About the VOLRETHICS Association
The VOLRETHICS Association is a non-profit association under French Law 1901 that aims at better protecting and empowering healthy volunteers who participate in research around the world, and at empowering healthy volunteers to get their voice heard on issues that concern them. The Association was created in June 2025 to expand the work of the VolREthics initiative created by the Inserm’s Ethics Committee (see below). The Association’s legal framework of French Law 1901 for non-profit associations provides guidance on our governance and enables raising funds to support our projects.
About the VolREthics initiative
Inserm (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale) is the French national biomedical research agency. In 2022, the Inserm Ethics Committee set up an international initiative on ethical issues related to the participation of healthy volunteers in biomedical research. Called VolREthics, which is short for Volunteers in Research and Ethics, this initiative was supported by numerous international partners. Its objective was to identify ethical and scientific issues specific to healthy volunteers in research and to identify best practices, so that each country can decide on the best way to protect its healthy volunteers. Its main achievement was, in June 2024, the publication of the Global Ethics Charter for the Protection of Healthy Volunteers in Clinical Trials. In June 2025, the VolREthics initiative, an informal network of interested parties, evolved into the VOLRETHICS Association.