ABSTRACT
Schomberg, 2013, p. 54). According to the international community
the State is the main subject which has primary responsibility
for the protection of human rights in the face of threats from
technoscience (Francioni, 2007), including the responsibility to
ensure respect for human rights by business enterprises (Weschka,
2006, p. 654). Beside States, the individual has become a subject of
international law as a holder of rights (e.g. human rights) and duties
(e.g. the duty to respect human rights with regard to transnational
corporations), which means that the individual can both claim
violations to his/her own rights by the State through supranational
courts (e.g. the European Court of Human Rights) and, in certain
cases, be called on to answer for their own violations (e.g. with
regard to international crimes before the International Penal Court
either in the case of transnational corporations having assumed
special self-obligations to a code of conduct, or through third-
party certification arrangements) (Pariotti, 2007, 2013). It is in
this legal framework that we must understand the phenomenon of
technoscientific development, its limits and its latent threats to the
human being. Thus the emergence of clear State responsibility in
the question of research and development (R&D) can be deemed
an acquired result of the international framework, whose path can
be seen as a succession of steps towards the complete affirmation
of human rights law in this matter and should be considered a
phenomenon still in progress.
