Committees: International Ethics Committees

Abstract

The establishment of international ethics committees started in the 1980s in Europe, along with the expansion of bioethics and in the wake of its institutionalization process. They maintain the characteristics of ethics committees, that is, multidisciplinarity, pluralism, independence, and an advisory function; specifically, they contribute to international cooperation and to the implementation of the fourth generation of human rights worldwide.

This article reviews the main international ethics committees, their origin and mission, the role they play, and their main accomplishments. It underlines the most important common goals to all of them, that is, the establishment of the best practices in the field of bioethics, to be identically implemented in a growing number of countries. At the bioethical level, this is a major contribution to its validity and credibility; at the same time, it has implications at the legal level, in what concerns international law; and both levels depend on political decisions. One important challenge that stands up in the context of international ethics committees is the relation between bioethics, biolaw, and biopolitics, seeking to prevent that overwhelming legal norms suppress ethical reflection and instead guarantee each one’s complementarity.