Introduction

Abstract

Mikel Mancisidor explores how and under what circumstances the right to science entered the UDHR, and what the travaux préparatoire of the Declaration may tell us about why those who drafted the Declaration chose these precise words – what they intended to say, and what they avoided saying. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights started out as a succession of working drafts over one and a half years. The first draft was prepared by the Canadian jurist John Peters Humphrey, who had been appointed the first Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights. This first draft, which is a very complete list of the rights that had been recorded in other declarations and reference texts, was then rearranged and converted into a more consistent declaration by the French jurist René Cassin. That draft subsequently had to pass the drafting Committee and the sessions of the Human Rights Commission before being approved by the ECOSOC and finally, on 10 December 1948, by the General Assembly in session at the Palais Chaillot in Paris, resulting in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we know today.