1.1 Introduction

The United Nations (UN) Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has recently adopted General Comment No. 25 on Science and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (E/C.12/GC/25), a process in which the author of the present chapter has been intimately involved for five years.

This General Comment, which has normative implications for 170 countries, is an interpretation of the obligations contained in the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of 1966, which came into effect in 1976. It is also an important step on a long journey that began at the dawn of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has not yet finished.

This chapter reviews the origins of that story. To do so, it charts the background from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms speech, delivered in January 1941, to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the Palais Chaillot in Paris on December 10, 1948, with many steps in between and beyond.

A careful reading of the background and the historical context of the Universal Declaration, supplemented by a study of the travaux préparatoires, will reveal to us that many of the debates, dilemmas, and challenges that we face today were already known in an inchoate form and discussed by our predecessors. Absorbing the lessons of those debates and reflecting on their ideas is not only to pay due homage, but also to undertake an exercise of extraordinary relevance and practicality.

1.2 The Historical Context and Background

The Right to Science,Footnote ¹ as we will refer to it in this chapter, was recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“the Declaration”) as follows:

Having read article 27, we may refer to the travaux préparatoiresFootnote ² of the Declaration to discern why its drafters chose those precise words and what they thereby intended to say and leave unsaid.Footnote ³ At first sight, this may seem like a question with a short, straightforward answer. On reflection, however, it is clear that further inquiry is necessary to fully grasp the drafters’ intentions.

To fulfil this goal, we must go back in history to January 1941. Eleven months prior to the United States’ entry into World War II, President Roosevelt made reference, in his famous “Four Freedoms” speech, to the “enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress” in a context which allows us to consider it a direct precedent of the Right to Science. The speech is widely recognized as one of the main intellectual precursors of the post-war international system and as one of the foundations of the Universal Declaration. Roosevelt’s reference here to science is not secondary or circumstantial. Science is given center stage as President Roosevelt places it amongst the six “basic things” of a “healthy and strong” democracy enabling the enjoyment of the Four Freedoms. These Freedoms, in turn, provide the foundations of human rights:

The key aspect science played in Roosevelt’s vision was confirmed in his famous letter to Vannevar Bush,Footnote ⁵ the wartime head of US military research and development, in November 1944, in which Roosevelt imagined a better world after the war thanks to science and asked Bush for a specific plan to carry out this mission:

The President, however, died soon after and in the post-war period that followed two circumstances were to have serious influence on the debates regarding science. The first was the long-standing memory of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which placed science, its limits, its control, and the social responsibility of scientists at the forefront of many debates.Footnote ⁷ The second was the new Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union which, as we shall see, would have a profound impact on the issue of science and its role in the international arena.

Nevertheless, the role of science in the humanities was gaining traction, a concept that can clearly be seen in the evolution of the institution that we now know as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The origins of UNESCO, as we know it, lie in a little-known debate which is however key to understanding the interplay between science and politics. UNESCO came into being on the initiative of the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME), following a proposal made by the United States to set up a United Nations Organisation for Educational and Cultural Reconstruction, and afterwards a United Nations Organisation for Education and Culture, UNECO. It was only later in a Conference in November 1945 that UNECO, entirely without any reference to science in its acronym, was revamped to create UNESCO. This conference, held in London and chaired by the British Minister for Education, Ms. Ellen Wilkinson, saw a group of scientists led by the biochemist Joseph Needham and the biologist Julian Huxley, both British, fight for the inclusion of science in the name and mandate of the new organization. Their commitment to the new organization would lead Needham to be installed as the Director of the Natural Sciences Section and Huxley to be inaugurated as the first Director General (in fact one of only two Director Generals in UNESCO’s history to be a scientist, along with Federico Mayor Zaragoza, from Spain).

