The relationship between intellectual property (IP) and small-scale farmer innovation is far from straightforward. The majority of innovation in agriculture is not driven by the promise of exclusionary rights that some IP tools afford — it takes place on the farm and is a collaborative and incremental process, the outcomes of which cannot be attributed to individual rights holders.

This policy brief consolidates lessons learned from an in-depth literature review on small-scale farmer (SSF) innovation systems and a two-day expert consultation on the same topic that QUNO hosted in May 2015. 

The key message here is that small-scale farmer innovation systems are unique relative to more ‘formal’ agricultural innovation systems. For this reason, the types of policies that are put in place to encourage innovation in agriculture require a fundamental reconsideration.

The paper is released as part of our project working towards a New Framework for Trade & Investment in Agriculture, in which we are exploring some of the questions at the heart of defining the purpose, structure and direction of governance of trade and investment in agriculture, in order to place livelihoods, dignity, sustainability, resilience and food security at the heart of the rules governing these areas.

The analysis presented in the paper highlights three points:

This is a very detailed study exploring the situations of children whose parents have been sentenced with capital punishment. It looks first at the commonalities between their experiences and those of children whose parents have been incarcerated, and then at the differences between these groups of children. It also sets out recommendations.

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Food security is  as a pressing global challenge. Agricultural innovation is critical to addressing it. Equally important is ensuring that the benefits of such innovation are widely diffused, especially in developing countries.

How should countries design their intellectual property (IP) system to encourage and support agricultural innovation?  

The TRIPS Agreement provides WTO Members with flexibility to implement IP provisions in a way consistent with their agriculture and food security objectives. Yet these flexibilities have received little attention so far.

One of the first QUNO publications to deal exclusively with the question of children whose parents are sentenced to death, paving the way for other documents in the same series. This paper raises awareness of some of the issues facing such children. It considers and elaborates on these issues in as much detail as the literature available at the time permitted, and highlights directions for future study.

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This document lays out the ways in which conscientious objection has been recognized and is protected under human rights treaties and mechanisms. In this way, it responds to those who claim that, as conscientious objection to military service is not explicitly recognized by international human rights treaties, it is not protected by them.

The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) influences global policy relating to agricultural research, as it is the only international organisation with responsibility for plant variety protection.

This report seeks to raise awareness about UPOV’s role and way of working. It aims to provide a point of reference around which key actors – both supportive and critical of current approaches to intellectual property (IP) protection of plants – can engage in discussions and exchange of ideas.

This paper is part of a series of publications looking at the different aspects of the impact of parental imprisonment on children. Jean Tomkin, an Irish trainee solicitor had written her Masters’ dissertation on the issue of children of imprisoned parents, and re-worked and updated it for publication under QUNO’s series. The publication explores the legal issues concerning the rights of the child in these circumstances, and studies case law from several contexts.

Since 2003, QUNO has worked on the issue of women in prison and children of imprisoned mothers, raising awareness about various issues arising from maternal incarceration. This study, by contrast, looks at the impact of paternal incarceration on children, exploring the similarities and differences between these situations and those where it is a child’s mother that is imprisoned.