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AAAS Science and Human Rights Program

Scientists for Human Rights

SHRP promotes Scientists for Human Rights through the Science and Human Rights Coalition – a network of professional and academic scientific associations and institutions engaged in human rights – and through initiatives that provide individual scientists with opportunities to contribute to the important work of the human rights community. SHRP is engaging scientists in human rights with the following objectives:

  • To expand the substantive and technical expertise scientists contribute to the efforts of the human rights community towards securing the protection, enforcement, and fulfillment of human rights;
  • To engage new sectors and larger numbers of scientists and to identify new, practical, and multidisciplinary applications of science that can be used to accomplish human rights ends;
  • To establish new and enduring partnerships and joint initiatives between the scientific and human rights communities aimed at tackling emerging human rights issues; and
  • To work with scientific and professional societies at expanding the number of working groups or sections devoted to human rights in order to strengthen advocacy on behalf of colleagues at risk and on human rights issues more broadly.

Science and Human Rights Coalition

As a program of AAAS, SHRP serves and enjoys access to 262 affiliated scientific societies and academies. In 2005, SHRP brought together scientific and professional associations with human rights sections or working groups to lay the groundwork for a coalition devoted to science and human rights. In 2007, the Science and Human Rights Coalition began organizing a series of planning meetings to prepare for a general membership meeting in 2008. The Coalition is envisioned to:

  • Support efforts to establish human rights programs within more scientific societies;
  • Create a forum where new and cross-disciplinary applications of science to human rights challenges can be incubated and explored;
  • Build a knowledge base within the human rights community about what science and scientists can contribute to the realization of human rights;
  • Establish a human rights agenda across scientific societies that incorporates this influential sector’s voice in human rights advocacy on behalf of colleagues at risk and human rights more generally.

Engaging Individual Scientists

SHRP is developing several initiatives to encourage scientists to tackle human rights-specific challenges and support those who are already engaged in this work, demonstrating in the process that the human rights field is a rich and rewarding terrain for scientific inquiry and contribution.

SHRP is currently engaged in developing the following initiatives:

On-call Scientists
Science and Human Rights Fellows
Graduate Fellowships
Science and Human Rights Prize

(page updated 10/29/2008)



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