Submitted By: Akash Sinha

Roll: 200801005, UG3

Technology and Human Rights

From the ages, Technology has always made its impact on the aspects and elements of Human Rights.
Sometimes technological progress violates human rights and sometime they become compatible with
them as well as there is also the cases that whether human rights stimulate or the hamper
technological progress. Technology is playing an increasingly important role in every facet of the
international and national lives of the people.

The current global scenario makes development goals both more difficult to achieve and even more
important.The complexity is due to the fact that development includes both increasing national
growth, and achieving social justice and respect for human rights. And to achieve the fair and near
gain, human right has always been threatened.

Science and technology are always assumed to be synonymous with progress, freedom, and the
betterment of the human condition but we can see that a lot of problems for the human condition in
the past have not been aroused due to failure of technology but due to success of the technology.

Technological progress has also played a vital role in framing the structure of the society. When human
resource was discovered to be the technology after the Stone Age, it has given birth to slavery. The
society got transferred into two groups i)Owner of Slaves and ii) Slaves themselves.
For the thousands of years slavery has hampered all the elements of human rights, ranging
from basic freedom, living with dignity, equal treatment to getting the justice. Even their Right to Life
was also governed by their owner. Slavery presented a disgraceful working condition where people are
treated as instruments of gain rather than free and responsible persons.

The coming of the industrial society, based on a new division of labor and on the systematic application
of new technologies, was accompanied by the advent of a new image of man and society.
It has given many reforms to the society. Industrialization influenced the human rights of people who
earlier couldn’t enjoy it. It enabled them to earn for their living in dignified manner.

But unfortunately this industrialization has divided the society in two classes i)
Business class and ii) Working Class. Due to this partition, working class suffered a lot of exploitation,
and got deprived of justice and equality once again.The machines capable of huge outputs made small
hand weavers redundant and they got forced to work in factories and thus getting low wages for
longer work hours. In India , Industrialization in forest areas ,captured the lands of tribals and opened
jobs for tribals, but they mostly did low or unskilled jobs getting very little economic compensation as
they had little access to modern education.

On the bright side most classes eventually benefited in some way from the huge profits
that were being made, and most workers were making somewhat better wages. The widespread
poverty and constant threat of mass starvation in india got lessened, overall health and material
conditions of the population got improved. The government, however, did have to eventually
intervene in order to put an end to exploitation by forcing labour rights and fixing working hours and
minimum wages one can get. We may say people get to enjoy life with dignity.
Many thinkers suggested that any technology that goes in the favour of centralization of money and
power is not good for society and human rights. Due to centralization of welath, rich became richer
and poor became more poor. And with the centralization of power aspects of justice became more
questionable. Eg. The radio gives the power to influence opinion and a giant irrigation scheme gives
control over vast agricultural areas .And we know that whenever power comes into a single hand or a
group it is always abused.

As well as today, in this information age , technology and communication has grown their canvas over
the entire human population. With the boom in the field of mass media ,it arises lots of conflict in the
field of human rights like sometimes Right to Privacy of one person get clashes with Right to
Information of the other.

There is also an ongoing legacy from the past in many countries where decisions were taken to
introduce various technologies without consultation with the people or regions affected. The siting of
nuclear reactors or great industrial works is an obvious example.
Due to technological backwardness,internal resources and lack of capabilities of few developing
countries ,they are becoming prey on the hands of MNCs to route their development. MNCs are
opening their firm in the developing countries to ensure development in their region as well as feeding
the global market, but in return they are affecting the future of people very badly. People belonging to
handicrafts industry are losing their job as their local market is being captured by the MNCs.

Eg. MNCs are extracting resources form these developing countries (in case of Nigeria) as well as
destroying their ecosystem very badly.
Job creation and technology transfer has been achieved in Mexico through policies to attract
foreign investment in the Northern frontier regions (Carrillo and Lara, 2004) but these benefits have
also been accompanied by systematic labour rights’ violations, whose severity is increasing over time.
To promote development process, these actions are affecting the human rights which are irreversible
or long term in nature.

There are technologies which have affected the environment in bad manner. The atmosphere is
getting polluted ,earths resources are not being used in judicious manner and lot of garbage is being
accumulated. Eg. we have developed the technology of purifying water but we are only one
responsible for making it unfit for drinking in the first place. Peoples in the society are using unwanted
resources for their comfort without caring about the fact , that those resources could be more valued
for a large number of people, and technology is enabling them to do such.

Its not like technology always affects human rights directly, sometime technology really helps in safe
guarding the several human rights. Involvement of large mass of people in internet and web enable
their right to speak and to be heard . Social media is removing boundaries to information.

The right to health care ( in some sense ) is one of the rights that became internationally recognized as
a fundamental human rights. Due to advancement in medical science these rights of many peoples can
be ensured. But it must have to follow some anti-discrimination policies.

So far we have seen that whenever a technology is introduced, society has to adjust to the needs of
that technology, for better or for worse. Technology is considered as autonomous forces over which
society has no control.
So we have to consider some facts before choosing a technology :

i) Whether that technology is not affecting the human rights on a big picture ?
ii) If it may affect human rights in future,then do we have the option to return back ,means
we have to check whether its effect will be irreversible or a long term or short term?
iii) Which type of technology is more favourable in terms of Social,Economic, Moral and
Physical betterment of human race ?
iv) Whether a technology is compatible with the human rights of all culture and not just with
the one, i.e. we have to check the applicability of the technology globally.
v) Whether the technology is in favour of inter generational justice or not ,ex: if a technology
comprises of consuming a resource then we have to check that whether that resource will
be available for coming generations or not .

In a nutshell, we could say that, to promote development processes via technological

methodology it is important to prevent initiatives whose positive economic effects will be
accompanied by negative impacts on human rights, and to promote those that are likely to
bring positive effects in all directions simultaneously.