The Activities of UNESCO in the Area of Ethics

TLDR

UNESCO designated ethics as a priority area in 2002. The article outlines three categories of UNESCO’s ethics activities—standard setting, capacity building, and awareness raising—and discusses the challenges and difficulties it may encounter. UNESCO’s ethics initiatives comprise global standard setting via the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, capacity building through national committees, ethics education, and legislation drafting, and awareness raising via publications, events, and conferences. The article highlights the challenges and difficulties UNESCO may face in implementing these activities.

Abstract

The member states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) decided in 2002 that ethics is one of the five priority areas of the organization. This article describes three categories of past and current activities in the ethics of science and technology, in particular bioethics. The first category is the global standard setting with the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights as the most recently adopted normative instrument. The second category focuses on capacity building in order to enable member states to apply the provisions of the declarations, through, for example, the establishment of national bioethics committees, the introduction of ethics teaching programs, and drafting of legislation and guidelines. The final category of activities is awareness raising through publications, events, and conferences. The challenges and difficulties UNESCO may face in its various activities are highlighted.