LLM Group 4 Human Rights Law Science Technology and Human Rights 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions

Article 27(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 provides that everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, TO ENJOY THE ARTS AND TO SHARE IN SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT AND ITS BENEFITS, and Article 27(2) protects the moral and material interests of an author.

Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966 makes it binding. Article 15(1)(b) recognises the right of everyone to ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS AND ITS APPLICATIONS; Article 15(1)(c) protects the author's moral and material interests; Article 15(2) requires steps for the conservation, development and diffusion of science and culture; Article 15(3) requires respect for the FREEDOM INDISPENSABLE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH and creative activity; and Article 15(4) requires encouragement of international contacts and cooperation in the scientific field.

Relation two: science as the enabler of other rights

Almost every socio economic right is delivered by technology, and the content of the right rises with the technology available. The right to the highest attainable standard of health under Article 12 of the Covenant means something different after antibiotics, vaccines and imaging; the right to an adequate standard of living under Article 11 is delivered by agricultural science, water treatment and sanitation; the right to education under Article 13 by printing and now by networks; and the right to freedom of expression and information under Article 19 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966, which protects the freedom to seek, receive and impart information REGARDLESS OF FRONTIERS AND THROUGH ANY MEDIA, is a clause about technology on its face.

This relation produces the ACCESS problem rather than a prohibition problem. Where a technology exists that could vindicate a right and is not available to a population, the failure is distributive, and the legal instruments that address it are compulsory licensing, technology transfer and benefit sharing rather than prohibition.

Relation three: science as a threat to rights

The same capability threatens the rights it serves, and the threat takes four recognisable forms.

Relation four: science as the proof of violation

This relation is usually omitted and it is the one on which modern human rights practice depends. Forensic pathology and exhumation establish custodial death and extrajudicial execution; DNA identification returns the disappeared to their families; satellite imagery establishes the destruction of villages; digital forensics authenticates a video; and epidemiological method establishes the effect of a chemical release. Without these, most serious allegations would be unprovable. The technique that exposes the violation is the same technique that can commit it, which is the clearest single statement of the whole relationship.

The consent principle. Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966, provides that no one shall be subjected without his FREE CONSENT to medical or scientific experimentation, a clause inserted in direct response to what the Nuremberg trials had exposed.

The Indian reception. The right to health under Article 21 was established in Consumer Education and Research Centre v. Union of India, (1995) 3 SCC 42, where the Supreme Court held that the right to health and medical care to protect health and vigour while in service and after retirement is a fundamental right, and directed asbestos industries to maintain health records, observe permissible exposure limits and compensate for asbestosis. Privacy was established in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, where nine judges held privacy to be intrinsic to Article 21 and to the freedoms in Part III, and laid down that an intrusion must satisfy legality, a legitimate State aim and proportionality; the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is Parliament's response. And the environmental consequences of technology entered Article 21 through Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, (1991) 1 SCC 598, and the absolute liability rule created for a hazardous enterprise in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1987) 1 SCC 395.

Artificial intelligence. The Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in November 2021, was the first global standard setting instrument in the field, built on human rights, dignity, proportionality, safety, fairness, transparency, explainability and human oversight. On 21 MARCH 2024 the General Assembly adopted its FIRST RESOLUTION on artificial intelligence, on the promotion of safe, secure and trustworthy systems for sustainable development, without a vote and with 123 co sponsors, resolving to bridge the divides between and within countries. Neither instrument is binding.

The binding regulation so far is regional and national: the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act of 2024 regulates by tier of risk and prohibits certain practices outright, and India has proceeded through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and sectoral advisories rather than by a dedicated statute. The human rights questions are the ones identified above: automated discrimination in credit, employment, policing and welfare; the surveillance capability of facial recognition; and the participation entitlement, since a person affected by an automated decision must be able to know that one was made and on what basis.

Conclusion. Science and human rights are related in four ways and an answer that captures only one has missed the subject. Science is the SUBJECT of a right in Article 27 of the Universal Declaration and Article 15 of the Covenant of 1966, whose content was finally set out in General Comment No. 25 on 6 March 2020, and it is the least invoked right in the whole instrument. It is the ENABLER of the rights to health, food, water, education and information, which makes its distribution a legal question. It is a THREAT, through surveillance, bodily intrusion, weapons and automated discrimination, which is why Article 7 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights forbids experimentation without free consent and why the Nuremberg Code of 1947 began with consent as absolutely essential. And it is the PROOF by which violations are established, which is why the same forensic capability serves the victim and the perpetrator. The principle that holds the four together is that a technology is neutral in capability and never in effect, and the legal consequence is that regulation must reach design and deployment, and that the people who will bear the risk must be heard before it is deployed and not after.