On Nov. 10 of every year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization celebrates World Science Day for Peace and Development. This year, UNESCO celebrates World Science Day with the theme “Science, a Human Right.”
What does it mean for science to be a human right? And how do we know that science is a human right in the first place?
To answer the first question, we need to know what it means for something to be a human right. We also need to know what science is in the first place. That makes it a bit more challenging to answer. To make it easier, let us start with the latter question.
On Dec. 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This year marks its 70th anniversary.
The UDHR was adopted by the countries of the world to aid in setting out, for the first time, “fundamental human rights to be universally protected.” In its preamble, the Declaration recognizes “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as the “foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”
Many of the rights in the UDHR are known to many. Examples are the right to freedom of conscience and religion, the right to not be enslaved, and the right to not be tortured. These well-known rights are guaranteed by Articles 18, 4, and 5 of the UDHR, respectively.
What is less known is that in Article 27, the Declaration guarantees that everyone has the right to “share in scientific advancements and its benefits.” In addition to this, Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) also requires governments to “recognize the right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications” and even to “conserve, develop, and diffuse science.”
In other words, under these Declarations and Covenants agreed to by the nations of the world, science is indeed a human right.
So, what does it mean for science to be a human right? What is a human right, anyway?
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines human rights as “norms that help to protect people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses.” These norms are sometimes enshrined in law, such as in the Philippine Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
What all this means is that sharing in the advancements and benefits of science must be a norm to everyone in the world. Better yet, sharing in the benefits of science must be strengthened by laws that are then enacted by governments.
Sadly, as with many human rights, many people do not have access to the benefits of scientific advancements. This means that the norms of our society or the actions of our government does not always ensure that everyone can have access to products of science.
One does not have to look very deep into the Philippine context to see how so many of our fellow Filipinos do not have access to the benefits of science.
First of all, the Philippines has a lot of room for improvement in terms of scientific literacy. According to official data, only around 60 percent of Filipinos 20 and older have a functional literacy of a high school graduate. If we combine the fact that functional literacy is a minimal measure with the facts about most Filipinos’ media diet and the number of available avenues for popularizing science in the Philippines, we come to a worrying conclusion.
What should make us worry even more is that we live in an age when scientific literacy is a very important tool for survival. Scientific literacy helps one decide whether to vaccinate one’s children or not, how to distinguish experts from charlatans, and how to distinguish reputable sources of information from unreputable ones or worse, from so-called “fake news.” The response of many members of the public from the Dengvaxia debacle shows how crucial improving our scientific literacy is.
This problem is not unique to the Philippines. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “[Governments] have largely ignored their Article 15 obligations and neither the human rights nor the scientific communities have brought their skills and influential voices to bear on the promotion and application of this rights in practice.”
Seeing how central science and its products are to the modern world, we must assert, more than ever before, our right to share in the products and process of science. In other words, we must insist that our government protect our human right to the benefits of scientific advancement through passing and enforcing laws that allow us to access these benefits that are the shared heritage of all of us.
