On the last day of the SCCR 32, the group statements on the topic of education, teaching, research and people with other disabilities are not surprising. Group B and CEBS do not want to engage in normative work. Grulac and the Africa Group are eloquent and remind all of us that development depends on education and knowledge. The Africa Group is also requesting the Chair provide a chart of the issues to be duscussed as well as regional meetings on the topic.
>> NIGERIA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Nigeria has the honour to deliver this statement on behalf of the African Group. The group believes that participants in this committee do not question the manifest and fundamental role of education and knowledge for mankind’s ability to exist and add value to its immediate environment and the global system.We also welcome the acknowledgment of Intellectual Property as relevant to sustainable development and note that the exception principle is in the international IP system. This by itself was founded on the need to balance the interest of right holders on the public interest, thus underscoring the role of practicable IP frameworks for achieving agreed international development goals. The vital role of education to progressive peoples and societies is encapsulated in the post 2015 sustainable development goals, as specifically SDG 4 which calls for collective efforts to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote life long learning opportunities for all.
The digital environment has evolved the way education and knowledge can be assessed beyond the walls of a classroom or a specific space. In so dogging, it has also brought more challenges for assessing learning opportunities for the public interest in a remarkable number of developing and Least Developed Countries including the Africa region. Mr. Chairman, we inconsider that inclusiveness and partnerships will be needed for exceptional teaching and research institutions being discuss the in the SCCR. To our mind this would imply facilitating the intellectual resource in all who can acquire and use such knowledge for development and for society. To this end, the Africa group would like to renew the call for focused textual work toward an international legal instrument on educational exceptions that would fulfill the objectives of the 2012 General Assembly mandate on this topic. It is important to underscore that the Africa Group again, as we stated before, does not view that the intellectual, legal and resources of rightsholders should be indiscriminately breached in the quest to make knowledge and information accessible to demanders. Rather, the call is to
make necessary steps to promote access to information through a fair and just modification of the international, the existing international Copyright frameworks with the objective of promoting intellectual freedom, human and so sigh at that time development and these are busy tenets of the IP system.The Africa group group will continue to engage constructively in this discussion and looks forward to discussing the provisional working document in SCCR26/4. We also reiterate our request for the preparation of a chart by the chair similar to the same you have prepared for discussion on exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives to serve as a useful tool to provide structure and better understanding of the topics and their utility in this discussion. We would equally welcome the sharing of national experiences of Member States as useful information resource for the committee’s work. Finally we would like to show our support for the chair’s proposal to hold meet regional meetings for the exceptions and limitationts and education research in that matrix. It would also appreciate more information from the Secretariat on the progress of the scoping study on exceptions and limitations for persons with disabilities other than print. We also take the opportunity to reiterate the study that was prepared, the on going study by Professor Daniel Sang and how it highlighted the gaps in the international system to be filled. And we hope the committee will demonstrate the willingness to advance significantly on this subject. Thank you, Mr. Chair.