Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

265 the United Nations to create a new international organization with bodies and institutions such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO ) 26 and the World Health Organization (UN, n. d.). In that same decade, besides rebuilding international institutions, some countries considered it necessary to organize a system for trading goods, services and products, so they gathered around an agreement known by its English acronym GATT (1948-1994), i.e., the General Agreement on Tariffs Trade one 27 . Its goal was to create an international trade organization which materialized in 1994 during the last round, the GATT Uruguay Round, which gave rise to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to liberalize international trade. WTO agreements bind governments through legal norms governing international trade favoring importers, exporters and producers of goods and services from developed countries (WTO, 2017) by establishing common standards for all members, regardless of their level of development or progress. At most it differentiates the implementation period of the subscribed obligations. During the Uruguay Round, besides the creation of the WTO and the regulation of goods and services, also trade knowledge and ideas were regulated through the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights 28 (TRIPS), which incorporated intellectual property as another activity within the commercial flow between countries. According to Joseph Stiglitz 29 , signing TRIPs meant signing a death sentence for the poorest countries, abruptly ending the gradual health development process of each country and forcing standardization on intellectual property legislation in all member states, including pharmaceutical product protection (Rengifo 2021). According to Marco Arellano, TRIPS is perhaps the most powerful expression of political and commercial pressure causing almost a global obligation to protect pharmaceutical products, while overlooking ethical reproach that could mean linking human health with the establishment of a system of dispute settlement, subject purely to commercial issues (Arellano & Tobar 2012). TRIPS requires patenting pharmaceutical molecules or active 26 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Organization’s website: http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.es. 27 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. 28 The TRIPS Agreement was signed in Marrakech, Morocco, on April 15 th , 1994. Available at: https://www.wto.org/spanish/tratop_s/trips_s/trips_s.htm. 29 Joseph Stiglitz, economist, public policy analyst and American professor. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001.