Description:
The curriculum is aimed at providing support for both students and teachers of human rights and intellectual property for the exploration of the intersecting issues of these two fields of practice and law in African universities.
The model curriculum will be used with the correlated primers which have been developed; one to assist intellectual property practitioners and teachers to familiarise themselves with human rights and the other to enable human rights practitioners and teachers to familiarise themselves with intellectual property concepts.
This course has been designed to provide learners with knowledge and skills to explore the issues at the intersection of human rights and intellectual property in Africa. In Africa, there is a growing need for informed advocacy on intellectual property and trade issues but through the lens of human rights. A balanced discourse is needed where IP practitioners and scholars are able to view intellectual property rights through the lens of human rights and human rights practitioners and scholars can see human rights through the lens of intellectual property rights.
It is important to include these intersecting issues within university curricula to enable students to be aware of the reality of these issues and to train them to be able to influence both policy and law-making processes.
The curriculum is divided into seven modules which are sequenced to guide both learners and instructors on the various issues at the intersection of human rights and intellectual property. The reading materials for the course are all OpenAccess.
The delivery of the course will depend on the unique circumstances of each institution or individual that seeks to utilise it. The depth of the content will be determined by the level of learners that the course is intended to be delivered to. For instance, the level of instruction between an LLB programme and an LLM programme would be different.
A variety of instructional methods can be employed such as lectures, seminar style workshops, tutorials and online lectures.
Module outlines:
Section I: Concept and regulatory frameworks
Module 1: Introduction to intellectual property and human rights concepts
Module 2: International, regional and national regimes governing intellectual property rights and human rights
Section II: Intersections of human rights and intellectual property rights
Module 3: Intellectual property rights and human rights in the developing world context
Module 4: Access to medicines
Module 5: Access to knowledge
Section III: Enforcement reform and advocacy
Module 6: The role of human rights in intellectual property reforms
Module 7: The role of public voice in integrating human rights and intellectual property rights
This report was published by ASK Justice 2018. Unless otherwise indicated, the content of this report is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence. To view a copy of the licence, visit: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0