 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome back to Around the World in 8 minutes, where we at People's Dispatch are with you every week to bring you stories of people engaged in struggle across the world. For our first story, we take you to Geneva, where member states of the World Trade Organization met to discuss a proposal to waive certain intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccine production during the pandemic. The proposal is supported by more than 100 countries, led by India and South Africa, who have demanded the temporary waiver of some clauses of the trade-related intellectual property rights on the production of vaccines and other related medical equipment in order to increase their production and ensure wider and more equitable reach. While the proposal is supported by United Nations and the World Health Organization, it is opposed by rich countries such as the U.S., U.K., Canada, and members of the European Union, who argue that the waivers disincentivize innovation and can harm the interests of big pharma companies involved in the production of vaccines. Hundreds of civil society organizations have joined the countries and international bodies in the call to waive vaccine patents, such as the People's Health Movement, the International Week of Anti-imperial Struggle, Progressive International, and others. We spoke to Garhia Tala-Kappali of the International Coordination of the People's Health Movement to understand the importance of this demand and the impact it could have on the global response to this devastating pandemic. The very week that we are seeing a surge in the new cases of COVID, where we are seeing second and third waves in different countries, depending on where you are from, there have been, it is in this background that the importance of vaccines and vaccinations has been increasing. But what we have been seeing is that there is a large inequity in the access to vaccination and vaccines all over the world and this was there even right from the PPE kits, the diagnostics that were necessary and the medicines that are necessary. So, it is in this background from the last one week there have been discussions on a particular issue that has been dragging from some time. In the month of October and November, the governments of India and South Africa approached the World Trade Organization requesting for a temporary relaxation of intellectual property, patents, and other provisions under the TRIPS agreement of the World Trade Organization. However, even after six months what we see is committees after committees meetings, you know, regular meetings, but nothing coming out of these and in the last one and a half week we have from the 15th we have seen many informal TRIPS waiver discussions which actually have only shown that the Global North still opposes any sort of waiver of the TRIPS and patents thereby restricting the access to medicines and medical products and vaccines to the Global South. And this to an extent is also with the, in aiding the large corporate sector that has been at the top of it, despite public funding for, you know, the research and development behind these vaccines. You know, in the last few months people were of the expectations that the new WTO director Dr. Ngozi coming in and also changes in the American administration, US administration would bring something new. Other than the US trade representative Catherine Tai saying that there has been, the world is going through a very inequitable distribution of vaccines and it is unjust, we have not seen a strong move by these rich countries to remove. I mean, you know, they have an option of not using this TRIPS waiver but they keep blocking it also for the Global South. And to an extent this signifies the crux of the problem of vaccinations and the COVID pandemic where a significant part of the response is rooted in the corporate structure and within capitalism. And we see the status quo being extended from quite some time. It has been 6 months that these requests have been submitted and on the 5th and 6th of May, again there would be discussions as part of the World Trade Organization's general council meeting. And we hope that as people's health movement and many organizations supporting the TRIPS waiver proposal, we hope that the Global North, mainly the rich countries opposing the TRIPS waiver would stop opposing this move and agree for a temporary relaxation of intellectual properties and patents. For our next story, we take you to Bolivia, where dozens of intellectuals, experts and political leaders from across the world participated in the re-encounter with Pachamama on April 22, Earth Day. The event, organized by the Plurie National State of Bolivia, saw participation from figures such as Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Ariaza, Peruvian social activists in Cardinal Pedro Barreto, Bolivian Vice President David Choquehuanca and Bolivian President Luis Arce. The participants in this summit took the occasion to harshly criticize the system of capitalist exploitation which favors profit over the survival of the planet and humanity and made several proposals of international legislation to protect the earth and natural resources from capitalist greed. Bolivian President Luis Arce in the opening address of the event stated that our mother earth is being threatened by a system of savage capitalist development that has turned life itself into a commodity, as is the case with the vaccines. Foreign Minister Jorge Ariaza in his address stated that with the capitalist system, there is no way to fulfill the objectives of humanity. We must create a new system where human relationships, the relationships of production and the relationship with mother earth must be profoundly different. The re-encounter with Pachamama event was held parallel to the climate summit organized by US President Joe Biden on the same day which has been widely criticized by climate activists and political leaders. For example, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro spoke this morning at the summit and lied about what his government has done to prevent illegal logging and burning in the Amazon and Pantanal regions. Over 130 people's movements, organizations, trade unions, political parties and environmentalist groups sent a letter to the leaders participating in the summit to criticize the approaches taken by capitalist countries to address the climate crisis and propose a series of urgent and necessary measures. These included the end of privatization of natural goods and implementation of public policies to promote ecological production, penalization of companies and projects for environmental destruction, the banning of toxic pesticides in agricultural production, protection of lakes, oceans and rivers, protection of peasant, indigenous and traditional communities who live in areas of risk and many more. They state that capitalism is heading towards social barbarism. In its search for profit alone, it is leading humanity and nature to collapse. We are at a singular moment in world history where solidarity and ecological values must overcome those of individualism and consumerism only defended by the insane capitalists and their governments. Against the project of death and destruction implemented by neoliberal capital by the big corporations, we must commit ourselves to life. This is a path we will continue to follow building a fair, ecological and internationalist world with solidarity. That is all we have time for today and keep watching People's Dispatch.