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Prohibition of discrimination against human beings on the ground of genetic heritage as the new human rights standard

Human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, witch 60th anniversary we commemorate this year, as well as six core UN treaties in the field of human rights, are providing basic principles for the elaboration of new human rights in biomedicine. In parallel to that, international human rights norms should be interpreted in the light of new facts or discoveries of life science relevant to the protection of human beings. The process of regional and universal standard setting has already started and resulted in the adoption of new legal instruments in the field of human rights and bioethics. At a regional level, the Council of Europe adopted, on 4 April 1997, the first legally binding international instrument, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, by which European countries have started the process of international codification of human rights of the human being with regard to the application of life science on human beings. The Convention entered into force on 1 December 1999. The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine as a new human rights treaty is building its standards on previously agreed universal standards in this filed and developing protection of human rights with respect to the application of biology and medicine. For example, the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine has broadened the traditional international non-discrimination clause with a new ground: "discrimination based on genetic heritage" and explicitly provided protection of human beings against such discrimination. This new explicit ground for the prohibition of discrimination based on genetic origin will most probably reach the level of universal standard in the field of human rights thought its explicit codification but also thought the interpretation of current standards or non discrimination clauses that in principal contain open ended list of grounds of discrimination. On the other hand this Convention also contains new standards for the protection of the human being and its individual human genome, as well as human genome of human species but universal acceptance of this standard will require more deliberations at the international level.

Prohibition of discrimination against human beings; genetic heritage; new human rights standard; international organisations and regulation

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