Decolonising with imperial tools? The paradox of a global bioethics library.

Abstract

This paper presents the Global Bioethics Library (GBL), an initiative developed by Black and Brown in Bioethics in response to recurring requests for more inclusive bioethics reading lists-requests that reflect deeper, structural gaps in the field. These gaps persist in mainstream bioethics pedagogy, literature and frameworks, which remain dominated by Western paradigms and the interests of global North countries, thereby marginalising knowledge and concerns from the global South and minoritised communities in the global North. Positioned as an epistemic justice project, the GBL was envisioned as a crowd-sourced, open-access resource that decentralises knowledge production and expands what is recognised as bioethics. However, the process of developing the library revealed deep tensions and limitations: most contributions came from the global North and continued to reflect dominant frameworks, despite efforts to adopt inclusive and democratic methods. These outcomes expose a controversial paradox-namely, that the very tools and structures used to 'decolonise' bioethics may be shaped by the same epistemic paradigms they aim to critique. This paper argues that intention alone is insufficient to redress epistemic injustice. Methods left critically unexamined and without reconfiguration risk reproducing exclusion under the guise of inclusion. The GBL thus serves as a case study in the controversies and contradictions of doing epistemic justice work within institutions and infrastructures built on unequal foundations. We offer this reflection not as a conclusion, but as an invitation for collaboration, critique and reimagining the politics of decolonial work in global bioethics.