JJUS00022U Cancelled Science as a cultural human right

The important role played by science and technology and the potential for dual use makes it imperative to assess scientific research and its products not only on their scientific, but also on their human rights merits. As a cultural human right, the right to science provides a tool for opening up science to lines of inquiry emphasizing ethics and prioritizing human rights and human-centered considerations above commercial interests.

The right to science is a little-known but potentially very powerful human right. One of four core cultural human rights – the other three being the rights to education, to participate in cultural life, and authors’ rights – it is outlined in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 and repeated in Article 15  of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Recognizing everyone’s “right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications,” the latter also requires State parties to develop and disseminate science, to respect the freedom of scientific research, and to recognize the benefits of international contacts and co-operation in the scientific field.

UNESCO has produced soft law within several distinct areas of cultural rights. With regard to the right to science, the 2017 UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers and the 2020 General Comment No. 25 on Science by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights are especially relevant.  

This course will take a multidisciplinary approach to the right to science and to cultural rights in general, exposing students to fields outside their respective core disciplines of study. Among the topics focused on are scientific freedom and dissemination, the importance of international scientific collaboration, and the relationship between intellectual property and authors’ rights. The idea is to look at science and its role in politics and society at a 'post-truth' or 'alternative facts' moment in time when science is often reduced to a matter of opinions, and when scientific funding no longer comes from public, but from private funding bodies.