Since Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996, the question of whether human reproductive cloning should be banned or pursued has been the subject of international debate. Feelings run strong on both sides. In 2005, the United Nations adopted its Declaration on Human Cloning to try to deal with the issue. The declaration is ambiguously worded, prohibiting “all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life”. It received only ambivalent support from UN member states. Given this unsatisfactory outcome, in 2008 UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) set up a Working Group to investigate the possibility of a legally binding convention to ban human reproductive cloning. The Working Group was made up of members of the International Bioethics Committee, established in 1993 as part of UNESCO’s Bioethics Programme. It found that the lack of clarity in international law is unhelpful for those states yet to formulate national regulations or policies on human cloning. Despite this, member states of UNESCO resisted the idea of a convention for several years. This changed in 2015, but there has been no practical progress on the issue. Drawing on official records and first-hand observations at bioethics meetings, this article examines the human cloning debate at UNESCO from 2008 onwards, thus building on and advancing current scholarship by applying recent ideas on global governance to an empirical case. It concludes that, although human reproductive cloning is a challenging subject, establishing a robust global governance framework in this area may be possible via an alternative deliberative format, based on knowledge sharing and feasibility testing rather than the interest-based bargaining that is common to intergovernmental organizations and involving a wide range of stakeholders. This article is published as part of a collection on global governance.
Introduction
UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) was founded in 1945, aiming to “build peace in the minds of men” through education, science, culture and communication (UNESCO, 2007). Its Bioethics Programme began in 1993. The organization deems itself uniquely placed to lead the way in setting bioethical standards, as the only UN agency with a mandate for both the human and social sciences (UNESCO, 2016e). To this end, it has adopted three declarations on bioethics: the 1997 Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UNESCO, 1997), the 2003 International Declaration on Human Genetic Data (UNESCO, 2003) and the 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UNESCO, 2005b). After drafting three declarations in the space of a decade, UNESCO decided to take a “normative pause” and instead focus on fostering take-up of the existing declarations regionally and nationally (UNESCO, 2005a). Before long, however, it started to consider a fourth bioethics instrument, an international convention on human cloning. From 2008 to 2011 it investigated whether an international convention to ban human reproductive cloning is warranted. The Working Group assigned to this question “flip-flopped” back and forth: in 2008 it recommended a convention, in 2009 it decided continued international dialogue would be sufficient and in 2010 it went back to a convention. As member states could not agree on a way forward, the issue was dropped in 2011 without a firm decision being made on the need or otherwise for a convention. This can be seen as a global governance failure. In 2014, the Bioethics Programme began to revisit the issue. This time there was greater consensus on the need for a ban on human reproductive cloning, but no practical progress has been made.
This article takes a traditional global governance scenario—a debate within a UN agency about whether to draft an international convention—and asks why the outcome was unsatisfactory. The analysis draws on first-hand observations of UNESCO’s publicly held bioethics meetings in 2010 and 2011, official UNESCO records of these and other meetings and UNESCO reports on human cloning. After a brief introduction to (a) developments in global governance and (b) the science and ethics of human cloning, the article charts the progress and ultimate collapse of the UNESCO cloning debate from 2008 to 2011 and developments from 2014 onwards. It concludes that, although human reproductive cloning is a challenging subject, establishing a global governance framework in this area may be possible via an alternative deliberative format.
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Since Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996, the question of whether human reproductive cloning should be banned or pursued has been the subject of international debate. Feelings run strong on both sides. In 2005, the United Nations adopted its Declaration on Human Cloning to try to deal with the issue. The declaration is ambiguously worded, prohibiting “all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life”. It received only ambivalent support from UN member states. Given this unsatisfactory outcome, in 2008 UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) set up a Working Group to investigate the possibility of a legally binding convention to ban human reproductive cloning. The Working Group was made up of members of the International Bioethics Committee, established in 1993 as part of UNESCO’s Bioethics Programme. It found that the lack of clarity in international law is unhelpful for those states yet to formulate national regulations or policies on human cloning. Despite this, member states of UNESCO resisted the idea of a convention for several years. This changed in 2015, but there has been no practical progress on the issue. Drawing on official records and first-hand observations at bioethics meetings, this article examines the human cloning debate at UNESCO from 2008 onwards, thus building on and advancing current scholarship by applying recent ideas on global governance to an empirical case. It concludes that, although human reproductive cloning is a challenging subject, establishing a robust global governance framework in this area may be possible via an alternative deliberative format, based on knowledge sharing and feasibility testing rather than the interest-based bargaining that is common to intergovernmental organizations and involving a wide range of stakeholders. This article is published as part of a collection on global governance.
Introduction
UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) was founded in 1945, aiming to “build peace in the minds of men” through education, science, culture and communication (UNESCO, 2007). Its Bioethics Programme began in 1993. The organization deems itself uniquely placed to lead the way in setting bioethical standards, as the only UN agency with a mandate for both the human and social sciences (UNESCO, 2016e). To this end, it has adopted three declarations on bioethics: the 1997 Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UNESCO, 1997), the 2003 International Declaration on Human Genetic Data (UNESCO, 2003) and the 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UNESCO, 2005b). After drafting three declarations in the space of a decade, UNESCO decided to take a “normative pause” and instead focus on fostering take-up of the existing declarations regionally and nationally (UNESCO, 2005a). Before long, however, it started to consider a fourth bioethics instrument, an international convention on human cloning. From 2008 to 2011 it investigated whether an international convention to ban human reproductive cloning is warranted. The Working Group assigned to this question “flip-flopped” back and forth: in 2008 it recommended a convention, in 2009 it decided continued international dialogue would be sufficient and in 2010 it went back to a convention. As member states could not agree on a way forward, the issue was dropped in 2011 without a firm decision being made on the need or otherwise for a convention. This can be seen as a global governance failure. In 2014, the Bioethics Programme began to revisit the issue. This time there was greater consensus on the need for a ban on human reproductive cloning, but no practical progress has been made.
This article takes a traditional global governance scenario—a debate within a UN agency about whether to draft an international convention—and asks why the outcome was unsatisfactory. The analysis draws on first-hand observations of UNESCO’s publicly held bioethics meetings in 2010 and 2011, official UNESCO records of these and other meetings and UNESCO reports on human cloning. After a brief introduction to (a) developments in global governance and (b) the science and ethics of human cloning, the article charts the progress and ultimate collapse of the UNESCO cloning debate from 2008 to 2011 and developments from 2014 onwards. It concludes that, although human reproductive cloning is a challenging subject, establishing a global governance framework in this area may be possible via an alternative deliberative format.