For immediate release

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Monday, November 10, 2003 Laura Echevarria (202) 626-8833

The following memo is from Jeanne Head, R.N., U.N. Representative for National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund and International Right to Life Federation:

Last Thursday’s close procedural vote (80-79 with 15 abstentions) in the Sixth (legal) Committee of the United Nations General Assembly was not a vote on the substance of the debate on human cloning. It was a vote for a two year delay in discussion and action on the parameters of a mandate for the negotiation by a working group that would draft the text for a Convention Banning Human Cloning.

It is sad that action by the United Nations failed to move forward on such an urgent and critical ethical and human rights issue. The growing consensus for a principled proposal for a total ban was a result of intense efforts led by Costa Rica, the Bush Administration, the Holy See and pro-life NGO’s.

The substantive debate which began last year was over whether or not the negotiating mandate should be for a Comprehensive Convention to ban all human cloning or if the negotiating mandate would be for a ban on “live born” cloning only which would allow the creation and killing of cloned human embryos for research purposes– in effect, a “clone and kill” Convention.

The narrowly passed procedural motion for non-action and deferral for two years was proposed by the chair of the 57 member Organization of Islamic States (OIC). In spite of the fact that 16 of its members are co-sponsors of the Costa Rican Resolution for a total ban (twelve of the co-sponsors voted against the non-action proposal, four did not vote and nine other OIC members either did not vote or abstained), the chair of the OIC claimed that this action was a consensus decision by the OIC. All but two of the Arab OIC members voted for the non-action. In its statement, the OIC emphasized that this motion represented no decision on the substance of the matter, but was an effort to gain more time for Muslim scientific and religious experts to study the issue. The representative of Uganda, an OIC member, spoke strongly against the motion. The motion stopped action on two substantive resolutions.

The first, sponsored by Costa Rica and co-sponsored by the U.S. and 64 other nations, proposed a mandate to draft a total ban and called for a moratorium on all human cloning research until a Convention is adopted. A broad spectrum of nations who either co-sponsored or pledged to vote for the total ban included European, East European, Latin American, Central Asian and African nations.

The second, sponsored by Belgium and twenty-some other nations (and supported by France and Germany, despite the fact that Germany explicitly outlaws such research) proposed a mandate to draft a “clone and kill” Convention banning “reproductive” or “live born” cloning only with possible regulations or restrictions on experimental or so-called “therapeutic” cloning.

Both sides privately acknowledged that without the procedural motion, the Costa Rican proposal, which had been steadily gaining momentum and would have been voted on first, was expected to pass with over 100 votes. The Belgian “clone and kill” proposal, if voted on, would have been voted on last and was expected to fail.

The proposed Convention was initiated by France and Germany two years ago as an urgent matter of serious moral consequences. In his speech of September 24, 2002, Mr. Christian Much of Germany stated, “We have a moral obligation to act now!” Yet Germany, together with France, voted Thursday for the two-year delay in action.

The Resolution proposed by France and Germany last year, which was for a mandate for negotiations on a “clone and kill” Convention without any restrictions on experimental cloning, failed to gain consensus in the face of the growing support for a mandate calling for a total ban sponsored by the U.S., The Philippines, Spain and a number of other countries.