UNESCO

SouthViews No. 286, 9 April 2025

Human Rights Council 58: Neurotechnology, Ethical Frontiers and Human Rights

By Daniel Uribe

The UN Human Rights Council’s 58th session examined the impact of neurotechnology on human rights, with a particular focus on privacy. The Special Rapporteur guided discussions on the report on neurotechnology, which detailed risks to privacy, autonomy, and mental integrity, and proposed principles such as human dignity, informed consent, stringent security measures, rights-by-design, and precautionary approaches to the development of this technology. This SouthViews considers the Member States’ discussion during the presentation of this report, taking into account the profound ethical challenges, the need for safeguards, equitable access (especially for developing nations), and international cooperation, while voicing concerns about potential misuse. The relevance of UNESCO’s ongoing work on the ethics of neurotechnology is also considered. The session underscored the pressing need for a proactive, holistic, and ethically grounded governance framework for neurotechnology, emphasizing core human rights principles and international collaboration to ensure the responsible development and use of this technology.

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Research Paper 163, 19 August 2022

The Human Right to Science: From Fragmentation to Comprehensive Implementation?

By Peter Bille Larsen and Marjorie Pamintuan

In times when the role of science in society is more debated than ever in polarized, politicized and partial terms, what is the role for the human right to science and rights-based approaches? The right to science remains poorly understood and neglected in both national and global human rights processes. Beyond defending the freedom of scientific expression, upholding the right to science is arguably fundamental to resolving key sustainability challenges of our times from climate change and the biodiversity crisis to global health and pandemics. The global COVID-19 pandemic has revealed persistent global inequalities not least in terms of how the privatization of science and current intellectual property regimes hinder just and equitable responses to access science and its benefits. This prompts the need for a shift from single-issue approaches to comprehensive and systematic treatment of the right to science as a bundle of human rights across multiple arenas to counter fragmentation and silo-tendencies.

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