Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights - WIPO

SCCR/SS/GE/13/3 Prov.page 18work undertaken during the week. The SCCR had seen some dark hours at the beginning, butone and a half days later delegations had been able to find consensus on a very complexclause regarding how the Treaty would become part of the copyright system. That was aninteresting achievement and the emergence of a kind of Marrakesh spirit. It endorsed thestatement of the Delegation of Nigeria about the key Delegates that had contributed to makeprogress during the week. That was clearly a non-exhaustive list of Delegates, but specialmention had to be made to Professor Ruth Okediji who had made a big difference in the qualityof the debates since July 2012.94. The representative of the World Blind Union thanked everyone in the SCCR for the hardwork and sincere efforts on behalf of the blind and visually impaired people throughout theworld. The issues confronted by the SCCR during the week were very complicated and, attimes, very technical. Yet WBU saw a spirit of goodwill, a spirit of belief in the right of blindpeople to have the greatest possible access to the information they needed. WBU had greathope for the discussions to be held in April and in June during the Diplomatic Conference, andits message would continue to be one of supporting language that encouraged the greatestpossible access to information in specialized formats for blind and visually impaired people witha minimum of bureaucracy and other complications that might impede facilitating that access.Finally, WBU thanked the Kingdom of Morocco for providing a venue for the DiplomaticConference and for stepping forward and demonstrating a belief in the ability and right of blindpeople to benefit from these materials, to become educated, to become employed and to livenormal productive lives.95. The representative of the International Publishers Association thanked the delegations forthe great spirit to achieve effective access to copyrighted works.96. The representative of Knowledge Ecology International hoped that WIPO could continuethe measures it had taken to be inclusive and open and to deal with issues in a transparentway, allowing people who were not in the room, who could not afford to travel to the SCCRnegotiations, to listen remotely and have access to the documents.ITEM 6: CLOSING OF THE SESSION97. The Chair thanked all delegations for their statements. When at home, he was trying toget well to come to Geneva and chair the meeting. He was receiving updates, but some ofthose made the pain even worse because of the little progress made. It was a pleasant surprisewhen a different scenario of much success was presented on Friday morning. That wasbecause delegations had spared no effort in trying to resolve their genuine problems and tomove forward. Another reflection of the dedication was the fact that there was a commitment topreserving the text and keeping it stabilized. The Chair reiterated his thanks to the interpretersand translators who had worked every day on the documents. He also expressed his gratitudeto the Chair ad-hoc, his good friend Ambassador Zvekic, who had chaired the meeting in hisabsence; as well as the Chair of the drafting group, Mr. Martin Moscoso Villacorta, who haddone an excellent job in that small group. He thanked Mrs. Graciela Peiretti and Mrs. AlexandraGrazioli, the Vice-Chairs for the continued advice and support. Finally, he thanked the WIPOSecretariat who was always on time with every aspect of support to the SCCR. The efficiencyof the WIPO Secretariat was evidence of the good leadership of the Director General. He notedthat the <strong>Standing</strong> <strong>Committee</strong> unanimously had adopted the revised version of documentSCCR/25/2 (to be identified as document SCCR/25/2 REV.) and closed the session.[Annex follows]