Global Policy Working Session

The absence of much needed global regulatory framework for the new biotechnology is partly due to the lack of strong consensus on a number of complex and contested issues. To promote good governance is to promote the rule of law, transparency, accountability, equality and justice. Yet the basis for sustainable global policy must rest with precautionary principles that would help to promote a more proactive approach to regulation. Our ethical and moral high ground must focus on neutral and well balanced policy approach. From African perspectives, I will be using racial lens to outline and contextualise socio-cultural issues and how the process of formulating principles and policies on good governance must remain mindful of how deeply embedded cultural traditional belief systems, values and practices may come to shape the use and safeguard of resultant international ethical standards in an increasingly wireless/borderless global village. Essentially, good foundational principles for global policy therefore must embrace widely shared values, views/attitudes, expectations and that these principles are contextually relevant. But what would principles for global policy mean in practice? One problematic issue is how to measure (monitor?) the effectiveness and limitations of principles and policies amidst socio-economic, cultural and political orientations. We must continue to seek ways to reconcile contested differences in situations where ethics, religion, culture and medical developments collide.