Indigenous Peoples' human genomic sovereignty: Lessons for Africa.

Human genomics research with indigenous peoples has often been characterised by tension between the 'western' science ideologies and indigenous peoples' cultural beliefs in relation to their human genetic resources and data. This article explores this tension from the lens of the concept of indigenous peoples' human genomic sovereignty and tests the applicability of the concept in Africa. The article achieves this by first highlighting the tension between 'western' science and indigenous peoples through three case studies from Canada, the USA, and South Africa.

The human genome as the common heritage of humanity.

While debate on the international regulation of human genomic research remains unsettled, the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, 1997 qualifies the human genome as "heritage of humankind" in a symbolic sense. Using document analysis this article assesses whether, how and to what extent the common heritage framework is relevant in regulation of human genomic research. The article traces the history of the Human Genome Project to reveal the international community's race against privatization of the human genome and its resulting qualification as the common heritage of humanity.

Regulating human genomic research in Africa: why a human rights approach is a more promising conceptual framework than genomic sovereignty.

This article revisits the debate on the regulation of human genomic research, with a focus on Africa. The article comprehensively examines the concept of genomic sovereignty, which was invoked mainly in the global South as a conceptual framework for state regulation of human genomic research. It demonstrates that genomic sovereignty has no utility value in human genomic research as it violates the rights of individuals and researchers.