Doha, Qatar: Qatar hosting the 17th World Congress of Bioethics (WCB) of the International Association of Bioethics (IAB) in June next year is an excellent opportunity to highlight research from the Global South.
The biennial congress has been named the largest gathering of bioethics thought leaders in the world will be hosted by the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in partnership with the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH). The congress would be hosted in the Middle East and an Arab country for the first time from June 3-6, 2024, and the topic would cover ‘Religion, Culture and Bioethics’, which is also a first.
“It’s great because we are finally highlighting ethics research within the Global South. Why should academia only be in Western countries? The World Congress was always held in Europe and the United States and has only once been held outside both places in India. So finally, they get to see Muslims, Arabs, other people from the Global South -- we are bringing people from South Asia and Africa to participate in the congress,” Sara Abdelghani, a CILE research assistant, told the media recently.
Abdelhgani added that the congress would promote more interdisciplinary research, collaboration and less focus on Western issues.
She said that questions about how a Muslim woman would have to deal with bioethics would be asked based on the theme. There will be discussions on complicated bioethical issues.
She added that participants would discuss dealing with these issues from a non-Judeo-Christian perspective.
Meanwhile, Abdelghani highlighted some of the activities of CILE, which include working on practical and theoretical ways of joining Islamic ethics to the real world and giving students the tools to understand the concepts.
She added that CILE’s faculty work on many different topics concerning Islamic ethics and the real world, like human rights, gender violence, and armed conflict.