Encouraged by these two scientists, at the plenary session of the London Conference, Minister Wilkinson defended the position with the following very significant words:

The reason for briefly digressing into the creation history of UNESCO is to demonstrate the state of distrust (“what the scientists will do to us next”) which pervaded the debate on the development of science when fully disconnected from values and aims. The role of science and technology in Nazi war crimes, and in the atomic bombs mentioned above, was still very present in their thoughts.Footnote ⁹ Bearing in mind that the Nuremberg Doctor’s Trial,Footnote ¹⁰ with its 140 days of gruesome and horrendous evidence, was held during 1947, and that seven defendants found guilty were given the death penalty and hanged in June 1948, that is, right in the middle of the negotiation process for the Declaration, we can appreciate René Cassin’s observation that this trial “influenced the debate on how or whether to connect human rights and science in the Universal Declaration.”Footnote ¹¹

Nevertheless, despite current affairs and developments, UNESCO’s Constitution puts science at the service of other objectives (peace and security) and does not treat it as a purpose in itself:Footnote ¹²

In this context, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights started out as a succession of working drafts over one and a half years. The first draft was prepared by the Canadian jurist John Peters Humphrey, who had been appointed the first Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights. This draft is a very complete list of the rights which had been recorded in other declarations and reference texts. It was then rearranged and converted into a more consistent draft by the French jurist René Cassin. That draft had to then pass the drafting Committee and the sessions of the Human Rights Commission, before being approved by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and finally, on December 10, 1948, by the General Assembly in a session at the Palais Chaillot in Paris, leading to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as we know it today.

Humphrey’s first draft already included a Right to Science under the same article as a Right to Culture and to the Arts. According to René CassinFootnote ¹³ the article was included on request from cultural organizations, including UNESCO,Footnote ¹⁴ which was represented at this time before the Commission on Human Rights by Jacques L. Havet. Already in this first version, we find that the choice of wording of the text is an important matter to consider.

In Humphrey’s draft, the right is formulated as the right “to share in the benefits of science.” This formulation appears to have been inspired by the Inter-American Juridical Committee for the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man,Footnote ¹⁵ as the Chilean delegation was keen to point out.Footnote ¹⁶ This Declaration had been approved in Bogotá a few months before the Universal Declaration and it stated in its article XIII that “[e]very person has the right to take part in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to participate in the benefits that result from intellectual progress, especially scientific discoveries.”

1.3 Debate on the Purpose of Science in the Declaration

The end goal of science is and has long been a topic of perennial debate. As such, it should come as no surprise that this debate took on some importance during the negotiation of the Declaration in the political context of the Cold War. The debate started during the first rounds of drafting and discussion when the Soviet delegation, led by Alexei Pavlov, nephew of the well-known Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, proposed a new text to the effect that this right should protect and promote certain objectives. The proposal stated that: “the development of science must serve the interest of progress and democracy and the cause of international peace and cooperation.”

The proposal was reasonable enough on its face given that, as the Soviet delegation argued, the preceding article in the Declaration on the Right to Education had been given a new second paragraph on the objectives of education. In its final formulation, article 26 states:

If it had been considered appropriate under the Right to Education to refer to the objectives or aims of education (human development, human rights, understanding, tolerance, peace, and so on), the Soviet proposal of including the objectives of science to be protected and promoted by the Right to Science appeared logical on the same grounds. However, in the end, the three ideas contained in the proposal (progress, democracy, and peace and international cooperation) were voted on separately and all three were rejected. Some States considered that science, and therefore the Right to Science, should not be subject to any purpose, however noble, given that its aim could only be to seek the truth.Footnote ¹⁷

The Ecuadorian delegate explained his vote during the debates on the Declaration by saying that “science should serve the interests of life rather than death, of peace rather than war.” The Soviet proposal seemed reasonable enough, certainly, except when considered under the perverse Cold War logic dominant at the time.Footnote ¹⁸ The fact was that other delegations distrusted the concept of democracy being defended by the USSR and its satellites. Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, feared a right “applied to abstract ideas for which no uniform interpretation existed. It seemed dangerous to adopt a text which could be interpreted as a pretext for the enslavement of science. The US delegation would under no circumstances agree that science should be placed at the service of politics. Yet that might be the practical effect of the USSR amendment.”Footnote ¹⁹ Similarly, the British delegation added that “unfortunately, the conception of democracy and of progress did not seem to be the same everywhere. The word ‘democracy’ could be interpreted in many ways … science should not be at the service of an ideology.”Footnote ²⁰

The Soviet delegation warned about the danger of a “science subservient to militarism and where intellectual forces were concentrated on producing a terrible weapon”Footnote ²¹ twelve years before Eisenhower denounced:

A neutral observer might have considered the Soviet concern as being along the right lines, or even seen it as visionary, although, with the benefit of historical hindsight, the reluctance of the other countries might also appear justified, given that they were faced with Stalin’s militarized Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War.

