Ecoethical and bioethical standards in the mechanism of international human rights protection - Статья

Ecoethical and bioethical standards in the mechanism of international human rights protection Law is the art of the good and the just (jus est ars boni et aequi). Rules of law reflect conceptions of people of different ages about justice, good and evil. International legal rules are specific rules as they establish the rules of conduct for international relations’ subjects by achieving consensus on the most important international issues, including ethical ones. Along with the pluralism of views on various ethical topics, international community is trying to elaborate some universal moral standards and fix them at the level of law. Among them are ecoethical and bioethical standards of human rights protection. Ecoethical standards are aimed at governing relations of «human being - society - environment» type, bioethical standards - of «human being - human being - society» type. Bioethical human rights standards are concentrated at micro level - the protection of an individual from interference into his inner world, while ecoethical standards are aimed at macro level - the protection of an individual from interference into his outer world, as well as the protection of other species or ecosystems from illegal interference into their outer world. We set a goal to compare the principles of environmental and biological ethics in the mechanism of international human rights protection. Among the distinguishing features between the implementation of ecoethical and bioethical standards in human rights protection law-making, we have to note the following: 1) The emphasis is made on different categories of human rights. Case law of international courts on environmental rights mainly concerns such fundamental rights as the right to life, the right to respect for private and family life, the right to property, the right to access information, the right to a fair trial, the right to enjoy the culture, etc. In the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter - the ECHR) case law the most applied is Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), which guarantees the right to respect for private and family life. Regarding the violation of human rights in biomedical research and clinical practice, case law of international courts usually concerns such human rights as the right to life, the right to respect for human dignity, the right to freedom from torture and freedom from experiments without free consent, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to respect for private and family life, the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to property, etc. Since most types of modern medical biotechnologies are based on using the embryonic cells and tissues (cloning, heritable genetic modifications, transplantation of embryonic stem cells), it is clear that in terms of bioethics and human rights the main question is at what point an embryo becomes a human being which can enjoy the right to life, liberty, integrity and respect for dignity. Due to the fact that defining the status of the human embryo in terms of ethics and biology is a challenging issue there is no univocal answer on the question whether human embryo is a human being or not in modern International Law. The only article on this issue is Article 18 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine (1997) (hereinafter - the Oviedo Convention), which obliges states to provide adequate protection of the embryo in their national legislation and prohibits the creation of human embryos for the purpose of research.