The Mobilization of Expert Bioethicists by International Organizations. A Comparison of the UNESCO and the WHO

This paper examines the role that a new type of experts in ‘ethics’ or ‘bioethics’ has played in the expansion strategies of international bureaucracies in the field of bioethics.Although the use of expertise by international bureaucracies is ubiquitous, we lack understanding as to why it is so pervasive a feature of international decision-making and for what specific uses expert knowledge is mobilized by international bureaucrats. This paper argues, however, that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) successfully expanded their mission to the governance of bioethical issues by resorting to the use of a transnational community of expert bioethicists. These organizations have mobilized existing advisory bioethics committees at the domestic level and integrated specialized expert groups within their own structure. By resorting to the use of a new type of “ethical” expertise, international bureaucrats were able to build their capacity to act, give epistemic authority to their actions, depoliticize debates and gather a constituency of support. Expert bioethicists represented a crucial bureaucratic device for international administrations and allowed them to step into issues where international intervention seemed unlikely.