Henry Shue, Oxford Professor of Politics and International Relations and member of the ASAP Advisory Board, contacted the ASAP team this week with a message for members: help protect access to affordable generic medicines in the Pacific Rim.

He says he hopes many ASAP members will participate in a campaign, initiated by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), pressuring the United States and other countries to ensure the availability of generic medicines in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal currently being negotiated.

According to MSF, leaked reports from the trade negotiations show that the US has proposed strict intellectual property rules that would undermine access to generic medicines, which are essential to MSF\’s work and play a major role in healthcare systems across developing countries.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will cover at least half a billion people in 11 Pacific Rim nations — Vietnam, Peru, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam, United States, Singapore, Canada, and Australia — and may be extended to include ten additional countries. TPP negotiations began in 2010 and are scheduled to conclude in October 2013.

With MSF, Shue is calling on ASAP members to contact the United States Congress and other governments negotiating the TPP and demand that access to generic medicines be protected in the trade deal.

Find more information and join MSF\’s campaign here.

The conclusions of the Global Poverty Consensus Report (GPCR), an ASAP effort to identify academic consensus on priorities for poverty alleviation, will soon be tested. ASAP board members Gilad Tanay and Keith Horton are working with a small research team to analyze the results of fifty interviews with academics on poverty-alleviation policy post-2015. In the coming months, they hope to produce a map of areas of agreement and disagreement on policy priorities for the development framework that will succeed the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.

The conclusions Horton and Tanay draw will be tested in a survey of academics who have published on topics related to global poverty.

David Rodríguez-Arias, a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Spanish National Research Council, led the effort to create a comprehensive database of academics around the world who have published peer-reviewed papers on global poverty in the last three decades. He and his team of volunteer researchers managed to gather basic data and contact information for 1,429 different academics who had published on topics relevant to the GPCR.

Rodríguez-Arias sees an urgent need for the GPCR effort. \”Within the academic field of global justice,\” he said, \”too much focus on disagreement sends the misguided and potentially paralyzing message to the society that a common agenda for global poverty eradication cannot be defined. Academic experts in global poverty need to be consulted when policy makers define sound and effective policies. In that respect, this is a very important moment: the Millennium Development Goals are about to expire, and the post MDG framework is being defined. Any academic consensus on what the Beyond 2015 agenda should look like can achieve a considerable positive impact for the face of global poverty during the 21th century.\”

Rodríguez-Arias and Tanay identified six academic disciplines that are highly relevant to the field of global poverty: social science, economy, political science, philosophy, public health and environmental studies. For each of these disciplines, Rodriguez-Arias searched a prominent bibliographic database for papers on the Millennium Development Goals, global poverty, and development policy. Volunteer researchers Janina Pescinski, Mario Ascolese, Amy Wood, Beatriz Carrillo, Iason Gabriel, and Gulrez Azhar turned this long list of publications into a database, complete with authors’ names, affiliation, location, and contact information.

Pescinski described the process as being \”as broadly inclusive as possible, from disciplines to geography\”. She said \”it was especially difficult to find contact info for non-
Northern or non-English speaking scholars, but I think this speaks to many of the inequalities ASAP targets\”.

Ascolese had not expected they would identify so many academics writing on the topic of global poverty and development. \”It was stunning and encouraging,\” he said. \”It means that many efforts already exist to promote change in academia, and that maybe a project aiming at coordinating these efforts can be useful\”.

Irazábal talks about his transition from working at Dow Chemical to leadership in Latin American poverty nonprofit TECHO.

Presentation on the post-MDGs and SDGs by Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on the Millennium Development Goals

The ASAP Genuinely Participatory Consultations (GPC) Working Group has published its initial assessment of the UN’\’s global consultation process on the next phase of international development.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has been leading an initiative to genuinely include poor and marginalized people, governments, NGOs, the private sector, unions, and academics in the discussion of the global development framework that will succeed the Millennium Developments Goals (MDGs). This process, initiated in spring of 2012, has included national consultations in more than 60 countries and eleven global thematic consultation meetings. National consultations concluded in January and thematic consultations will run through the spring.

According to the UN Development Group website\’s page on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, consultations were meant to \”stimulate discussion amongst national stakeholders and to garner inputs and ideas for a shared global vision\”.

This global consultation process stands in contrast with the method used to design the MDG framework in the late 1990s. Although the years leading up to the formulation of the MDGs saw many global summits on development issues, the list of MDGs was finalized without public input. While the policy process this time has been more inclusive, it is not yet clear how the ideas generated in the post-MDG consultation meetings will influence the new development framework.

ASAP has formed an expert working group on participatory consultation to discuss the inclusiveness of the process of formulating the MDG successors and to make recommendations for participatory implementation of the new framework.

The group\’s discussion paper, outlines principles for inclusive consultation processes in general and suggests ways of ensuring that the new development framework is implemented in an inclusive and participatory way.

