Skip to main content
Skip to search
Skip to footer

Starter Kit: Resources

Helping Your Scientific Society Promote Human Rights: Resources

There is a range of resources available for your exploration of science and human rights. The following are good places to start.

The Coalition seeks to become a major resource for scientific associations that want to establish or explore human rights programs or activities. Member Organizations are entitled to:

  • Benefit from the Coalition’s programs, workshops, and materials in five areas of activity and joint initiative mentioned above;
  • Receive assistance in organizing science and human rights workshops, annual meeting sessions;
  • Receive assistance in developing principles on science and human rights for ethics codes;
  • Link with scientists and scientific associations across disciplines;
  • Link with the human rights community both in the United States and abroad;
  • Access human rights expertise; and
  • Join the Coalition listserv and receive news and information about science and human rights developments, events, and publications.

Affiliated Organizations have the benefit of:

  • Coalition support in introducing human rights to their associations;
  • Participation in all Coalition activities, including area of activity working groups; and
  • Joining the Coalition listserv to receive news and information about science and human rights developments, events, and publications.

B. Speakers

The AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition helps members to identify speakers for association meeting sessions and presentations. Speakers can be found who work in specific disciplines or who can address science and human rights more broadly.  For help in finding a speaker(s), contact: SRHRL.

C. Associations as a Resource

Scientific associations and professional societies that are engaged in a range of human rights activities can serve as excellent resources.

Human Rights Committees, Sections, Working Groups

Awards for Human Rights Work

Declarations, Resolutions, and Statements on Human Rights

Defending the Welfare of Scientists

  • American Anthropological Association
  • American Historical Association
  • American Philosophical Association
  • American Physical Society
  • American Political Science Association
  • American Sociological Association
  • International Studies Association

Ethics Codes Incorporating Human Rights

D. Publications and Websites

Journals

Websites

AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition Resources:

The Science and Human Rights Coalition Resources webpage offers a searchable database, annotated bibliography, and course syllabi addressing the connection between science and human rights. Additionally, the webpage links to previous partnerships between scientists and human rights organizations, and to over two dozen scientific societies engaged in human rights.

AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program:

“The AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program works with scientists to ‘advance science and serve society’ through human rights. The Program carries out its mission by engaging individual scientists and scientific associations in human rights efforts; applying scientific tools and technologies to enhance human rights work; bringing human rights standards to the conduct of science; and promoting the human right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress.”

Human Rights Education Associates:

“Human Rights Education Associates (HREA) is an international non-governmental organization that supports human rights learning; the training of activists and professionals; the development of educational materials and programming; and community-building through on-line technologies. HREA is dedicated to quality education and training to promote understanding, attitudes and actions to protect human rights, and to foster the development of peaceable, free and just communities.”

University of Minnesota Human Rights Library:

“The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library houses one of the largest collections of more than sixty thousand core human rights documents, including several hundred human rights treaties and other primary international human rights instruments. The site also provides access to more than four thousands links and a unique search device for multiple human rights sites. This comprehensive research tool is accessed by more than 250,000 students, scholars, educators, and human rights advocates monthly from over 150 countries around the world. Documents are available in nine languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.”

E.  Some Recent Titles in Science and Human Rights

The following is not an exhaustive bibliography but simply a listing of some recent publications of relevance.

  • Chapman, Audrey R.“Towards an Understanding of the Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and Its Applications.” Journal of Human Rights, vol. 8, 2009: 1-36.
  • Chapman, Audrey R. and Sage Russell. Core Obligations: Building a Framework for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Antwerp: Intersentia, 2002.
  • Claude, Richard Pierre. Science in the Service of Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
  • Claude, Richard Pierre. “Science and Human Rights.” Human Rights Encyclopedia (4 vols.). Edited by David P. Forsythe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Donders, Yvonne and Vladimir Volodin, eds. Human Rights in Education, Science and Culture: Legal Developments and Challenges. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2007.
  • Murphy, Therese. New Technologies and Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Rubenstein, Leonard and Mona Younis. “Scientists and Human Rights.” Science, 28 November 2008: 1303.

Related Scientific Disciplines