The rapid development of effective Covid-19 vaccines in 2020 gave hope to the world in the darkest days of the deadly pandemic. Ensuring vaccine access for as many people as quickly as possible is the most effective route out of this unprecedented health and human rights crisis. The handful of companies that developed these vaccines at record speeds could, and should, have been heroes, supplying doses fairly around the world and taking all necessary measures to ramp up production. This report assesses what major western vaccine makers did instead, tracing their business decisions which favoured a small number of wealthier countries, while blocking other manufacturers from producing their own vaccines. This resulted in predictable – and artificial – vaccine scarcity for the rest of the world...

...All businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights wherever they operate in the world. Above all, this responsibility means that companies should “do no harm”. If they discover that they are the cause of human rights abuses, then they must immediately stop their harmful actions and provide remedy. This is a widely recognized standard of expected conduct as set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights is independent of a state’s own human rights obligations and exists over and above compliance with national laws and regulations protecting human rights...

...For the vaccine developers, the responsibility to respect human rights means that they should develop and implement policies that aim to make quality Covid-19 vaccines available, accessible and affordable. They should ensure that they are not creating obstacles and refrain from any action that unduly impacts on states’ abilities to make Covid-19 vaccines available to all. Amnesty International has assessed six of the companies that now largely hold the fate of billions of people around the world in their hands. They are: AstraZeneca plc, BioNTech SE, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Inc., Novavax, Inc. and Pfizer, Inc..

...Drawing on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and other standards, Amnesty International assessed each company’s published human rights policy, pricing structure, their records on intellectual property, knowledge and technology-sharing, the global allocation of available vaccine doses and transparency. Amnesty International wrote to each company before publication. Five companies – AstraZeneca, BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer – responded, along with institutional investors Baillie Gifford, BlackRock and UBS. Amnesty International reviewed the responses, which can be found in annex, and took appropriate account of information provided in updating its findings...