ABSTRACT
The negotiations on biosafety, or safety in modern biotechnology, carried out under the Convention on Biological Diversity since 1996 were completed in January 2000. The clash of the lines of thought paralysed the negotiations in Cartagena in February 1999. The subsequent effort to revive the biosafety negotiations got off to a good start in the informal consultations that took place in Vienna in September 1999. The Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety is the first international agreement created in anticipation of the likely problems. That is why the precautionary principle is central to it, and that is why the protocol is a good testimony to humanity’s wish to keep improving. In 1993, United Nations Environment Programme established a panel of experts to explore the need for and modalities of a biosafety protocol and to make recommendations. The issue of the regulation of pharmaceutical genetically modified organisms will obviously generate debate in the meeting of the Parties to the protocol.
