In Mozambique, the following steps have been taken:
•
accession to the World Trade Organization and, consequently, the incorporation into
domestic legislation of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS);
•
the ratification, through Resolution 2/94 of 24 August 1994, of the United Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity;
•
the approval of the Policy on Traditional Medicine through Council of Ministers
Resolution No. 11/2004 of 14 April 2004;
•
the current debate on the draft “Law on Traditional Medicine”;
•
the current debate on the draft “Regulation on access to and the sharing of the benefits
deriving from genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge ”.
In terms of institutional framework, the question of traditional knowledge remains a crosscutting issue and a range of sectors have introduced mechanisms to deal with it, such as:
•
The Department of Traditional Medicine in the National Health Institute, under the
Ministry of Health;
•
The National Commission on Sustainable Development, under the Ministry of the
Environment;
•
ARPAC, the Cultural Heritage Archive, under the Ministry of Education and Culture;
•
The associations of practitioners of traditional medicine such as Anmetramo, Prometra,
Avemetramo, etc.
The intellectual property system could represent the best means of incentivizing the
identification of traditional knowledge and the granting of rights in it and, consequently, the
introduction of mechanisms for sharing benefits and recompensing the holders of this kind of
knowledge. These measures could stimulate collaboration between the holders of traditional
knowledge and researchers, thereby leading to a more extensive analysis of the existing potential
of traditional knowledge about resources and contributing to knowledge of them, their
industrialization and their use for the benefit of humanity.