A/HRC/33/40 dissemination of technology, and that this should work for the mutual advantage of producers and users of technological knowledge as well as promoting social and economic welfare and a balance of rights and obligations. • The practical experience of WTO Members implementing the Agreement has since borne out the breadth of the scope for public health policies that the TRIPS Agreement supports, both for diverse forms of innovation and for measures to leverage access to the fruits of innovation such as new medicines, as well as safeguards against abuse of IP rights. • A major step towards policy coherence for public health for the WTO was the subsequent adoption of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health of December 2001 (‘the Doha Declaration’). The Doha Declaration situated a multilateral trade agreement squarely within a public health context, stating that the TRIPS Agreement had to be part of wider national and international action to address public health problems. The Declaration has helped catalyse cooperation across the multilateral system to promote a more coherent and inclusive approach to innovation and access to medicines, as reflected most recently in the Sustainable Development Goals (target 3.b). • The Doha Declaration led, on the initiative of the African Group, to a consensus among WTO Members in 2005 to establish a formal amendment the TRIPS Agreement that would remove a potential legal obstacle for countries most dependent on imports to meet their needs for affordable medicines. This was the first agreement to amend the entire package of WTO multilateral trade agreements, and it was entirely geared to ensure access to medicines for the most vulnerable. • The Doha Declaration is also at the origin of an extended transition period for least developed country WTO Members that exempts them from the obligation to protect and enforce patents for pharmaceutical products, as well as undisclosed test data that are submitted for the purpose of obtaining marketing approval. In 2015, the LDC Group took the leadership in negotiations with all other WTO Members that ultimately led to a consensus decision to further extend the transition period until January 2033. This second extension of the transition period is an example of the allinclusiveness of the negotiating process at the WTO. It aims at facilitating access to affordable medicines and represents a significant contribution to an early implementation of the SDG goals. • The effect of the Doha Declaration as a catalyst for coherence at the international level was seen in its role of making public health issues a central focus of work carried out by the WTO on IP and international trade, in its inclusion in a series of World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions on ensuring accessibility to essential medicines and public health, innovation and IP, in its use as a point of reference in the negotiations on the WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GSPA-PHI), and in identifying health-related flexibilities that have been dealt with under the WIPO Development Agenda, as well as in a number of important declarations and resolutions adopted by other UN bodies (e.g. UN ECOSOC High-Level Segment Ministerial Declaration, Implementing the internationally agreed goals and commitments in regard to global public health, 2009; UN Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Intensifying our efforts to eliminate HIV and AIDS, 2011). • Exemplifying this coherent and inclusive approach, an active program of coordinated technical assistance and policy dialogue, led at Director General level and centred on public health imperatives, has unfolded in the form of a trilateral initiative undertaken by the WHO, WIPO and WTO. Reaching well beyond the GE.16-11938 31