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Note to the reader from the UNU
The UN Commission on Human Rights invited the United Nations University in 1986 to study both the positive and negative impacts of scientific and technological development on human rights and fundamental freedoms. The University responded to the invitation by launching a research project on the interrelationship between human rights and the advances in science and technology, focusing especially on the interaction between socio-cultural, economic, and political factors on the one hand and scientific and technological advances on the other. One aim of the project was to formulate policy recommendations that will strengthen the positive impacts of technological development, and an effort was made to survey the opinions and perceptions of international experts and human rights lawyers in developing countries in order that those recommendations would carry not only social scientific significance but have legal applicability as well.
This publication is a sequel to Human Rights and Scientific and Technological Development, edited by C.G. Weeramantry and published by the United Nations University Press in 1990. It includes a philosophical overview and case-studies relating to Western Europe, Eastern Europe (with special reference to Poland), Latin America (Venezuela), South-East Asia (Thailand), and Africa (Ethiopia).