Ahmed Abdel Latif, illness International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
A2K was born out of frustration of lack of knowledge. Intellectual property – the system of exclusion of rights is not a human right. One enters a trap. Intellectual property rights people tried to push those rights in A2K and there was a lack of progress in this debate. There is a primacy of the diffusion of culture. The protection of moral and material rights of others is important. There is a possiblity of progress.
There is a complimentarity of the two movements is important to emphasize. We have not done enough to formulate a human rights discourse in this regard. The rights of users and the rights of consumers as well as the rights of the visually impaired etc. They need to look at the convention on the rights of the disabled.
There is very powerful human rights language that provides momentum to the A2K movement.
The WIPO development agenda does not mention a2k specifically but it can be developed as a framework for that. The issue of climate change can also benefit from access to knowledge.
How do we operationalize and translate this a2k to concrete guidelines that need to be advanced and presented. Much more can be done.