International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies Proceedings - Symposium and Seventh Biennial Meeting, London, May 18-20, 2005 (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Workshop: Scientists, Human Rights, and Prospects for the Future
Workshop: Scientists, Human Rights, and Prospects for the Future
Pages 102-154
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From page 102... ...
As Torsten said on Wednesday, the world is changing, and we need to hear the voices of different cultures and countries. A very important part of the biennial meeting is the regional discussions -- an important forum for bringing to the attention of all of us here the different human rights issues that regions face.
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From page 103... ...
The effectiveness of the Network depends on what you do in your own academies to carry out the work. Communicate with your members, ask them to write letters, use the information that Carol provides through the Network as Action Alerts from the Network secretariat.
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From page 104... ...
John Eckert, German Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina First, I think it is generally agreed that this Network should take care of the individual scientists or individuals in the academic field who are in trouble. Second, I think the Network should continue to support and enhance international scientific cooperation, as it was done in the case of Israel and Palestine, especially groups that are in political conflict.
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From page 105... ...
In the colloquium, we address more general questions of human rights and human rights issues. Your second point, regarding contributions to a peaceful settlement of disputes, is also very broad.
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From page 106... ...
There is also the Inter-Academy Panel, which takes on a larger role of trying to articulate statements on major issues of concern to the global science community. These may range from statements about the health of mothers and children, to the importance of science education, to issues related to the global management of water resources.
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From page 107... ...
If such an initiative came, not from the Network, but from the region, then we could facilitate and assist it as a Network. Does your academy have a human rights committee?
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From page 108... ...
But, in terms of the other point, we do invite academies from all over the world. Carol Corillon, U.S.A., [Network Executive Director]
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From page 109... ...
Theoretical discussion is much more important because in Asia, we have no such human rights declaration as the European Convention of Human Rights, but there are so many human rights issues in Asia, so maybe we should combine individual cases with theoretical discussions. That is my proposal.
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From page 110... ...
When we think about human rights in scientific work, the question of duty is much more appropriate when you consider, for instance, biotechnology and human rights, the patenting law and human rights. As a scientist, you consider human rights as somehow a duty.
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From page 111... ...
Harald Reuter, Council of the Swiss Scientific Academies I think we should go back to the roots of why the Network has been created, and it was very clear that the original idea was to help colleagues around the world who spoke up against what they believe was unjust in their countries or elsewhere and for that are imprisoned or badly treated, etc. It could be defined out of the environment where we live -- namely the environment of academia.
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From page 112... ...
The individual academies could be activated to take more initiative. I think you are actually carrying the entire burden on your side.
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From page 113... ...
I would also like to say that, to be effective as scientists, we have to have strong institutions to work from. We are not effective individually, and one of the important things about the creation of a Network like this is that it provides an institutional framework because it is a collection of national science academies working together to pursue a particular objective, which is that of supporting the human rights of scientists when they are threatened and, more broadly, scientific communication and discourse.
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From page 114... ...
The Inter-Academy Panel is also a global organization of science academies, but takes on a broader mandate concerned with a wide variety of science issues that concern the global science community, including the capacity building of academies, education, and some of the other things I mentioned earlier. It has received permanent funding from the Italian government, which is a wonderful thing.
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From page 115... ...
We have both email and the web site. The web site isn't visited enough, and your own academies should have something about the Network on their web sites.
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From page 116... ...
I think there is also information in the agenda book. We will talk more about this issue during the discussion on freedom in the conduct of science and on free circulation this afternoon.
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From page 117... ...
Corillon There are three or four reports on successful cases that are coming up after the break, and a list of resolved cases since the last meeting is in the agenda book. Arjuna Aluwihare, National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka These issues are dangerously close to coming within our purview.
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From page 118... ...
They may not have the resources. Reuter Could the Executive Board put in a request to the Sri Lanka Academy?
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From page 119... ...
Most of our cases are in the developing world, so you felt the meeting should be held in Europe because that is where these things are discussed. But there are problems in all parts of the developing world.
