2003 CGS Report on the UN Cloning Treaty Negotiations
By admin
| 11. 24. 2003
Human Cloning, the United Nations, and Beyond
On November 6, 2003, after two years of debate and no substantive
action, the United Nations voted to suspend until late 2005
any further consideration of a French-German proposal for an
international treaty to ban human cloning.
The vote in the Legal (Sixth) Committee of the UN General Assembly
was very close: 80 countries voted for the suspension, 79 wished
to continue negotiations, 15 formally abstained, and 17 were
not present.
What happened, and why? What are the implications for global
governance of the new human genetic technologies? What is likely
to happen next, and what can be done?
The Original Proposal
France and Germany initiated the cloning treaty process in
September 2001. They limited their proposed ban to reproductive
cloning because they recognized that a broader proposal - in
particular, one that also banned research cloning - would not
be able to attain the effective consensus required to successfully
conclude a treaty within the UN structure. They believed that
a treaty banning reproductive cloning would be a critically
important contribution in itself, and would establish a precedent
and structure...
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