Investors in companies that make COVID-19 vaccines must use their influence to ensure that supplies of these vital and urgently needed vaccines reach low- and lower-middle-income countries.; This is what Amnesty International has affirmed today, with a view to the annual general meetings of Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer (April 28) and AstraZeneca (April 29).
When the global goal of the World Health Organization (WHO) of achieving a 70% vaccination rate in all countries of the world before July 2022, Pharmaceutical companies continue to hinder fair access to COVID-19 vaccines with their monopoly on technology, their blockades and pressures to prevent the sharing of intellectual property, charging high prices for vaccines and their priority distribution to rich countries.
Amnesty International calls on all institutional investors – including Baillie Gifford, Bank of America, Bank of NY Mellon, BlackRock, Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, State Street, UBS, Vanguard Group y Wellington Management— use their annual general meetings to hold AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer accountable for their human rights responsibilities. They should also vote in favor of shareholder resolutions aimed at facilitating the universal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and ask the board of directors of each company what measures they are taking to reach the WHO vaccination target.
“Pharmaceutical companies have human rights responsibilities, yet they continue to play a critical role in the shockingly unequal distribution of vaccines around the world. While they and their investors have made handsome profits from COVID-19 vaccines, low-income countries have received a negligible share of the global supply and have suffered a disproportionate number of deaths from the disease,” said Mark Dummett, Head of of Business and Human Rights of Amnesty International.
“Institutional investors have benefited greatly from this short-sighted and speculative policy, but they have a duty to ensure that their money does not contribute to human rights abuses. These annual general meetings represent a golden opportunity for them to change course and assert their considerable influence over these companies. They should raise their concerns with the board of directors of each company and support those shareholder resolutions that can drive a long-awaited policy change that puts people before profit.”
Amnesty International calls on all institutional investors in Johnson and Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer to vote in favor of the resolution introduced by Oxfam America, calling for commissioning shareholder reports on the transfer of technology to make COVID-19 vaccines. 19 so that manufacturers in low- and lower-middle-income countries can produce them. It would be an important step in convincing the boards of each of these companies that they need to change course and do more to ensure delivery of vaccines to low- and lower-middle-income countries, where vaccination rates remain very low. .
According to Our World in Data, as of April 25, 2022, 65.1% of the world population had received at least one vaccine dose against COVID-19while only 15.2% of the population in low-income countries had received at least one dose.
Amnesty International also calls on institutional investors to exercise human rights due diligence on their investments, including continuously monitoring the effects of companies’ COVID-19 vaccine distribution policies. They must also adopt immediate measures to prevent adverse effects, mitigate risks, repair all identified damage and make the results publicly known.
In Spain, CaixaBank
Amnesty International has asked Caixabank, with participation in Pfizerthat at the shareholders’ meeting to be held this Thursday, April 28, use your considerable influence to pressure the company to remove barriers to equitable access to the vaccine and promote accountability and transparency, in order to help achieve the World Health Organization (WHO) goal of a vaccination rate of 70% of the population of each country by July 2022.
Additional information
In February 2022, Amnesty International published the report Money Rules: The Pharmaceutical Response to the COVID-19 Vaccine Crisiswhere the main vaccine manufacturing companies were evaluated by means of a scoring system: AstraZeneca plc, BioNTech SE, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. Pfizer and Moderna were the ones with the worst scores.
In 2021, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna forecast revenue of up to $54 billion, yet supplied less than 2% of their vaccines to low-income countries. Johnson & Johnson’s distribution records were better: 50% of its stock went to low- and lower-middle-income countries, although many of these doses were supplied as “donations” from high-income countries rather than as part of supply contracts. sale. The company continues to refuse to share its technology and intellectual property through initiatives coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is abandoning its non-profit pricing system.
Ahead of the annual general meetings in April 2022, Amnesty International has written to more than 30 institutional investors of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, asking them to use their great influence to pressure pharmaceutical companies to that they remove obstacles to achieving the WHO target of a 70% vaccination rate. The total investment in vaccine providers owned or managed by these 10 financial institutions amounts to more than US$250 billion.
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