The report\’s main conclusions include:

1. Consultations must ensure that the voices of those who are consulted are taken seriously and have weight in final decision-making about the post-MDG development agenda.
2. All consultations must be evaluated on the basis of how genuinely participatory they are.
3. Genuinely participatory processes are part of an ongoing process that is important to the legitimization of the post-MDG development agenda, not only in terms of the content of the MDG replacement goals themselves but also in terms of the successful implementation and monitoring of those goals.

Meena Krishnamurthy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manitoba, recruited the team of academic experts in the field of democratic theory and was lead author of the discussion paper. Describing the process, she said \”writing the paper was actually quite easy, because we all agreed on the fundamental issues of why genuinely participatory processes are important and how to begin to implement such processes.\”

Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of Philosophy and Women\’s Studies at the University of Michigan and a member of the working group, also observed broad agreement amongst the experts involved: \”I found a high degree of consensus among the members of the working group, which is not to say that we all had the same ideas coming in, but that we saw the value of the ideas everyone was putting in,\” she said.

Krishnamurthy says she does not believe that this group\’s recommendations will significantly influence the post-MDG consultation meetings organized at the UN, since this process is almost over. However, she says she believes the group\’s work could be valuable for development policy going forward.

\”The processes that we have argued for and outlined could be applied to more general international political processes and consultations. So, perhaps the document could be used as a model, more generally, for genuinely participatory discussions regarding development.\”

Looking towards next steps for the post-MDG framework, Anderson said that the time for consulting academics has passed. \”The main work going forward for the UN process is not so much to consult academics, as to consult the poor themselves, and to be responsive to their voices. We academics have contributed successfully to the extent that we have facilitated the empowerment of the poor.\”

Krishnamurthy sees an important role for participatory consultation not just in the formulation, but also in the implementation and monitoring of the new development framework.

\”I think the next step really is to think about how genuine participation can be part of the implementation and monitoring of the MDGRs [MDG replacements]. There already exists a body of work on participatory processes in the implementation and monitoring of health-related goals. Perhaps we can draw on this model as we begin to think about how participation can be realized in relation to the MDG-Rs and issues of health.\”

The members of ASAP\’s Participatory Consultations Working Group are Elizabeth Anderson, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women\’s Studies at the University of Michigan; Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Mayer Professor of Philosophy and Political Science and Director of the Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University; Lyn Carson, Professor of Applied Politics, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney; John Dryzek, Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and Australian Research Council Federation Fellow; Meena Krishnamurthy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba; Vijayendra Rao, Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank; Charles Sabel, Maurice T. Moore Professor of Law and Social Science at Columbia Law School; Gilad Tanay, Ph.D. Candidate in the Philosophy Department of Yale University; Catarina Tully, Director of From Over Here; Mark Warren, Professor of Political Science and Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair in the Study of Democracy, University of British Columbia; Scott Wisor, Research Fellow in the Centre for Moral, Social, and Political Theory in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University; Melissa Williams, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto; and Bettina von Lieres, Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

As an emerging global power, India has increasingly felt the domestic effects of its international immersion in networks of trade, investment and security. A new global justice program at the University of Delhi will explore the moral and ethical dimensions of such issues, with an emphasis on bringing more voices from India and the Global South into global justice debates.

The Nyaya program — Hindi for justice — is being developed by ASAP Board Member Ashok Acharya, a longtime faculty member at Delhi University, with support from ASAP Chair Thomas Pogge at Yale University and Board Member Luis Cabrera at the University of Birmingham. The three partnered to secure funding from the British Council which will support short-term doctoral student exchanges, a major conference in Spring 2014, \’Global Justice and the Global South,\’ at Delhi University, and a doctoral student workshop at Birmingham, along with a continuing seminar series at Delhi.

\”Setting up a global justice programme in India, and especially at the University of Delhi, has been a dream project that I have been nurturing for the past 10 years or so,\” Acharya said. \”I\’m sure, once established, this will grow from strength to strength and bring together the best of the minds from across the world and apply them to resolve key global inequities.\”

Pogge said he sees the project as \”bringing together three strong and dynamic research communities into sustained collaboration. This is a highly cost-effective way of enhancing the global justice work each of these communities is already doing: improving its quality, extending its reach and strengthening its practical impact. We are very grateful to the British Council for this far-sighted and profoundly important initiative.\”

Mobility exchange students from Delhi will be hosted by Yale\’s Macmillan Center Global Justice Programme, and at Birmingham in the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics.

The Nyaya progamme\’s development is funded through the British Council’s Trilateral Research in Partnership (TRIP) Awards, the first strand of the successful UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) to partner with the United States.

For more information, contact Luis Cabrera at a.l.cabrera@bham.ac.uk

At present, the development of new medicines is driven by the reward of temporary market exclusivity. When a new medicine is protected from generic competition, its profit-maximizing price inevitably prevents a large proportion of the world\’s population, including many in affluent countries, from purchasing it. As a result of this incentive system, (1) people suffer and die needlessly, and (2) research is focused on those medicines from which investors can make the most money, rather than on those that would lead to the greatest improvements in human health.
The Health Impact Fund would help to reduce all these problems.

