AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Spring 2004 Vol XXIV, No. 1

Scientific Society Profile: The Committee on Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine

Jason R. Sanders interviewing Torsten Wiesel

The Committee on Human Rights was created in 1976 in response to concern by members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) about widespread abuses of human rights, particularly those of their scientific colleagues. In 1994, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) joined the National Acadamies as full sponsors of the committee. The committee is composed of members drawn from the membership of the three institutions.

The committee uses the influence and prestige of the institutions it represents in behalf of scientists, engineers, and health professionals anywhere in the world who are unjustly detained or imprisoned for exercising their fundamental human rights. Each case is carefully investigated, using a variety of sources, before being taken up by the committee. Such individuals cannot have been known to use or advocate violence. The committee also intervenes in behalf of non-violent colleagues who are the recipients of death threats, and it works to promote just prosecution in cases of individuals who have been killed for political reasons. The international work of the committee is grounded in principles set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The committee does not support or oppose any government or political system; it holds governments responsible for conforming to international standards for the protection of human rights and accountable when they do not.

Activities of the committee include private inquiries, appeals to governments, moral support to prisoners and their families, and consciousness-raising efforts such as workshops and symposia. Periodically, it undertakes a mission of inquiry to a country. It issues public statements regarding a case or reports on the human rights situation in a country only when significant private efforts have proved unsuccessful. The committee also is a catalyst for science-related human rights issues of concern to the members of the academy complex.

The committee also serves as the secretariat for the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies. The Network, created in 1993, works to address grave issues of science and human rights, particularly the unjust detention or imprisonment of colleagues, throughout the world. It also promotes and protects the independence of academies and scholarly societies worldwide. The Network seeks to promote the free exchange of ideas and opinions among scientists and scholars in all countries and, thereby, to stimulate the development of collaborative, educational research and human-rights endeavors within academies and the institutions with which they are affiliated.

SHR: What kind of arguments do you make to the scientific, engineering, and health professional communities about why one should care about human rights?

Our committee takes it as a given that the members of the National Academies care about the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of others the world over. Thus, the question for us as a committee has been how we can most effectively and appropriately protect and promote human rights and how can we encourage our very busy and highly prominent members to actively support the committee's work? Of course, as scientists and engineers and health professionals, the rights to travel, to communicate, and to find and speak the truth are essential and directly relevant to our work. Because of the prestige accorded the national academies, the fact that they search for and speak the truth to governments, and because many of our members are very well connected around the world, we have found ourselves in a rather unique position to bring about positive change in the human rights arena. Thus, our committee decided many years ago to focus its efforts on gaining the release of unjustly imprisoned colleagues the world over-we have more than a hundred cases and take a variety of actions such as writing appeals, filing petitions with UNESCO, preparing action alerts to send to the members, undertaking missions, providing moral support to the prisoners and their families, sending observers to trials, and meeting with government officials. We also spend considerable time consciousness-raising among our members by providing them with an extensive private website, sending and posting Action Alerts, providing briefings at their annual meetings, arranging for them to meet former prisoners and/or their family members, and encouraging them to bring relevant cases to the committee's attention. During the last ten years, we have spent considerable time working to establish and strengthen the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies, for which our committee serves as secretariat.

When human rights issues that are related to science, technology, or health (past examples have included Female Genital Mutilation, Detection of Anti-Personnel Land Mines, and Proposed Scientific Boycotts for Political Reasons) we sometimes refer them to the appropriate committee within the National Academies for possible action. In addition to the 12 members of our committee, more than 1,700 other members of the NAS, NAE, and IOM have signed up to be "correspondents" of our committee; they write individual letters of appeal in response to Action Alerts we send them on cases of particular concern. And 70 academies around the world are affiliated with the international network and take action on various cases and issues.

SHR: What do you think are some of the most important human rights issues or cases for the CHR?

Although we do not make public the vast majority of our cases, I can tell you that there are a large number of cases and several issues about which the CHR is particularly concerned or involved either as a committee or as a member of the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies.

A few examples include encouraging and assisting prominent scientists around the world to co-sign private petitions on individual cases to UNESCO and elsewhere. In Guatemala, although we have been active in the case of Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang for more than a decade and are gratified that on January 20, 2004, the Guatemalan Supreme Court reversed an earlier appeals court decision and upheld the conviction of Colonel Juan Valencia Osorio for ordering Myrna Mack's assassination, our concern about threats to other social science researchers doing similar work in the country continues. In the United States, we are increasingly concerned about unjust treatment of detainees and prisoners and the torture and denial of basic rights of U.S. held detainees imprisoned outside the United States. Through the international Network and with the support of the NAS council, we have also been involved in helping to create an Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization that will be located in Jerusalem and will, we hope, rekindle, foster, and fund scientific cooperation and scholarly endeavors between Israelis and Palestinians.

I've already mentioned, we have more than a hundred cases of scientific colleagues detained or imprisoned all over the world simply for peacefully expressing their opinions. The case of Nguyen Dan Que, a Vietnamese endocrinologist and one of his country's best known and respected advocates for human rights and democracy, is a good example. Dr. Que has devoted his life to improving human rights in Vietnam, promoting civil society and a peaceful transition to democracy and freedom there, and improving the daily lives of people in Vietnam who suffer both economic and political repression. His unwavering efforts, however, have brought him great personal suffering. He has already spent more than 19 years in prison and 5 years under house arrest and today once again lies in a jail cell without any means of communicating with the outside world.

Dr. Que has been offered many opportunities to leave Vietnam and begin a new life here in the United States. But he has steadfastly refused to abandon his vision of a free and democratic country and his efforts to help achieve it. In a speech I gave on Capitol Hill last year on Vietnam Human Rights Day I compared Dr. Que and his stature to Andrei Sakharov, the famous Russian physicist and dissident. There is no question that Dr. Que is a man of tremendous courage and principle, and his plight has inspired members of our academies and many other scientists all over the world to take action to help him.

SHR: How do you measure the impact or the success of your efforts?

It has long been our philosophy that if one life is saved, one prisoner is released, our work has been worthwhile. Over the years, approximately 670 cases that we have undertaken in some 65 countries have been successfully resolved. Of course, we often do not know whether our action on a particular case was pivotal in securing an individual's release. We do know that international pressure-from our committee as well as many other members of the international community-has many times led to the successful resolution of cases. No prisoner or family member has ever told us that our interventions have done harm. And over the years, many of the freed scientists have come to the National Academies or written the committee to express their gratitude for our efforts in providing them and their families with moral support, in gaining the amelioration of their treatment and, eventually, their freedom. When one of us receives a letter from or meets in person a former prisoner for whose case we personally intervened, our resolve to continue such efforts is strengthened, and we move onto the next case.

Next Issue: The American Chemical Society

Additional Resources

http://www4.nationalacademies.org/nas/nashome.nsf

http://www.nae.edu/

http://www.iom.edu/

http://www.nationalacademies.org/

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