2
Bridging Human Rights and Engineering

The goals of the symposium’s first session were to clarify the concepts of human rights, social justice, and ethics, and to examine the overlap between human rights and engineering across disciplines. Theresa Harris, Director of the Center for Scientific Responsibility and Justice at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), provided an overview of historic and ongoing work in this area. Tyler Giannini, Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, addressed the international human rights framework and its relevance for engineering. Maya Carrasquillo, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and Shareen Hertel, the Wiktor Osiatyński Chair of Human Rights and Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, then presented their perspectives on the intersection of engineering and human rights. An open discussion moderated by Harris followed the three presentations.

In her introduction to this session, Harris noted that work at the intersection of engineering and human rights is not new and that several organizations have been grappling with issues in this area for many years. She mentioned that her own organization and its Science and Human Rights Coalition, which is composed of STEM associations that are actively involved in exploring the connections between science, engineering, and human rights. Harris highlighted the AAAS Statement on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, which says in part that “[s]cientific responsibility is the duty to conduct and apply science with integrity, in the interest of humanity, in a spirit of stewardship for the environment, and with respect for human rights.”⁵ She also emphasized that the connections between science, engineering, and human rights are recognized in international human rights law, citing Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which calls for states to “recognize the right of everyone…[t]o enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications.”⁶

However, Harris observed that the area of human rights and engineering is underexplored and that it is important to think deeply about how we can make real progress for society by exploring the connections between these fields.

EXCHANGES BETWEEN HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTITIONERS AND ENGINEERS

In his presentation, Tyler Giannini discussed what a human rights framework brings to the table for engineers, how engineers can fill gaps to help human rights practitioners, and where possibilities exist for exchange, experimentation, and joint problem solving.

Giannini noted that the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10, 1948, as the foundational document on human rights. It was not, however, binding law when adopted. Some people argue that parts of the Declaration are now customary international law, but putting aside that question, it provides, at a minimum, moral and ethical language that is relevant for the discussion of human rights and engineering. This UDHR framework has since served as the foundation for legal frameworks and legal institutions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights cited by Harris, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and treaties on issues such as racial discrimination, discrimination against women, torture, enforced disappearance, children’s rights, and the rights of persons with disabilities. These treaties represent binding law on the parties. Since the end of World War II, international legal institutions, which include regional human rights courts and bodies such as the International Criminal Court, have been established to enforce the law. Bodies such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have also been established and are involved in important functions such as investigations and monitoring of right violations. Importantly, human rights investigations and enforcement bodies also now exist at the national level.

The international human rights framework continues to evolve. Notably, the UN Human Rights Council adopted the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011.⁷ Although the UN Guiding Principles are not a treaty, said Giannini, countries have started to incorporate them into their laws. In 2021, the UN Human Rights Council also recognized the right to a clean and healthy environment, and in 2022, the UN General Assembly did the same. These are new, dynamic areas, he mentioned, and offer possibilities for combining the disciplines of human rights and engineering.

Giannini explained what is meant by the duty to respect, protect, and fulfill under international human rights law, using the right to health and access to health care in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as an example. If a government blocks access to a hospital, for example, it is violating its duty to respect its citizens’ right to access health care. If a corporation running the hospital decides to block entry for all children, the government has a legal obligation to protect against this harm as well. The duty to fulfill refers to a country’s obligation to take active steps to improve access to health care by putting plans and processes in place. Engineers can play a role both in the reactive and forward-looking aspects of human rights compliance.

One challenge in this context is operationalizing high-level human rights principles for businesses and making them more granular, said Giannini. “That granularity is one of the limitations of the human rights lawyering side of things,” he observed. “We are good at setting up frameworks and we can get into the regulatory space, but how do we actually work within a company to develop systems … and actually [solve] problems?”

In the context of business and human rights, three pillars are understood: (1) the state’s duty to protect from third-party harm,⁸ (2) companies’ responsibility to respect human rights, and (3) remedies. There is a need to continue to operationalize these existing pillars, and this, Giannini said, is where the Fourth Pillar Initiative⁹ may be relevant. This initiative focuses on rights holders and expanding efforts to center communities in business and human rights, including for example involving these groups in co-development of solutions and in co-governance that extends beyond simple consultation models.

Another important consideration when working with a community as a partner is the right to information. “How do you actually turn things that are quite technical into accessible engagement?” asked Giannini. This kind of question about the operationalization of human rights needs more attention, he asserted, “but also needs both lawyers and the people generating the technical documents at the same table.”

The human rights movement has been criticized for being too reactive and too focused on after-the-fact harms and making the responsible parties accountable, said Gianni. “We’re not as much in the problem-solving, solutions-oriented space, and we need to be.” He has recently become involved in a collaboration with colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on issues involving the right to cooling¹⁰ because extreme heat has become deadly in parts of the world. Giannini noted that this effort highlights the significance of human rights and how attention to them enhances the value of scientists’ and engineers’ contributions through the systems they develop and implement.

HOW DO WE BRIDGE ENGINEERING AND HUMAN RIGHTS?

Maya Carrasquillo began her remarks by offering several definitions of engineering:

• It is the systematic application of scientific knowledge in developing and applying technology.
• It involves the knowledge from the mathematical and natural sciences, both biological and physical, gained by study, experience, and practice applied with judgment and creativity to develop ways of using the materials and forces of nature to benefit humankind.
• It is a systematic and often iterative approach to designing objects, processes, and systems to meet human needs and wants.
• It is the act of creating artifacts, processes, or systems that advance technology and address human needs using principles of the sciences, mathematics, computing, and operations.

A common thread among these definitions, said Carrasquillo, is that engineering is an application that involves some measure of systems or standards of practice to benefit humankind and address human needs.

