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WIPO: Empty Meeting Room

Tuesday 15 August 2006, by Pedro de Paranaguá Moniz


This is the second post of a series of four. All of them will be posted during this week. The original posts were made in Brazilian Portuguese, between 26-30 June 2006, during the second session of the Provisional Committee on the Development Agenda (PCDA), of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), almost in real time. The author was in Geneva on behalf of Fundaco Getlio Vargas (FGV) School of Law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The translation into English was only possible due to the kind assistance of Andrs Vivas, a US-Argentinian former Harvard University graduate student, to whom the author is very thankful.

Originally posted on 28 June 2006.

On day three of the second session of the Provisional Committee to discuss the Development Agenda (PCDA) for the World Intellectual Property Organization - WIPO, agency of the United Nations that specializes in intellectual property, the principal meeting room remained empty for quite some time.

The meeting only began at 12:03 p.m. Geneva time. Beforehand, some delegations took time to meet informally with the meeting Chair.

When the formal meeting finally began, it did not last long: 40 minutes to be exact.

Ultimately, the majority of what would be accomplished at this meeting took place behind closed doors during informal meetings.

At least the good news are that NGOs were given time to speak. Each NGO will be able to speak for no more than three minutes when reconvening after an extended lunch of three hours.

When I spoke to various public interest NGOs, it was clear that they will make short, punctual interventions.

At the end of yesterday’s meeting and in the brief meeting time today, some delegations simply enumerated the items from the document PCDA/1/6/prov.2 (which contains all proposals from all the different countries that have been presented until now) with which they agree upon, and the items with which in principle there is no agreement and thus there is a need for more clarification.

Some delegations, like Brazil, on behalf of the Group of Friends of Development, mentioned that by not discussing any of the above-mentioned document’s items does not necessarily constitute agreement or disagreement. This point was raised because those countries that remained silent did not want any item to suddenly be excluded from the discussion.

At the end of the morning session, the event Chair called upon the delegations of Colombia, Chile, and Thailand to speak with him privately. It is not known what was discussed during this side meeting, nor for what purpose they were held.

Here we have further evidence of how much of what is accomplished at these meetings is done informally, either in hallways or separate meeting rooms before, after or between the official (and formal) meetings.

For the ones who read English (this was originally posted in Portuguese), here it follows web links to some public interest NGOs that are present here at WIPO and that are posting news on the meeting:

EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation

FSF-Europe (Free Software Foundation Europe)

From Geneva (do Thiru Balasubramaniam, que trabalha no CPTech - Consumer Project on Technology)

As soon as I have more relevant news, I will post it immediately.

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