COVID-19 ve Aşının Adil Dağıtımı: Dünya Ticaret Örgütü Anlaşmaları Bağlamında Ortaya Çıkan Sorunlar

Vaccine nationalism is an obstacle to combating the global COVID-19 pandemic. Since the production of COVID-19 vaccines is still insufficient to meet the needs of the world population, developed countries primarily purchase them for their populations. The protection of intellectual property rights is another obstacle to the acceleration and widespread use of vaccine production. In order to overcome this obstacle, India and South Africa filed a waiver request before the World Trade Organization (WTO). This request aims to obtain official permission for the otherwise breach of the WTO Agreements provisions protecting intellectual property rights until the pandemic is over. The waiver request has become a topic of differing analysis. Some say the waiver request is unnecessary as the existing provisions of the GATT and TRIPS Agreements sufficiently serve the same purpose. In this article, the waiver request is considered critical and necessary. The provisions of the WTO Agreements that allow recourse to the national security exceptions or compulsory licensing were analyzed to evaluate whether or not they would be an alternative to a waiver decision. They concluded that resorting to these already existing procedures in the WTO Agreements would likely bring about further trade disputes and, therefore, a waiver decision is preferable. Finally, this article addresses the issue of quantity restrictions in the international trade of vaccines.