Just a few years ago, in a promisingly changing political environment, high hopes were placed in the United Nations.

But, promisingly and surprisingly, given the somewhat toxic state of US politics it attracted broad support and intelligent commentary from many mainstream pundits.

The good news is that there are now opportunities for change, most promisingly through an international effort headed by the World Health Organization that would begin to fix the broken intellectual property regime that is holding back the development and availability of cheap drugs.

Following the Budapest Summit, when Hungary is to take over for a year the duties of the chairmanship in office of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), I personally intend to pay particular attention to the consolidation of mutually advantageous cooperation between the CSCE and the United Nations which is so promisingly unfolding.

This state of affairs represents a failure of economics and law that urgently needs to be corrected. The good news is that there are now opportunities for change, most promisingly through an international effort headed by the World Health Organization that would begin to fix the broken intellectual property regime that is holding back the development and availability of cheap drugs.