The right to benefit from scientific progress and its applications
“The right of everyone to share in scientific advancement and its benefits is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, in slightly different terms, as the right to benefit from scientific progress and its applications in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It is also recognized in other international and regional human rights instruments. The scope, normative content and obligations of the State under this right, referred herein as “the right to science”, remain underdeveloped while scientific innovations are changing human existence in ways that were inconceivable a few decades ago.
The right to science is usually regarded as a means to advance the realization of other human rights and to address “the needs common to all humanity” or in terms of the “potentially adverse consequences for the integrity, dignity and human rights of the individual”.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur hopes to catalyse a robust discussion among States, scientific researchers and practitioners, civil society groups and the private sector to further elucidate the right to science.”