As we now know, the final formulation, for good or ill, rightly or wrongly, avoided references to the purposes of the Right to Science, or of science itself, beyond enjoying the “benefits which derive from it.”

1.4 Primary Objects of the Right According to the Declaration

At one stage of the Declaration negotiation process the formulation of the right was modified from the initial version based “on the benefits that result from scientific discoveries” to the wider idea of the right to “share in scientific advancement.” This significant change was approved on a proposal from China, based, according to the delegate Peng Chun Chang, on the authority of Francis Bacon.Footnote ²³ Footnote ²⁴ Footnote ²⁵

This change and the loss of the word “benefits” did not last long and it was soon restored.Footnote ²⁶ The Soviet delegation had already voiced its support for the idea of “benefits”: “the benefits of science were not the property of a chosen few, but the heritage of mankind … that the task of science was to work for the advancement of peaceful aims and to make human life better.”Footnote ²⁷ However, the word was recovered on submission from Cuba with the argument that “not everyone was sufficiently gifted to play a part in scientific advancement” and that what was needed was for the text to state that everyone has the right “to share in the benefits that result from scientific advancement.”Footnote ²⁸ Chile supported the Cuban proposal emphasizing that, as the Inter-American Juridical Committee had proposed, the key concept was the idea of “benefits.”

To this both the Chinese and Saudi Arabian delegation added that even if one does not have the capacities to contribute to scientific knowledge, we all nevertheless possess the capacity for certain enjoyments of science beyond just its direct, material benefits.Footnote ²⁹

In the end, however, Cassin agreed with the Cuban vision and declared that “even if all persons could not play an equal part in scientific progress, they should indisputably be able to participate in the benefits derived from it.”Footnote ³⁰

This back-and-forth exchange of ripostes nonetheless ended with the concept of the benefits of science being restored by consensus and added to, rather than substituted into, the Chinese text, which is more important than it may seem.

This historical debate helps explain the prevalence of the misapprehension that the scope of this right is limited to participating in “the benefits of science” which means, among other things, the ability to “be able to receive affordable medicine.”Footnote ³¹ One of this chapter’s intentions is to provide a more comprehensive and ambitious interpretation of this key phrase than the mere idea of “[being] able to receive.” The word “share” in the phrase “everyone has the right freely … to share in scientific advancement and its benefits,” may appear at first sight to be of a high level of generality, and as connoting less engagement or activity than the alternative phrases to “participate” or “take part.” However, given the background above the phrase must in my judgment be taken to indicate an idea of action or agency, of active participation in an enterprise or endeavor, and must therefore be considered in this regard to have the same meaning as “participate” or “take part.”

Against this statement one could argue that since article 27 opens with the expression “everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community,” that had the authors intended to use this same idea of active participation also in science, then they would have used the same word; however, this was not the case as “share in” was chosen instead, possibly precisely to reduce this association with action. However, the French and Spanish versions of the Declaration, which are equally valid, clearly opt for the idea I propose by including the words “participer” and “participar,” which are without doubt identical synonyms of their French and Spanish counterparts, “prendre part” or “tomar parte,” which are used to open the article.

If we examine international law criteria for interpreting identical texts in two or more languages,Footnote ³² we see that “the text is equally authoritative in each language,” that “[t]he terms of the treaty are presumed to have the same meaning in each authentic text” and that “when a comparison of the authentic texts discloses a difference of meaning … the meaning which best reconciles the texts, having regard to the object and purpose of the treaty, shall be adopted.” I propose without doubt that we should opt for an interpretation of “to share in” that is synonymous with “to participate in” or “to take part in” through which we achieve the equivalence of meanings between language versions necessary to “reconcile the texts.”

