STATEMENT
The Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week (HNPW)
Intellectual property rights (IPR) in humanitarian innovation partnerships.
Organised by: Innovation Norway: Humanitarian Innovation Programme, The Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN, Response Innovation Lab, Norwegian Peoples Aid and Norwegian Church Aid
Statement delivered by
Mr Tormod C. Endresen, Ambassador - Permanent Representative to the UN and other International Organizations
Check against delivery
8 May 2022
Good morning, colleagues and friends.
Welcome to this session on intellectual property rights in humanitarian innovation partnerships.
It is great to see interest in this topic and a pleasure to see you all in person here in Geneva. I believe we have humanitarian organisations, private sector actors, and governments with us this morning.
Some of you may already know a lot about this topic. Others may be thinking, what is the relevance of intellectual property rights to humanitarian action?
There is wide agreement that innovation and cross-sectoral partnerships are essential to address current and future humanitarian needs. With the widening gap between needs and available resources, our future humanitarian efforts depend on new solutions and new, systemic ways of working.
We heard Martin Griffiths emphasize during the HNPW opening ceremony that now is the time for step change for how we deliver humanitarian assistance and that we need to widen our partnerships even further to make sure our response is coordinated and effective.
Humanitarian innovation is a priority for the Norwegian Government, and for the Norwegian Mission in Geneva. It is a priority in our Humanitarian Strategy as well as our strategy for development cooperation.
In order to support innovation in the humanitarian sector, governments also have to be innovative, and willing to take on some risk in finding new ways of supporting the sector. That is why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with Innovation Norway, developed the Humanitarian Innovation Programme, to support and de-risk these partnerships. This cannot be done merely through providing funding, but also through support like knowledge development and capacity enhancement, access to a community of practice of fellow humanitarian innovators and the development of new tools and resources that can support these innovation processes.
[For the humanitarian organisations inviting the private sector in to innovate new solutions for people affected by crisis requires changing ways of working. It requires a curiosity and openness, challenging the established ways of working, to find how we can extract the best skills and strengths, from each partner and each sector.]
Intellectual property rights are one key aspect, where Innovation Norway has done a lot of work to look at key issues that can enable innovation and more sustainable partnerships.
We have seen that a one size fits all approach to intellectual property rights – either with standard clauses that the humanitarian organisation takes all rights, or a principled approach that open source is the only right way – might not always be the right way to support innovation, facilitate the best partnerships, and ensuring that people affected by crises have access to the best solutions.
We also know that building trust in partnerships across sectors are key for a successful impact. Negotiating contracts, including IP rights, are important tools to build this trust.
In our session today you will hear from companies and humanitarian actors about how they have navigated intellectual property rights in their innovation collaborations. How careful Ip-negotiations have contributed to strong innovation partnerships, keeping costs low, strengthening localisation, setting a solution up for scale from the start and safeguarding the protection of people affected by crises. We will also be presented with Innovation Norway’s recently developed handbook on intellectual property rights.
I wish to thank Innovation Norway and the partner organisations who have put together today’s programme. I am excited to hear about the new handbook and the presenters’ experiences and recommendations for the sector.
We hope you leave here today with a more informed understanding of what intellectual property rights are, the role that IP decisions can have on the scalability and impact of your innovation and a wider menu of options for you next IP negotiations.
Innovation partnerships are essential as we go forward and I look forward to hearing how we all can contribute to making them even more effective.
Thank you.