UNESCO's Human and Social Science Program is not doing its job!

"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."
Article 27, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"Appearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), experts from AAAS testified that the long-established but rarely applied right could help address a range of challenges in the Americas."
Science magazine


"UNESCO Ethics of Science and Technology Programme was created in 1998 with the establishment of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) to give an ethical reflection on science and technology and its applications"
UNESCO Website

"With regard to the advancement of human rights, action is concentrated in areas where UNESCO has a special mandate: generating and sharing knowledge, protecting human rights, renewing and reinforcing commitment to human rights education and providing advisory services and technical assistance to Member States."
UNESCO Website

7.6 million children under the age of five die every year, according to 2010 figures.
Over two-thirds of these early child deaths are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions.
WHO Website

If more than five million children die each year from conditions that could have been prevented or treated with simple and affordable interventions, then these kids are being denied their rights to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. Indeed, billions of people every day are being denied those rights.

There is no society in which people are not being denied the right to share equitably in scientific advancement and its benefits. In many societies that vast majority of people are subject to egregious denials of that right. The denial of that right is profoundly immoral.

COMEST does not seem to be giving ethical reflection on the enormous gap between what science makes possible and what people actually realize of that possibility. More generally, UNESCO does little to protect the human right to share in the benefits of scientific advancement.