Pence on Procedure of Development Agenda

Eliot Pence has just put out a paper on process and procedure at the WIPO Committee on Development and IP. He has some suggestions for re-structuring the discussions away from the cluster approach currently in use. More interesting, in my view, are his observations about the importance of procedure in the CDIP debates and the role of the WIPO secretariat. He argues that what is sometimes referred to as 'procedural wrangling' is actually highly important and political; that under current procedures the committee chair may be placing too much emphasis on speed over a thorough process; that the involvement of the secretariat can have a moderating effect on debate because of its natural middle-of -the-road approach, and that the standard procedures used at WIPO committees are important to the way WIPO does its business and to how it implements the development agenda in the long term.