UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology, 2025, and the neurorights line
The line of instruments that protects the brain and mental states against neurotechnology: the four neurorights proposed by Ienca and Andorno in 2017, Chile's constitutional amendment of 2021 and its Supreme Court's first writ on neural data in 2023, and UNESCO's Recommendation SHS/BIO/REC-NEURO/2025 adopted on 11 November 2025. These are the nearest neighbours of the term cognitive sovereignty, and they concern a different object.
When this decides something for you
A reader who searches for "cognitive sovereignty", "cognitive liberty" or "mental integrity" meets this line of instruments first. A reader of this library who meets the canon's term needs to know why it is not one of them. This page exists so that the boundary is drawn once, with the instruments on the other side of it stated accurately.
What the line is
In 2017 Ienca and Andorno proposed that the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology requires new human rights, commonly summarised as cognitive liberty, mental privacy, mental integrity and psychological continuity. The proposal is the origin of the vocabulary; its article was not read at source for this page and the four rights are stated as secondary accounts give them.
Chile acted first in constitutional text. Law 21.383 of October 2021 amended Article 19(1) of the Constitution to provide, in the translation used by the Royal Society's 2024 account, that "scientific and technological development shall be at the service of people and shall be carried out with respect for life and physical integrity. The law shall regulate the requirements, conditions, and restrictions for its use on persons and with special safeguards for cerebral activity as well as the information deriving from it." In August 2023 the Supreme Court of Chile granted a plaintiff's constitutional writ against a foreign company marketing a home brain-computer interface that accessed and stored neural data, the first judicial application of the provision.
UNESCO's General Conference adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology on 11 November 2025 at its 43rd session, reference SHS/BIO/REC-NEURO/2025. On the copy read for this page: paragraph 43 provides that "the protection and promotion of the rights of autonomy and freedom of thought must be secured and mental and physical integrity should be protected from any unwanted and harmful interference"; paragraph 45 that individuals are entitled "to make free, informed and voluntary decisions about their engagement with neurotechnology throughout the whole life cycle"; paragraph 47 that neurotechnology "should never be used to exert undue influence or manipulation", covering "both the internal processing of thoughts and their external expression"; and paragraph 49 that "privacy, including mental privacy, is fundamental for personal identity and agency, as well as for the protection of human dignity". It is a recommendation, not a treaty.
What the line protects
The brain and the mind of a person against a technology that reads or acts on them. The subject is the person whose neural activity is accessed; the threat is the device; the remedies are consent, privacy, integrity and non-manipulation. Every instrument in the line is about what may be done to a person's cognition.
Where the canon's term stands in relation to it
Cognitive sovereignty, as this library defines it, protects a different thing: the judgment applied to a person by a court or tribunal, and the person's entitlement that a human verified and owns it. The subject is the litigant; the threat is unverified machine output adopted by the officer who decides; the remedy is verification and ownership by that officer. Nothing in the neurorights line reaches a case in which no one's brain was touched and a judge signed an order with invented authorities in it. The two share a word and no object.
The line is nonetheless evidence that rights framed around cognition are being recognised at the constitutional and international level, which is part of the argument, stated as argument, that the litigant's entitlement belongs under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India.
Where it stands in the record
The UNESCO paragraphs were read on a university-hosted copy of the adopted text; the Chilean provision was read in a journal's translation; the 2017 article was not read. Each is marked accordingly in the library's ledger, and none is cited in a filed document until read at source.
Provenance and method.
Where this was published
- UNESCO
- Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology
- SHS/BIO/REC-NEURO/2025
- adopted by the General Conference at its 43rd session
- 11 November 2025 (read on a university-hosted copy; to be confirmed against the UNESCO text)
- Chile
- Law 21.383 of October 2021 amending Article 19(1) of the Constitution
- and the Supreme Court of Chile's ruling of August 2023 on a brain-computer interface device (as reported in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
- 2024)
- Marcello Ienca and Roberto Andorno
- Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology
- Life Sciences
- Society and Policy (2017) (not read at source; cited from secondary accounts)
Changelog
- 2026-09-25, version 1. First published.