On 10 March 1986 the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted Resolution 1986/9, entitled ‘Use of Scientific and Technological Developments for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’, inviting “the United Nations University, in co-operation with other interested academic and research institutions, to study both the positive and the negative impacts of scientific and technological developments on human rights and fundamental freedoms.” (UN Resolution, cited in Weeramantry, 1990: Appendix 1)

The resulting studies pay particular attention to: “the socio-cultural, economic, political, and ethical aspects of the process of scientific and technological development and the conditions required to guarantee access and choice; and the interface between the process of scientific and technological development and human rights.”  (Weeramantry, 1990: Part 1)  The 1990 volume describes “three principal elements involved in using technology for purposes beneficial to developing societies: their participation in the process of decision-making; their contribution to the technology itself; and their enjoyment of that technology, in the sense that it reaches and benefits the bulk of the people in a given society rather than a select few.” (Weeramantry, 1990: Introduction)

This project resulted in two principal publications, a book in 1990, Human Rights and Scientific and Technological Development, and a 1993 collection of global case studies, Impact of Technology on Human Rights, both edited by a Justice of the International Court, Christopher Weeramantry. The 1993 volume of global case studies examines conventional and new technologies in relation to human rights, focusing on: conventional technologies (industrial and agricultural), and new technologies (microinformatic, biotechnology, and new materials).

In the introduction to the 1990 volume, Weeramantry argues that society can and should push science and technological developments in certain directions (e.g. toward service to society and address human rights) in particular by enabling the broader community to control the financial investments that science and technology require.

While it would be unrealistic to deny altogether that science and technology sometimes go forward with a momentum of their own, they are also amenable to direction and guidelines of service to the community, for science and technology are funded externally – in the last analysis by the community – and the community, as funders and supporters of technology, is entitled to a voice in the directions it takes. The need for heavy funding makes it no longer true that the individual scientist or technologist charts out his own course of action as a totally free determiner of the nature and ends of his research. […] If this be true we have the opportunity to guide science and technology in the direction of greatest service to humanity. The furtherance of human rights is one such service. Indeed, if human rights represent the quintessence of human achievement in the direction of equality and freedom, there are few higher purposes that science and technology can serve.  (Weeramantry, 1990: Introduction, emphasis added)

Weeramantry also emphasises the same point made by the original Sussex Manifesto that as most science and technology is generated in the more affluent countries of the world, the types and purposes of these technologies are directed toward their needs, not toward the needs of the developing countries. Weeramantry further highlights how this fact relates to an important issue of power. “Science and technology give power to those who wield them, whatever the field involved. Whether it is in the field of communications technology or of bio-medical advances, every new technology gives new power to its controllers. This constitutes a new source of power for the affluent world from which these technologies come and, in the nature of things, such power tends to be wielded in the interests of those who command it.” (Weeramantry, 1990)

Weeramantry points out that the legal aspects of processes of scientific and technological development are often quite remote from conventional concepts of human rights, and suggests that research is needed “to bring the applicable legal norms into closer conformity with developing human rights concepts and to bridge the wide gulf now existing between the two disciplines.” (Weeramantry, 1990: Part 1)

Weeramantry describes three categories of human rights related to scientific and technological development, both in positive and negative aspects:

1. The right of protection against the possible harmful effects of scientific and technological developments.
2. The right of access to scientific and technological information that is essential to development and welfare (on individual and collective levels).
3. The right of choice, or the freedom to assess and choose the preferred path of scientific and technological development.  (Weeramantry, 1990: Part 1)

Among the problems identified by the case studies were “lack of participation in scientific and technological decision-making, inaccessibility and maldistribution of information, and the need to change the view that technological development in the developing world is a dependent variable of what happens in the advanced countries.” (Weeramantry, 1993: Introduction)

The studies highlight “the need to develop technological self-reliance and to use new technology to supplement rather than supplant traditional technologies” and emphasize vital aspects in order to ensure equitable distribution of the benefits of technology, such as participation in the process of decision-making and knowledge-creation, as well as a need for policy-makers and practitioners to be sensitive to the above issues and needs, and to implement policies and practices accordingly. (Weeramantry, 1993: Introduction)

 

Sources:

Weeramantry, C.G. (Ed.) (1990) Human Rights and Scientific and Technological Development, Tokyo: United Nations University Press.  See Appendix 1 for the text of the Resolution 1986/9 of the UN Commission on Human Rights.  See also ‘Part 1: Scope and Objectives’

Weeramantry, C.G. (Ed.) (1993) The Impact of Technology on Human Rights: Global Case-Studies, Tokyo: United Nations University Press