Further support for this position may be derived from General Comment No. 21 on the Right to Participate in Cultural Life, and the work of the Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), which have previously analyzed the meaning and scope of the term “to participate” or “to take part” in and indicated that “they have the same meaning” and include both “access” and “contribution.”Footnote ³³ The same idea applies to interpreting the Right to Science.Footnote ³⁴

Although this reflection delves deeply into semantics, this analysis is essential to framing our vision of a right which goes beyond “benefit from” and advocates broader concepts of “participation in;” a right which includes participation in scientific creationFootnote ³⁵ (citizen science),Footnote ³⁶ and participation in scientific policy,Footnote ³⁷ among other things. The recent approval of the General Comment No. 25 by CESCRFootnote ³⁸ provides enough guiding elements to revisit this question with new tools.

1.5 A Brief Consideration of the Name of the Right

Up to this point we have referred to this right as the Right to Science, which might appear to some as lacking in technical precision. Many authors outright reject this framing. It does however merit further consideration.

We could refer to this right in the terms of the Universal Declaration as the “right to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” (RSSAB) or in terms of the ICESCR as the “right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications” (REBSP), but it is clear these are both unwieldy and of limited usefulness as formulae if we wish to develop this right, disseminate it, and hope for its uptake and use by the broader society. General Comment No. 25 chooses to use another, more complete, wording which might still suffer some practical problems in the everyday, and certainly oral, usage: “the right to participate in and to enjoy the benefits of Scientific Progress and its Applications (RPEBSPA).”

Some may find in its abbreviated formulation, the Right to Science, opportunities for humor. For example, science is not accessed as of right but through effort and intellectual energy, which is clearly true (since Euclid we have known that “there is no Royal Road to geometry”). Yet, putting cynicism aside, the fact remains that when we speak about the Right to Health,Footnote ³⁹ technically what we are speaking about is the right to the “enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” and not about a right to be healthy by decree. The same applies to the Right to Science. A simple name does not simplify or caricature a right’s normative contents, but is instead intended to offer practical cognitive advantages facilitating familiarity with the concept and easing the cognitive burdens of its use. We are interested in a shorter, more manageable, and more easily popularized formulation than the RSSAB or the REBSP or RPEBSPA. Lea Shaver has suggested a very interesting name, the Right to Science and Culture, which includes the artistic, cultural, and scientific contents of article 27 of the Declaration. For Shaver, “[a]lthough ‘science’ and ‘culture’ are invoked separately in both UNESCO’s name and the Article 27 text, there is no clear dividing line between these two fields …. This integrated approach is captured by my emphasis on the unifying concept of the ‘Right to science and culture.’”Footnote ⁴⁰

There are substantial grounds for this unified approach to science and culture, not the least of which can be discerned from the points this chapter has already made above and in chapters by several other distinguished commentators on the right to science contained within this volume. That said, for practical reasons, and to most effectively develop the contents of science and culture, it is arguably most appropriate to continue, at least for now, working in pursuit of an autonomous Right to Science within the field of cultural rights. Shaver’s proposal still appears to me to be an attractive option full of suggestive possibilities.

Another short-form name for the right, the “right to access to knowledge,” has been suggested, backed by the authority of B. Boutros-Ghali,Footnote ⁴¹ although it could be said that this formulation only refers to some of the possible normative contents of the Right to Science.Footnote ⁴² The Information Society Project at Yale Law School has opted for solid arguments based on the ICESCR for the same formulation of a ‘‘right of access to knowledge” or more briefly still, “the right to knowledge.”Footnote ⁴³ Here, the more flexible and practical “Right to Science” is advanced as the most appropriate, encouraged by the fact that it has already been accepted by a considerable number of authors,Footnote ⁴⁴ scientific and academic associations, social organizations, the first Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights, Farida Shaheed,Footnote ⁴⁵ UNESCO,Footnote ⁴⁶ and some countries.Footnote ⁴⁷

Some may say that what is gained in flexibility is lost in rigor when considered against the REBSP, but it could be said that the short formulation is at once more ambitious because it contains all the contents of a right to actively access science beyond merely passively participating in its benefits. It is this framework that is defended in this chapter. What we shorten in title we increase in contents.

