AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Winter 2003 Vol XXIII, No. 1

On December 10, 2002, International Human Rights Day, the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program (SHR) organized a program to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The Science and Human Rights Program grew out of the Clearinghouse on Science and Human Rights, which was established in 1977 by the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. Dr. John Edsall, the eminent Harvard scientist and founder of the Committee, believed that scientific associations “have not only a right but a responsibility to concern themselves with the defense of human rights of scientists.” Documenting and publicizing cases of abuses of scientists in other countries continued to be priorities when the Clearinghouse was transformed into the Science and Human Rights Program in 1989.

At its 25th anniversary celebration, the Science and Human Rights Program honored Dr. Richard Claude, pioneering human rights educator and author of the recently published book Science in the Service of Human Rights.

Through the years the Program has continued to carry out human rights documentation and advocacy in three areas: (1) violations of scientific freedom and the professional rights of scientists; (2) violations of the human rights of scientists in their capacity as citizens; and (3) participation by scientists in practices that infringe upon the human rights of others. Begun in 1993, the AAAS Human Rights Action Network (AAASHRAN) uses email and the World Wide Web to inform subscribers of cases and developments deserving special attention and to coordinate scientists’ efforts to appeal to governments on behalf of their colleagues. SHR also organizes humanitarian and fact-finding missions to investigate human rights issues; prepares documentation for Congress and other U.S. government officials and international human rights groups; and organizes programs on human rights issues related to science.

Although it is difficult to quantify the contributions of the Program to the protection of the human rights of individual scientists and scientific groups, SHR’s efforts have played an important role in energizing the involvement of scientists and other scientific associations in human rights-related activities. Many of the scientists, engineers, and medical professionals for whom we have advocated have credited our efforts as contributing to their improved treatment or their release from prison.

In a recent communication, Dr. Moncef Marzouki, a former professor of public health and human rights detainee in Tunisia, explained that solidarity from outside one’s group is especially welcome because it is direct proof that one’s struggle is understood and appreciated. He remembered “the day I got the first message from Victoria Baxter on behalf of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was a happy one.” He therefore asks that we keep writing letters, showing interest, and lobbying on behalf of human rights. “It has much more effect than one can imagine. It keeps alive the light of a fire refusing to die, called human brotherhood.”

In addition to these efforts to bring human rights to the science community, the Science and Human Rights Program has pioneered the application of a variety of scientific methodologies to protect and promote human rights. In 1984 when Argentina had recently returned to civilian rule, President Raul Alfonsín and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a nongovernmental human rights organization, requested the help of the Program in exhuming the mass graves of victims of Argentina’s “dirty war” and conducting genetic tests to try to identify the children stolen from former dissidents and adopted by supporters of the previous regime. SHR responded by sending a delegation of American forensic and genetic scientists to Argentina. This first mission led to a major AAAS initiative to apply forensic sciences to the investigation and documentation of human rights violations and to provide this evidence to courts and special commissions of inquiry. In the course of these efforts, the Program established, trained, and supported the work of teams of forensic anthropologists in Argentina and Guatemala.

In the 1980s, AAAS sent forensic scientists to Argentina to conduct training on identifying skeletal remains.

Since the mid-1990s, SHR has actively developed and applied new statistical and information management techniques appropriate to dealing with large-scale human rights violations. Human rights organizations and commissions increasingly undertake projects that require an understanding of large-scale violations, such as mass killings and genocide, deportations and ethnic cleansing, and systematic detention and torture. However, the usual tools of human rights documentation are inadequate for dealing with such phenomena. In order to understand large-scale violations, human rights groups need to be able to collect, organize, and analyze massive amounts of information. SHR has developed technical and scientific methodologies for dealing with large-scale violations and has provided technical assistance and training to truth commissions, tribunals, ombudsmen, and non-governmental organizations in Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, South Africa, Cambodia, East Timor, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka.

The Program has also developed methodologies for monitoring human rights and identifying violations, along with resource materials on how to use them. There has been increasing awareness in recent years that the ability to undertake systematic monitoring of the major international human rights instruments is central to evaluating the performance of states and holding them accountable for violations of these rights. SHR has focused its efforts on developing new methodologies and resources for monitoring economic, social and cultural rights; in the process it has played a major role in shaping the approaches and monitoring strategies of other human rights organizations and of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
In the past 25 years, SHR has amply demonstrated that just as human rights are indispensable to the conduct of science, science is equally necessary to the promotion and protection of human rights. We are committed to promoting this critical two-way linkage between science and human rights in the years ahead.