Description
This paper will investigate regulatory bottlenecks in global health. International regulations typically evolve over four stages: (1) need identification and acceptance (2) drafting (3) adoption and (4) implementation. Effective regulation can be stymied at any of these stages. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for example, has been at the forefront of bioethics regulation in the last two decades. Yet recent attempts to establish international instruments have failed to get beyond the idea stage, even when the need for regulation has been clearly identified. In 2015 UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee recommended a ban on human reproductive cloning, but the organisation has not acted on this. In September 2017 the same committee, in its draft report on big data and health, recommended that UNESCO negotiate a convention on the protection of privacy, but this has also not been taken forward. Based on interviews with current and former members of UNESCO’s International and Intergovernmental Bioethics Committees, as well as observations at public IBC and IGBC meetings and analysis of official UNESCO documents, this paper will present possible reasons why these Stage 1 regulatory bottlenecks have occurred.