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From page 120... ...
There is, however, a serious dilemma that the Network is facing that will be discussed at the meeting, and Torsten Wiesel has asked me whether I would be willing to write a short statement on this for distribution at the meeting as a point of departure for the discussion. In the past few years there have been a number of serious violations of human rights against which the Network has not protested, since some members of the Network have regarded these cases as political and argued that therefore the Network should not take a stand on them.
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From page 121... ...
I agree with what Lord Dahrendorf said yesterday -- many organizations were originally set up specifically to help individuals, and they have become political. Human Rights Watch is now telling governments that they should do this and that.
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From page 122... ...
Aluwihare I think people are all heated up about Iraq and the World Trade Center because it happens to be Iraq and oil and Europe and America and so on. But if you look at similar events and situations, you will find them in Sri Lanka, in India, and in Sudan, Rwanda, Chechnya, the break-up of Yugoslavia, and other places that don't so immediately have an impact, if you like, 122
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From page 123... ...
I think this Network should concentrate on individual cases and make statements very cautiously. Statements should be restricted to situations in which the rights of individual scientists may be being infringed.
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From page 124... ...
Khatib in the agenda book, that of Akram Kharroubi, a Palestinian. For these cases, we haven't been able to establish that they are prisoners of conscience, but a member of the Network has requested that the Network be alerted.
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From page 125... ...
The easy cases are the ones that fall under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and those we really focus on. As for the others, we can't have rules for the gray areas because the cases are all different.
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From page 126... ...
In the book given to you by Torsten Wiesel the other day, there is a statement by Amartya Sen, who comes from my land, Why is half the country hungry? That is the problem that has to be addressed because, over the years, science has become a power, an instrument of change.
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From page 127... ...
The question is Are academies addressing the problems of the gravest interest to their own countries and to the region? That would give them credibility with the common people, who would not take them to be a bunch of ivory tower people, far removed from the miseries of life.
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From page 128... ...
Again, the question is how to involve the scientific societies. Wiesel Is that something for consideration now?
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From page 129... ...
What I was trying to say is something different. The science academies have to think as the scientific think-tank of the governments.
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From page 130... ...
The population has doubled, but we are still self-sufficient, because the agricultural scientists have put some very good inputs into agriculture. If the science academies of the world act as scientific think-tanks of the government and do something for the common people, then they garner high credibility.
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From page 131... ...
Funders all over the world need good information about the development of science education in various countries. Michiatsu Kaino, Science Council of Japan I think the scientist is also the educator, especially so the common people understand that science is sometimes the cause of war.
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From page 132... ...
Of course -- if you read the blue book [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] -- you know that part of human rights is to receive an education.
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From page 133... ...
Comment I think you have raised a very important point. Yves Quéré at The French Academy of Sciences, through a program called La Main à la Pâte, has encouraged its academicians to go to schools and talk to schoolchildren, who are very encouraged by the experience.
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From page 134... ...
Also, we began to know that medical doctors were involved in the torture and deaths. Being myself a professor at the faculty of medicine, I began to do some investigations of my own to try to know who was in charge because they were most probably former students of mine, though I taught biochemistry, not torture.
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From page 135... ...
This was just a few months after the Uruguayan military regime gave up power, so it was a great time to try to figure out what had happened. Everybody wanted to say "I didn't do it, it was the other guy who did it." I talked to some Uruguayan military intelligence folks who took great pride in the systematic role of physicians in the rough interrogation that they admitted was torture.
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From page 136... ...
So, one would expect to have a few cases of doctors imprisoned and maybe tortured in turn because they refused to participate. Corillon In 1985, the president of the Medical College in Chile, Juan Luis Gonzalez, called us at the U.S.
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From page 137... ...
They weren't -- but subsequently Juan Luis Gonzalez was arrested. The medical college immediately called us again, and we went back to appeal to the ambassador because we had already established a relationship.
