2003 CGS Report on the UN Cloning Treaty Negotiations

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...