Second Meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group for the elaboration of a first draft of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology

At its initial meeting in April 2024, the AHEG prepared a first draft text of the Recommendation (first outcome document). This text went through an extensive consultation process in order to collect the views of a wide range of stakeholders, ensuring an open and inclusive elaboration process. Over 25 consultations took place at the regional, sub-regional and national levels between June and July 2024, in parallel to an online global survey. 

The AHEG will now reconvene at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from 26 to 30 August 2024 to finalize the first draft of the Recommendation, in light of the inputs and feedback gathered during the consultation phase. 

This first draft will then be shared with Member States in September 2024, marking the beginning of the intergovernmental consultation process, which will extend into 2025. 

UNESCO embarked on a 2-year process for the elaboration of the first global Recommendation on the ethics of neurotechnology. 

This special mandate, entrusted by UNESCO’s 194 Member States at the 42nd session of the General Conference in November 2023, aims to establish a comprehensive framework of shared values and principles, pinpoint ethical challenges, and propose concrete policy actions to ensure the ethical development, deployment, and use of neurotechnology globally. 

Today, neurotechnology offers tangible possibilities for enhancing people’s well-being – it brings invaluable promises to alleviate human suffering when it comes to memory or movement loss, as well as in the case of mental health diseases. Globally, 1 in 8 people suffer from a mental disorder and it is estimated that 1 in 3 people will develop a neurological disorder at some point in their life. 

However, neurotechnology also raises important risks and concerns that must be addressed by the international community. UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee (IBC) addressed these concerns in 2021 through a forward-looking report, Ethical issues of neurotechnology, alerting on five main ethical challenges – cerebral/mental integrity and human dignity, personal integrity and psychological continuity, autonomy, mental privacy, and accessibility and social justice – and inviting Member States to ensure respect to neurorights through its recommendations. UNESCO’s unique work on the ethical implications of neurotechnology emphasized the need for a robust global governance model, positioning the Organization as the optimal space to lead the international debate and develop such a framework.  

The future Recommendation is intended to be rooted in universal Human Rights and fundamental freedoms, aiming to keep the trajectory of neurotechnology to be used to promote the welfare of society.