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From page 138... ...
In most parts of the Chilean universities, what they try to do is a very broad ethics course, and the medical students and the science students get bored in the first lecture and then try to avoid going. So what I do in the ethics course I teach on the science faculty, is what I call an operational course on bioethics.
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From page 139... ...
That is a big difference from Abu Ghraib, where the military intelligence people don't even speak the same language. As Jonathan Marks mentioned yesterday, the United States had such a shortage of Arabic-speaking military personnel that they hired an outside firm to supply Arabic speakers.
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From page 140... ...
Then there is the culture that reinforces that. The people doing it don't think of it as "torture lite," they think of it as "not torture." They think of it as humane treatment.
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From page 141... ...
But, unfortunately, universality of science really doesn't mean that. Six months ago the International Council for Science (ICSU)
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From page 142... ...
It considered, once again, this question of a call for boycotts against, in this case, two Israeli universities. They issued a statement that I'll read in part to you: The Council of the National Academy of Sciences has always been opposed to academic boycotts and we continue to call on the members of the world scientific community to support freedom in the conduct of science and cooperative scientific exchange, as outlined in our August 2002 statement, .
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From page 143... ...
We live in a very complicated world, and the scientific community can play a very special ethical role in that world. We try to do that to the extent that we are capable.
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From page 144... ...
One of the big aims of the global science community, as reflected in the InterAcademy Panel, is to try and help other academies acquire the tools and capabilities to be more effective in influencing the policies of their government that have a science and technology component. We think that is a worthy aim.
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From page 145... ...
For example, that document that we agreed on this morning, short and sharp, is the sort of thing that would be useful for him to actually see from us, rather than through a biased and circuitous route. Agre I don't have a good answer, but the sad truth is that the presidential science advisor is a fairly new institution.
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From page 146... ...
One I can cite was done shortly after the 9/11 event. The academy took $1.3 million of its own money to do a very complicated study on homeland security issues in the United States, because it was quite clear that fast-track legislation was going forward to create a new department of government, and there was a huge amount that science could say about what the real threats were and how they might be intelligently managed.
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From page 147... ...
Very often we glorify what science can do, but when we look at the trajectory of human society, we have to worry. In the universality of science, we talk about ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political stance, and so forth.
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From page 148... ...
Wiesel At the same time that scientists are aware of the energy crisis, the investment made by the government in support, for example, in physics, has declined. The National Science Foundation (NSF)
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From page 149... ...
We're doing okay, but we could do a lot better. We all agree that the pressing issues that the science community ought to be concerned about on a global level are how to accommodate another 3 billion people, how to deal with emergent diseases, and how to deal with global water resources.
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From page 150... ...
IPSO meeting there, following this meeting. I know from Carol that you have been invaluable in making all this possible.
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From page 151... ...
The main players and the originators of IPSO are all here. The first idea of IPSO, as far as I'm aware, actually came up at a UNESCO meeting in Paris in the fall of 2002, in which Menahem Yaari, Sari Nusseibeh, Torsten Wiesel, and, of course, Carol Corillon, came together and discussed the possibility of setting up a science organization between Israelis and Palestinians.
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From page 152... ...
It is certainly a great achievement, mainly by Dan Bitan, that IPSO is now registered in Belgium as a legal organization. It is a lot easier to convince governments that this is something real and to try to raise money when it is written down legally.
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From page 153... ...
Johannes Eckert, German Academy of Natural Sciences-Leopoldina, Germany The human rights committee of the German academy of sciences has also considering establishing a small supporting committee but then we made some inquiries and discovered that the German Science Foundation is supporting research programs in Israel since 1995 -- about 27 projects. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has special programs for cooperation between Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
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From page 154... ...
They have now, through the Bronfman Philanthropies, hired Janet Lowenthal, who I seated in the back, and is now actively helping to raise funds in the United States for IPSO. Wiesel Thank you all for coming here, for spending two and a half days listening to the discussion, participating, and making very fine comments.
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