The commitment to an autonomous and differentiated Right to Science must not prevent it from being read together and in harmony with other human rights and in particular with the cultural rights of which it forms part,Footnote ⁴⁸ and with which it is “inherently interlinked”Footnote ⁴⁹ as the Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights rightly says, or as the Information Society Project argues in favor of the right of access to knowledge.

It seems that over time, the use of the expression “Right to Science” will become a familiar shorthand, making this type of nominalist explanation no longer necessary, and it will be used for ease of exposition in the same way we speak about the Right to Health, the Right to Work, or the Right to Housing, which are at least as problematic as the Right to Science when it comes to the gulf existing between a simplistic reading of their formulation and their real contents.

1.6 The Right to Science As a Cultural Right

The importance of science for the enjoyment of other human rights and for sustainable human development is thankfully beyond doubt. Thousands of pages have been written on science’s importance for the challenges facing our societies and our planet, and plenty more on science’s importance for our wellbeing and for the opportunities and possibilities currently in our hands.

Thanks to scientific and technological advancement we have managed, in global terms, to double life expectancy, vanquish much suffering and disease, and we are also able to produce sufficient food to feed the world (the fact that we do not have sufficient institutional, economic, political, or ethical resources to make the most of this capacity is altogether another matter). Bertrand Russell once said that “science can confer two kinds of benefits: it can diminish bad things, and it can increase good things.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Nowadays, we have access to information and knowledge which was previously unimaginable, at a speed and price which surprises us every day. All of this provides us with the opportunity to be free, to choose, to learn, to investigate, … to develop ourselves as persons and as communities, because “the knowledge society has more possibilities for personal freedom than all previous social forms.”Footnote ⁵¹

It is true that this development has brought with it new problems that were previously unknown: new diseases; novel risks and threats like the loss of biodiversity, climate change, contamination; how to apportion and manage control over the continually expanding mass of useful information; loss of privacy; the dilemmas of bioethics; and many others. It is not suggested that science alone can solve these challenges; it is certain, however, that without science they cannot be successfully and responsibly tackled. Science is not therefore ultimately responsible for these challenges, but it is an essential element in meeting them. The response to these challenges must be social, political, economic, ethical,Footnote ⁵² and also scientific, because the response must be based on scientific knowledge on our side.Footnote ⁵³

Science is directly related to various rights up to the point where they have common contents. Take, for example, its interconnections with the Right to Education: education is necessary for the performance of science, and science is essential to any proper education from primary school level and beyond. Consider the Right to Health: the right to enjoy the highest possible level of physical and mental health relies in large part for its fulfilment on the right to benefit from the advancement of scientific progress, and especially its applications. With respect to the Right to Food or the Right to Water and Sanitation, it is clear that science and technology must be allies for progress in the universalization of the enjoyment of those basic needs. As for Rights of Association, Information, and Expression, these are all essential requirements for the smooth and efficient workings of the scientific community. The UNESCO representative at the Commission on Human Rights, Jacques L. Havet, pronounced very clearly on this matter at the Seventh Session: “The right of everyone to enjoy his share of the benefits of science was to a great extent the determining factor for the exercise by mankind as a whole of many other rights.”Footnote ⁵⁴

The relationship between gender equality (or the principle of nondiscrimination on the grounds of gender) and science is also important. Scientific and technological advancement favor equality. Advancements ranging from progress in sexual and reproductive health, to the facilities provided by technology in areas traditionally (and in many places still currently) identified with women, through to scientific evidence of the persistence of the wage gap and continued implicit biases against women in some professions, have been of great practical usefulness in the fight for access by women to other previously taboo, or even vetoed, social and labor areas. Equality is also one of the contents of the Right to science which makes it crucial given there is still considerable imbalance in access to education by women in general and above all to professional technical scientific work in particular. This is so even in countries which are considered advanced in this issue. Inequality also leads to a loss of talent and capacity for science itself, which, given the reflections above on the interconnections between science and several human rights, must necessarily compound to the greater loss of humanity.

