The Facilitation Council of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) met on 9 December 2021. The meeting included a discussion on two key questions:

• What are the most urgent political actions which need to be taken to meet
the global targets?
• What role can Council members play to encourage the financing of the ACTAccelerator’s Strategic Plan, including in the run up to a possible pledging
event in early 2022?

Peter Owiti (Community Representative) and Dr Fifa Rahman (NGO Representative) made interventions during this discussion.

Dr Fifa Rahman highlighted the urgent political message of intellectual property, calling on the United States and the EU to invest urgent political capital in advancing work on textual negotiations on the TRIPS waiver. Dr Rahman also echoed the words of President Masisi of Botswana – travel bans arising from the identification of the Omicron variant are demeaning, degrading, and espouse neo-imperialist thinking, highlighting that these travel bans defeat the paeans of solidarity.

Peter Owiti highlighted support for a pledging event in 2022 with meaningful engagement of Communities, and called for a topline number of funding required given that it appears ACT-A will only account for half the total budgeted need. Peter Owiti also emphasised the need for collaborative and multi-sectoral interventions such as rigorous testing campaigns, COVID-19 literacy as well as market shaping, to ensure that all populations will be reached, tested & treated (and/ or vaccinated) in an equitable manner.

Dr Fifa Rahman’s full remarks on behalf of NGOs can be found here

Peter Owiti’s full remarks on behalf of Communities can be found here

The livestream of the Facilitation Council meeting can be found here. Dr Fifa Rahman’s remarks start at 1:34. Peter Owiti’s remarks start at 2:05.