The availability of essential medication in SA, tackling the WTO on Trips waiver and fighting fake news

On Monday 22 November at 3pm Maverick Citizen editor, Mark Heywood will be participating in a discussion hosted by the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation titled The Power of Law: How can NGOs Promote Access to (Covid-19 or other essential) medicines through Legal Procedures? Lessons Learned from Past Cases. 

You can register to join the event here.



On Tuesday 23 November at 9am the People’s Vaccine Alliance is hosting a global rally against the World Trade Organization (WTO) titled Don’t Trade with our lives, the aim of which is to demand that the WTO pass the critical Trips waiver on life-saving vaccines and medicines. The organisation seeks to amplify the voices of communities in Colombia, Palestine, South Africa, India, Thailand, Honduras, Kenya, Pakistan, Uganda, Mexico, and elsewhere who have been most affected by the inequalities that have allegedly been exacerbated by the WTO. Legal experts, human rights activists, and public health advocates also will lay out various advocacy actions undertaken by several international coalitions.

You can join the event here.

At 10am, Health activists from Cancer Alliance, the Treatment Action Campaign and SECTION27 will march to Premier David Makhura’s offices in Johannesburg on 23 November 2021 to demand that he urgently establish a task team to address the cancer crisis in Gauteng, where waiting lists for time-sensitive and potentially life-saving cancer treatment extend for years. 



On Wednesday 24 November at 1pm, Civic and Open data organisation Code for Africa, will be hosting a discussion titled Fighting Fake news: Combating mis / disinformation in Africa. You can register to attend the event here.



At 1.30pm the World Health Organization is launching a report titled The politics of a WHO pandemic treaty in a disenchanted world. The report addresses the need for new approaches to the challenge of a pandemic future, in the wake of the harsh but real lessons that Covid-19 continues to administer. You can register to attend the report launch here.



At 2pm the The Applied Constitutional Study Laboratory (ACSL) at the  Dullah Omar Institute will be hosting a discussion on Next Generation Constitutionalism titled Climate Change Litigation — global trends. The discussant will be Joana Setzer from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, who is one of the authors of the Climate Change Litigation report, about the “strategic” nature of this litigation, current trends in litigation and future developments to watch, the types of legal challenges that are being brought and where they are being fought. You can register to attend the discussion here.



Lastly on Wednesday at 5.30pm, the Soul City Institute for Social Justice will be holding a 16 Days of Activism event titled Kgalemelang From Awareness to Accountability. The event is to move people from just being aware of gender-based violence towards personal accountability and the justice system, civil society and general society. For more information on how to participate contact [email protected]. DM/MC