AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Fall 2002 Vol XXII, No. 2

Staff Highlights

Victoria Baxter traveled to Mexico City to attend an international conference, “Truth Commissions: Torture, Reparation and Prevention,” sponsored by the Association for the Prevention of Torture. She also spent three weeks in September in Santiago, Chile, conducting interviews and research on civil society efforts to redress past periods of human rights abuses. In addition to her ongoing casework efforts with the AAAS Human Rights Action Network (AAASHRAN), she is coordinating an international conference, “Empirical Research Methodologies of Transitional Justice Mechanisms,” to be held in South Africa in November 2002.

The analysis of data from a multi-year project studying the societal response to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been a major focus of Audrey Chapman’s time during 2002. During the past three years, the Science and Human Rights Program, in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and other South African partners, has analyzed the transcripts of the TRC’s human rights violations and amnesty hearings, conducted focus groups with former victims, held in-depth interviews with former perpetrators and religious leaders, and reanalyzed relevant public opinion surveys before, during, and after the TRC in order to assess the interrelationships among truth-finding, forgiveness, justice, and reconciliation. Supported by a MacArthur Foundation research and writing grant, she is writing one book and co-editing two additional volumes based on these data.

Chapman has also been part of the staff team developing a major new AAAS initiative dealing with the intellectual property implications for scientific research and access to the benefits of science. She contributed a paper on the human rights implications of intellectual property protection for a special issue of the Journal of International Economic Law based on the presentations given at a symposium on health and intellectual property sponsored by the Science and Human Rights Program at the 2002 AAAS Annual Meeting.

Chapman presented a paper on the requirements for developing human rights indicators at a conference held in April in Merida, Mexico, on issues related to monitoring the incidence of torture cosponsored by the Mexican National Human Rights Commission and the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics.

Chapman was one of four AAAS staff members attending the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Stephen Hansen participated as an international expert on cultural rights at the UNESCO-sponsored International Roundtable on the Right to Take Part in Cultural Life that took place in Manila, the Philippines this past February. His paper for the Roundtable, “The Cultural Dimensions of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” will be included in a the collected conference papers, to be published by UNESCO. In March, he was an invited speaker at the Conference on the International Patent System, sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, where he discussed the place of traditional knowledge as prior art in the patenting process and related human rights issues concerning intellectual property. In June, he participated in a panel discussion entitled, “Current Status of the Protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” at American University Washington College of Law.

Along with staff member Justin VanFleet, he gave a presentation on documenting traditional knowledge as prior art, where they demonstrated the Program’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database (TEK*PAD) for conducting prior art searches on patent applications based on traditional knowledge.

Recent publications include “The Right to Take Part in Cultural Life” in the Program’s new publication Core Obligations: Building a Framework for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as a book review in the latest issue of Human Rights Quarterly.

Sage Russell edited the recently published Core Obligations: Building a Framework for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She co-organized the NGO workshop on Human Rights, Sustainable Development and Environmental Protection at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, described elsewhere in this Report.

Justin VanFleet recently joined the Science and Human Rights Program as a Program Assistant. During the summer of 2001, Justin was an intern with the Program. He recently completed a B.A. in International Studies with a focus on politics and Spanish from Frostburg State University in Maryland. VanFleet has been working on the traditional ecological knowledge project and the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database. He is currently writing a manual on intellectual property rights and existing options for traditional knowledge holders and indigenous communities.