genetically Modified Food for the Developing World
Statement of the Problem
The division between the Global North and Global South is not only economic but also climatologic. Most of the arable land is concentrated in the North. The land in tropics, where the developing nations are predominantly concentrated is quite ill-suited for agriculture. The fragile soil, often high in acidity, combined with heavy sunlight results in poor harvests, particularly of such temperate crops like corn and wheat. Unpredictable weather changes, droughts and periodic heavy rainfalls aggravate the situation. Given the low agricultural productivity, and the inability of many foodstuffs to survive the harshness of the tropics, the resulting harvests are often insufficient to feed the people of the developing nations. With the projected population increases of 20% in the next 20 years, the situation looks increasing grim and many scholars believe nothing short of a second Green Revolution could solve the problem. Such a Revolution would include the wide-scale introduction of genetically modified (GM)/genetically engineered (GE) foods in the developing world.