Өсімдік сорттарын қорғау жөніндегі халықаралық ұйым және шарттар

Intergovernmental organization
While the earlier versions of the convention have been replaced, UPOV 78 and UPOV 91 coexist. Existing members are free to decide whether they want to ratify UPOV 91 or stay with UPOV 78, whereas new members have to adhere to the more restrictive version from 1991.

As of December 3, 2021 two intergovernmental organisations and 76 countries and were members of UPOV: African Intellectual Property Organisation, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, European Union, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States of America (with a reservation), Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Viet Nam. For a country or intergovernmental organisation to become member, it needs to implement the requirements of the actual convention in national law. UPOV's secretariat analyises the regulation of plant variety protection in national law and writes a recommendation to the council whether or not the applicant shall be granted membership. In the past several countries have been refused memberships because their national plant variety protection laws granted exceptions for subsistence farmers to reuse and exchange seeds. In addition, a large number of countries (eg Pakistan), intergovernmental organisations (eg European Free Trade Association) and international non governmental organisations (eg International Community of Breeders of Asexually Reproduced Ornamental and Fruit Varieties) have observer status.

Several international standards enacted by the United Nations oblige their member states to protect the rights of farmers to seeds: Article 19 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) grants peasants "The right to save, use, exchange and sell their farm saved seed or propagating material." The same right is also codified in Article 9 of the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Agriculture (ITPGRFA). Furthermore, peasants rights to seeds are also mentioned in the Convention for Biological Diversity and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. UPOV standards violate this rights in the case of protected varieties, as farmers only are allowed to save seeds within very narrow limits and are not allowed to exchange or sell any seeds at all, according to UPOV 91. Furthermore, as implementation of UPOV is based on predefined standards, there is little room for member states to fulfill their obligation to take into account possible effects on the human right situation in their countries and to allow for participation of farmers. In many developing countries, small scale farmers have not been informed prior to adopting and implementation of new plant variety protection laws and had no possibility participate in these decisions. As UNDROP and UNDRIP are part of Human Rights standards, they are higher order norms and therefore they prevail over property rights on seeds, according to human rights experts. As a consequence, states are obliged to revise regulations in national law that violate peasant's rights and adapt trade agreement or other intergovernmental obligations such as UPOV. In a report on seeds and farmers' rights to the Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur for the right to food Michael Fakhri states that UPOV 91 violates farmers' rights. The report denounces pressures applied by industrialised countries on countries of the global South to join UPOV. It calls on UN member states to design and interpret seed policies and plant variety protection laws in a way that protects farmers rights and promotes farmers' seed systems rather than restricting them. Ethiopia, India, Malaysia and Thailand (all non UPOV members) are mentioned as positive examples. In 2021 the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras deemed unconstitutional the Legislative Decree No. 21 2012 containing the Law for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. The supreme court sacked the UPOV 91 based law because it judged it to be in contradiction with a range of human rights as well as with the obligation of the State of Honduras to protect the envrionment.

A study published by UPOV in 2005 evaluated the impact of UPOV compliant regulations in Argentina, China, Kenya, Poland and South Korea. The study found that in these countries the number of protected varieties of some crops has increased after these countries have joined UPOV. The report takes this as an indicator that farmers and the agricultural sector as whole has profited. However, the by far does not live up to the scientific standards for impact assessments and has been criticized being heavily biased. A report from 2005 commissioned by the World Bank looked at the impact of intellectual property rights regimes on the plant breeding industry in 5 developing countries. It concludes that intellectual property regimes have relatively little effect on the emergence of the private seed sector. India, the country with the most dynamic seed sector analysed in the report, is not a member of UPOV and has no strict plant variety protection regime. Contrarily, the report states that farmer's seed systems are the main source of seeds and new varieties in the countries studied and that strict intellectual property rights on seeds may reduce the effectiveness of these systems. An analysis of the data from the Access to Seed Index from 2019, came to a similar finding: Many of the developing having the most vibrant private seed sector are not member of UPOV but have their own system of plant variety protection or no plant variety protection at all. A study published by NGOs looked at the effects of the implementation of UPOV 1991 in francophone Africa in the 11 years after the accession of OAPI to UPOV. It found that in the 17 member countries only 117 plant varieties have been newly protected during this period, half of them had already lapsed because of nonpayment of fees. At least half of them were varieties that had been available before. The study finds no increase in plant breeding activities in the region; while breeding by the public sector continued independent of plant variety protection, breeding by private companies remained largely non existent. In the case of Iceland, no new variety has been protected since its accession to UPOV 91 in 2006, while 49 varieties had been newly protected in the 10 years before. An increased number of protected varieties does not automatically increase the accessibility of seeds to farmers. In many developing countries the majority of seeds used by small scale farmers come from the farmers’ managed seed sector. Frequently, also seeds of protected varieties are saved, exchanged and sold. As these practices are prohibited in UPOV 91, farmers lose access to an inexpensive source of seeds while commercial seeds remain unaffordable for many. The study found that the productivity of 3 major staple crops increased during this period: Yield gains were 18% for rice, 30% for corn and 43% for sweet potato. The study argues that improved varieties which had been introduced due to stricter plant variety protection contributed to this development, and that 74 million people could be fed with the additional sweet potatoes. However, in the case of sweet potato that had the highest gain, no new variety had been protected and also for the other crops, productivity gains can be explained with other factors. A Study published by an Asian NGO finds that implementation of UPOV 91 in Vietnam did not lead to an increase of investment in breeding or in gains of productivity. Instead, it strengthened international commercial breeders at the cost of weakening the public breeders and threatening the farmers' seed sector.

Smallholder farmers in the global South are amongst the groups most prone to poverty and hunger. They predominantly rely on seeds that are produced by farmers themselves, often also including varieties originally bred by public and private breeders. These farmers’ seed systems are often highly resilient and more accessible to famers than seeds offered by breeding companies. Through the implementation of strict plant variety protection in line with UPOV 91, and the restrictions on the use, exchange and sale of farm saved seeds, farmers become more dependent on the seeds offered directely by breeding companies which often are unaffordable for the most vulnerable groups. and food security