Finally, the relationship between democracy and science is also important. Experience has shown that science flourishes more easily in settings with freedom and participation. In turn, science becomes a force for democracy by providing citizens with the knowledge needed to act responsibly in the political debate, and by providing better technological tools for participation.Footnote ⁵⁵ The relationship between science and human development, the Sustainable Development Goals, and a great many other issues could be easily developed. Not much of value, though, would be added to the debate that has not been covered above. What should be highlighted is that intentional emphasis has been placed on the idea of an interrelationship or interdependence between science and other rights and interests. We must not frame a vision of science solely as an instrument for other more valuable objectives, but rather as an interaction between human assets.

This is because the need for a Right to Science is often justified by reference to science’s importance for the enjoyment of other rights and this is exactly the idea I want to challenge: evidently not because it is false, but because it is insufficient for the basis of science as a human right. If science’s role is purely instrumental, for the attainment of other rights, the right to science would in the best of cases be a derivative, instrumental or secondary right. I advance the argument that this right should go much further, and indeed has its own objectives and inherent value which justify it standing alone as a separate human right. In this sense, scientific knowledge makes us more human, it allows us to know ourselves and our environment better, to make better individual and collective decisions, and to enjoy life and its beauty more fully.

There is furthermore a logical, internal reason derived from the UDHR which should be stressed here: the Right to Science is contained within provisions dedicated to cultural rights, in the same category as the right to “participate in the cultural life” and the right to “enjoy the arts.” There is no argument that suggests participation in cultural life or the arts should be justified as human rights by reference to their service to other ulterior or higher purposes, and they are accepted as objectives in themselves. Nor is anyone asked to explain the use of poetry, dance, or music to defend their right to create and enjoy them. The same should be said of science: its relationship to creativity, aesthetic and intellectual enjoyment, and human curiosity and understanding, should suffice in order to justify it as a human right.Footnote ⁵⁶ We might say that the right “to share in scientific advancement” is an objective in itself, additional to “shar[ing] in … its benefits,” where the latter of these expressions is concerned mainly with the useful effects of science on the enjoyment of other rights. More colloquially, we might say that people have a right to science for the same reason as they have a right to literature (read and write), because they are objectives in themselves, universally realizable assets, a human necessity; but that perhaps they have the right to benefit from science, in principle, because they have the right to health or to food. Had the intention been otherwise, the Right to Science would be more of an instrument of economic and social rights, and its logical position would be amongst these. It has, however, right from the beginning, been set amongst the cultural rights because, as stated by a well-known scientist and commentator, “science is culture in capital letters.”Footnote ⁵⁷

Science is a basic human necessity and, as already stated, not only due to its effects on other rights but as a necessity in itself. Science makes us human, just like literature or music, or history or linguistic diversity, and this is why it is a necessity associated with the concept of dignity.

1.7 Final Considerations

This chapter examined the debates and dilemmas that led to the creation of a right that included elements both of participation in and the enjoyment of the benefits of science. It is a right that has profound political implications. It was always a means to achieve other goods and goals, but it was above all a cultural right; that is to say, a good in itself. As a book chapter it was finalized in the middle of the COVID-19 confinement. The current relevance of the right to science is therefore greater than ever.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is a human right that adds key dimensions, some of them previously undervalued, to the debate around science and human rights, from access to knowledge to citizen participation, from transparency to quality, and from promoting the role of women and minorities in science to balancing intellectual property and facilitating universal access to its applications. It includes the need for the promotion of research, development & innovation, public funding and, in conclusion, it puts science at the service of citizens and the world, through international scientific cooperation. There are few challenges more pressing than to revisit the spirit of article 27 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to ensure its revival and enhance its influence in the contemporary era.