The HIF, proposed by the non-profit organization Incentives for Global Health, would be financed by governments and offers patentees the option to forego monopoly pricing in exchange for a reward based on the health impact of their medicine. By registering a patented medicine with HIF, the firm would agree to sell it at cost. In exchange, the firm would receive, for a fixed amount of time, supplementary payments based on the products assessed health impact. Registering with the fund would be optional, and the fund would not diminish patent rights.

Currently, IGH is in talks with various pharmaceutical companies and governments regarding pilot projects that would test the HIF proposal from every angle.

Pilots will:

• Test the ability of reimbursement based on health impact to create sufficient incentive for firms to invest in activities that increase impact.
• Identify challenges for reliably evaluating health impact in a marketed setting in a manner that can be calibrated directly to reimbursement to the innovator.
• Clarify the minimum for required variables to measure impact across different populations and medicines.

If you are interested in getting involved with Incentives for Global Health, contact Jake Hirsch-Allen at jakehirschallen@gmail.com.

The Global Poverty Consensus Report project aims to identify and clearly articulate academic consensus and disagreement on global poverty alleviation and to feed these points of consensus into the MDG replacement process. To date, the team has interviewed more than 50 poverty researchers, with more to come. They are particularly concerned at the moment with interviewing academics from the Global South. The interviews are currently being transcribed. Once the interview phase is completed, the team will write a report highlighting the major recommendations for development policy post-2015. Next, they will test the consensus identified in the report, circulating a survey amongst academics who have written on the MDGs and MDG successors. Finally, they will organize consultation meetings with impoverished communities on three continents to present the report and get feedback on its key policy proposals.

The Global Health Impact project is happy to welcome a new batch of interns working on improving the first draft of the index that will appear in a proceedings from the Global Administrative Law seminar put on by New York University in Rome this summer!

The Global Health Impact project has conducted 40 sensitivity analyses of the model for the rating of pharmaceutical companies on the basis of their drugs\’ global health impact. The team welcomes collaboration from public health experts working on malaria, HIV/AIDS, and, especially, TB, as well as from advanced PhD students or researchers doing experimental economics to design a test to see if people will be willing to use a label on the basis of our model rating system. Finally, the team is looking to collaborate with a few computer programmers to develop a phone application to make the final version of the ratings system more widely available.

Two new groups of ASAP volunteers — the Quick Response Team and Campaign Coordination Team — will work together to provide research, consultation, and other support services to Beyond 2015.

Beyond 2015 is a global coalition of more than 500 civil society organisations from over 80 countries calling for a strong and legitimate development framework to succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals, which are due to expire in 2015. Beyond 2015 is working closely with the UN to ensure that its work on the post-2015 development framework is inclusive, participatory, and responsive to the voices of people living in poverty. The High Level Panel appointed to advise the UN General Assembly regards Beyond 2015 as a key source of civil society input in the MDG replacement process.

ASAP is well placed to contribute research and consultation to Beyond 2015 because two ASAP projects, the Global Poverty Consensus Report and the Institutional Reform Goals, focus on co-ordinating academics\’ research and recommendations for the MDG successors. Beyond 2015 has recognised ASAP as a leading source of academic knowledge concerning poverty alleviation and other development goals.

In order to provide Beyond 2015 with the best academic input possible, ASAP has recruited volunteers from around the world to form the Quick Response Team and the Campaign Coordination Team.

The Quick Response Team consists of 25 academics who specialize in poverty alleviation from diverse disciplines, including philosophy, political science, social science, economics, international business, environmental management, medicine, and other fields. Team members are based in a wide range of countries, including Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. The diversity of the Quick Response Team leads to rich interdisciplinary analysis and research on questions concerning poverty alleviation. Specifically, the Quick Response Team offers the following services:

1. Providing research-informed responses to urgent questions from Beyond 2015.
2. Fact checking position papers written by Beyond 2015 member groups.
3. Translating Beyond 2015 materials into other languages.
4. Identifying academics who are conducting leading research on poverty alleviation and international development.

The Campaign Coordination Team consists of four members who are responsible for liaising between ASAP, the Quick Response Team, and Beyond 2015, and for coordinating the efforts of these groups. Specifically, the Campaign Coordination Team recruits academics from the Quick Response Team to contribute to Beyond 2015 policy briefs, delegates research tasks amongst the Quick Response Team, and synthesizes research findings.

To date, the Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams have worked together to provide substantive academic feedback on several Beyond 2015 policy briefs, spanning the themes of Health, Food Security and Nutrition, and Environmental Sustainability. The two teams are also collaborating to compile a list of potential contributors to the Global Poverty Consensus Report who represent a variety of nations and academic disciplines.

The development of the Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams marks a pivotal step for ASAP\’s work in facilitating discussion between civil society and academic researchers, and in providing an avenue for academics to engage in poverty-alleviation activism and contribute directly to the efforts to eradicate global poverty.

For more information on the Quick Response Team, please contact Brent Peterkin at brentpeterkin@gmail.com.

For more information on the Campaign Coordination Team, please contact Erin Schutte at erin.schutte@yale.edu or Monica Landy at monica.landy@yale.edu.