The 1975 Declaration: How It Came About

In one line

The General Assembly proclaimed in 1975 that science must serve peace and human rights, and it did so because of the arms race, decolonisation and the demand of newly independent States for technology.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Declaration on the Use of Scientific and Technological Progress in the Interests of Peace and for the Benefit of Mankind was proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 3384 (XXX) of 10 November 1975; its title states its purpose, and its preamble records that scientific and technological progress has become one of the most important factors in the development of human society, that developments can give rise to social problems, as well as threaten the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the individual, that achievements can be used to intensify the arms race, suppress national liberation movements and deprive individuals and peoples of their human rights, and that the transfer of science and technology is one of the principal ways of accelerating the economic development of developing countries.

Reading the title

The title is unusually informative and should be quoted in an answer: Declaration on the Use of Scientific and Technological Progress in the Interests of Peace and for the Benefit of Mankind.

"Use", not development, discovery or regulation. The instrument is not about whether science should proceed but about the purposes to which its results are put, which is the dual-use structure of [Dual Use: the Same Technology Both Ways] stated in a title.

"In the interests of peace" is the first purpose named, and it comes before human rights. That order tells the reader what the drafters were most worried about.

And "for the benefit of mankind" is the distributive purpose, which the operative paragraphs turn into obligations about developing countries and about all strata of the population.

The setting, as the preamble records it

An answer on how the Declaration came about should be built from its own recitals rather than from general history, and the recitals name four things.

The arms race

The preamble notes with concern that scientific and technological achievements can be used to intensify the arms race. In 1975 the arms race was nuclear, and the concern is a concern about the direction of scientific effort itself: that the most capable science of the age was being applied to weapons.

This is why paragraph 1 leads with peace and security, and why paragraph 4 forbids the use of scientific achievements for the purposes of violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other States, interfering in their internal affairs, waging aggressive wars. [Weapons, Warfare and the Right to Life] takes the substance.