SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being | SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions | SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
Institutions: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare | Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) formally adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology, culminating a multi-year global process. It will come into force on November 12, 2025. This instrument is the first global normative framework designed to guide the entire life cycle of neurotechnology—devices that directly measure, monitor, or modulate the human nervous system—in a responsible direction.
Pivotal Scope: The framework is necessary because neurotechnology poses profound and dynamic risks to human rights such as autonomy, mental privacy, personal identity, and freedom of thought.
Broad Definition: The scope is intentionally broad, covering direct neurotechnology (e.g., EEG, Deep Brain Stimulation) and the use of indirect neural data (e.g., eye tracking, heart rate variability) when used to infer mental states.
Strategic Imperative: Failure to harness neurotechnology’s potential, particularly for medical and assistive use to combat the significant global prevalence of neurological and mental health conditions, would itself raise ethical questions.
The adoption of this Recommendation provides Member States like India with the ethical and policy foundation required to regulate this fast-developing sector and ensures that technological progress aligns with human dignity, social justice, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Policy Relevance: Implementation and Equity
Global Equity: The Recommendation stresses the need for global solidarity and equitable access, with specific attention to Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), to prevent technology from exacerbating existing inequalities.
Risk Mitigation Mandate: It requires governments to adopt a comprehensive approach to protect against harms from the private sector and public sector, ensuring human rights due diligence and robust independent oversight mechanisms.
Convergence Challenge: The text highlights the profound risks arising from the convergence of neurotechnology with AI, demanding specific safeguards against algorithmic bias, cybersecurity threats, and manipulation.
Strategic Path Forward: Key Policy Actions
Member States are recommended to take legislative and operational steps across policy domains:
Protect Neural Data: Classify all neural data (direct and indirect) as sensitive personal data. Policymakers must prohibit tying access to goods or services to data disclosure and forbid its use for targeted advertising without explicit, affirmative opt-in consent.
Restrict Non-Medical Use: Establish stringent rules for non-health contexts, requiring that neurotechnology use in the workplace and education be strictly voluntary and opt-in. It must be explicitly prohibited for performance evaluation or punitive measures in labor settings. Use on children for non-therapeutic enhancement is restricted.
Governance and Innovation: Establish or strengthen oversight and enforcement capacity relevant to neurotechnology and consider implementing mechanisms like regulatory sandboxes—controlled environments for testing and validation—to facilitate innovation while safeguarding rights.
What is Neurotechnology?→ Neurotechnology refers to a class of devices, systems, and procedures—encompassing both hardware and software—that are specifically designed to directly measure, access, monitor, analyze, predict, or modulate the nervous system. This technology combines elements of neuroscience, engineering, material science, and computing. Its purpose is to influence, restore, or anticipate the nervous system’s structure, activity, and function. Neurotechnology spans both medical applications (such as diagnostics and therapy for neurological and mental conditions) and non-medical applications (like direct-to-consumer devices). Interventions involving the nervous system are particularly sensitive because the human nervous system is the coordinating center of behavior, mental processes, consciousness, and autonomy
Why is ‘Mental Privacy’ a new human rights concern in the age of neurotechnology?→ Neurotechnology allows the direct measurement and observation of nervous system states—activity previously inaccessible to others. Mental Privacy is the right to protect this activity because it is the most intimate part of the self and is fundamental to personal identity and agency. Without this protection, individuals are vulnerable to manipulation and surveillance.
Follow the full update here: UNESCO Draft Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology
Ethics of neurotechnology: UNESCO adopts the first global standard in the cutting-edge technology