Session on "Foundational Principles for Global Policy"

Points for discussion:

1. What counts most in transnational bioethics is not the (hopefully) resulting agreement but the fairness and openness of the process.
2. The different topics (global warming, human genetics, biodiversity, organ trafficking, sex trade and narco-trafficking etc.) are all global issues. But they are so different problems that they need to be considered individually in all their necessary detail. They raise highly different questions and problems. There is no principled solution overall. Human rights are necessary but insufficient as a basis for many of these problems, because they are much too abstract and general. But all discussions, if they should be successful, need to start with learning steps: the partners need to learn from each other (by listening to their stories and experiences) how the others are concretely affected and what kinds of situations are created that challenge agency, create conflicts or are seen as degrading.
3. These are the ethical concerns, which can be shared much more easily and are much more substantial than agreements on general and abstract ethical principles or theories of human rights.
4. To better understand each other, we need to differentiate clearly between the concepts we use: 'transnational', 'international', 'global', 'cosmopolitical', 'cross-cultural' etc. Not everything is global that is transnational. Not everything is cross-cultural that is international etc. Globalization is e.g. happening when companies seek the best market conditions wherever they are on the globe. For good governance development the other terms are perhaps even more important, because they appreciate the local while recognizing the concrete relationships to and exchanges with other places and circumstances of biotechnological and biopolitical activities.
5. Governance is a descriptive term that includes all levels of steering in society, including the state as actor. Bioethics should not only focus on policies and international agreements but also on other levels of transnational governance.

Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, 11 July 2010