On the question of how to bridge engineering and human rights, Carrasquillo started with the idea that human needs are those things that make people most human, such as access to water, food, clothing, and shelter. Human needs also include immaterial things such as community, dignity, free will, and freedom of choice. Human rights, under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,¹¹ involve protecting, respecting, and remedying. Engineering, she said, can go beyond these three principles supporting the development of proactive approaches to prevent harms and protect human rights.

Carrasquillo noted that the first fundamental canon of engineering ethics is to hold paramount the safety and welfare of the public. Recently, this has evolved to include a social justice framework. In that respect, a human rights framework for engineering extends the motivation for engineers beyond ethics, morality, legality, and citizenry to applications based on humanity. In this way, a human rights framing becomes the starting point for enforcing additional measures of accountability and for standardizing engineering practices.

Although engineering for a human standard typically refers to social justice and equity and focuses on low-income and/or racially marginalized communities, Carrasquillo said it can also extend, for example, to people who are experiencing houselessness, who are incarcerated, or who are undocumented immigrants. Such extensions raise the concern of how to ensure that engineering to meet human needs is based on humanity and is not limited to legalities.

Carrasquillo provided an example of how she has applied these ideas. She teaches an undergraduate class called Engineering and Reimagining Just Futures. In one project, students worked alongside a community partner in West Oakland, CA, to evaluate how to build resilience for housed and unhoused neighbors. The students served as engineering consultants for projects regarding food, energy, drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, housing, transportation, and emergency preparedness. Each team of students developed a plan of action for the community partner and a plan for communicating with the broader community.

In closing, Carrasquillo said that engineering can be a means to inform the practical application of human rights to address needs, perhaps even beyond basic needs. “Bridging engineering and human rights can continue to build upon the ethical and justice framings that challenge [engineers] to think about the complexity and opportunities of operationalizing human rights into engineering standards,” she said.

ENGINEERING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Shareen Hertel defined a human right as “a claim by someone, on someone, for something essential to human dignity.” All of the human rights documents that exist are in the service of this principle. Human rights are relational, with the claim-making structure being not only about shaming and blaming but also about empowering and creating shared commitments to fulfillment. Hertel observed that rights and duties go together. Human rights law, she said, binds states, which set laws that bind people and other entities to act in ways that respect human dignity.

Hertel said that a comprehensive approach to engineering for human rights includes multiple types of rights. Civil and political human rights, she said, protect people from harm,

___________________

¹¹ https://www.ohchr.org/en/publications/reference-publications/guiding-principles-business-and-human-rights

while economic, social, and cultural human rights promote access to rights that are instrumental to well-being. The parallels to the latter in engineering are inclusive design and community benefits assessment. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the speed with which vaccines were developed resulted from experimenting with inclusive ways of sharing knowledge absent the traditional strictures around patenting and process development. Hertel noted that “economic, social, and cultural rights … are often the poor stepsister in American discourse around rights, and yet the field of engineering is the one best suited to … helping us measure and then cumulatively develop new ways of enhancing our access to those economic, social, and cultural rights.”

Engineering for human rights has practical implications, said Hertel, including

• enabling people who have taken an oath as professional engineers to better exercise their obligation to do no harm and enhance benefits;
• addressing the ethical implications of engineering using universal norms and standards, such as those applying to hazardous forms of child labor;
• covering the social and environmental effects of activity in the field, particularly at the intersection of risk, harm, and benefit;
• linking to the safety and well-being of employees, customers, and other stakeholders;
• linking to legal requirements, such as due diligence for supply chain management, and voluntary standards, such as industry codes of conduct;
• linking to reputational factors such as negative publicity or positive positioning at the firm or unit level; and
• linking to concrete carry-on effects of engineering, such as reduced turnover, increased productivity, increased policy coherence, and creative synergies among individuals from different disciplines.

Hertel described a conceptual framework based on principles of engineering for human rights that she has developed with colleagues at the University of Connecticut (Figure 2-1). It includes attending to distributive justice, broad-based participation, consideration of duty bearers to ensure the fair distribution of benefits of new technology, accountability when problems arise, and the indivisibility of rights. She noted in closing that engineering for human rights includes a preventive approach that focuses on preventing negative impacts on the rights of people or groups, a remedial approach that focuses on research and remedial measures when problems occur, and a proactive approach that ensures the right of access to technologies.

DISCUSSION

A participant working in Myanmar asked how these ideas can be implemented in areas where authoritarian regimes are committing human rights violations. Giannini said that some semblance of the rule of law is required to work on projects from the solution side. In addition, corporations should consider whether to enter or withdraw from particular countries once certain lines have been crossed.

A remote participant asked how engineers working in for-profit organizations can accelerate human rights–focused engineering. Hertel responded that engineers are duty bearers in a company and can harness existing structures of accountability and supply chain management that are intrinsic to any company’s operations. Engineers should consider when it is appropriate to challenge short-termism that might create immediate gain over innovation or commitment to inclusion, for example, that can better position the company in the long term. Carrasquillo added that she aims to give her engineering students the tools and training needed to begin to actualize the principles that the speakers discussed in their work environments and to consider justice and equity in how they frame their engineering-based projects.

In response to the final inquiry of the session, Giannini and Carrasquillo discussed the role that culture plays in people’s or communities’ responses to human rights–based approaches. Giannini said that, although human rights are universal, how they are understood in different cultures may vary. Culture, Carrasquillo said, thus must be factored into thinking about applying human rights principles in engineering. Being able to understand and appropriately apply personal definitions of human rights, acknowledging that individuals bring disparate perspectives to such questions, and recognizing that human rights issues can be complex are important in the conversation.