Issues at the Intersection of Engineering and Human Rights: Proceedings of a Symposium (2025)
Chapter: 1 Introduction
1
Introduction
Engineers innovate to meet human needs, but their innovations can sometimes fall short of their intended goals when a critical component is overlooked: human rights. Many of the challenges engineers seek to address through their work—from increased access to clean water and transportation to climate change adaptation—are inextricably tied to human rights, and addressing them holistically requires embedding human rights frameworks into engineering practice. In turn, efforts to advance human rights can be strengthened by incorporating engineering expertise, problem-solving approaches, and novel technologies.
These motivating concepts led the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Cultural, Ethical, Social, and Environmental Responsibility in Engineering (CESER) program and the Committee on Human Rights (CHR) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), NAE, and National Academy of Medicine (NAM) to conduct a symposium on November 18-19, 2024 to:
- increase awareness of the role that engineers play in protecting and promoting human rights,
- explore ways that human rights–based approaches in engineering might help engineers and human rights experts solve pressing challenges, and
- collect information to identify areas of impact for future CHR/CESER efforts.
In his introductory remarks to the symposium, John Anderson, NAE President, said that engineering influences nearly every facet of human life and that engineers can either reduce or amplify societal challenges through their work. “With this immense influence comes a profound responsibility to approach each innovation thoughtfully, ensuring that work contributes to a more equitable world,” said Anderson. This symposium, he continued, is an opportunity to address difficult issues at the interface of engineering and human rights, such as those related to artificial intelligence (AI) and climate change. “We anticipate that a range of perspectives will be presented at this symposium and envision that constructive engagement with these issues can illuminate the path forward,” said Anderson. He expressed the hope that the event could be a step toward ensuring that the fields of engineering and human rights can work together to build a brighter future.
Anderson noted that everyone attending the symposium—students, faculty, researchers, practicing engineers, policymakers, and advocates—have a role to play in this work. “Make use of this opportunity, enjoy the camaraderie, and create the optimism we need to move in a positive direction,” he said.
Charles Bolden, Founder and Chief Executive Officer Emeritus of the Charles F. Bolden Group LLC, former NASA Administrator, NAE member, and CESER co-chair, added that the solutions to many problems discussed during this symposium are multi-year, if not multi-
decadal, which means that the students participating in the symposium will play a key role in addressing them.
In a special lecture for participants, Shirley Ann Jackson, NAE member and former President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, emphasized that the topic of human rights is broad and complex, covering a wide range of contexts and rooted in norms and expectations that may be codified, but not for every situation. These norms and expectations, she said, relate to the right to life, overall safety, freedom from harm, freedom of expression, protection against slavery, freedom of religion, and educational access. Following World War II, an international system of human rights law emerged that protects these and other rights. Many of these rights are also integrated into national law and, in some cases, corporate principles.
Jackson listed five considerations for incorporating human rights principles into the work that engineers perform:
- Structure the work to benefit humankind.
- Advocate for the inclusion of human rights into engineering practice to improve ideas and understand disparate effects on certain populations.
- Advocate within engineering and science for appropriate ethical frameworks to govern discovery, design, and implementation.
- Keep designs and discoveries from harming others or disproportionately affecting certain groups or communities.
- Take advantage of opportunities to have a larger positive effect on a population, nation, or the world.
Engineers face many conundrums that involve human rights, said Jackson. For example, advances in AI and biotechnology may be able to address the human right to freedom from disease but pose risks. Today, heritable or germline human genome editing is possible, and although no country is known to explicitly allow research on heritable human genome editing, South Africa recently modified its health research guidelines in a way that suggests the possibility of such research if there is “a clear and compelling scientific and medical rationale, focusing on the prevention of serious genetic disorders and immunity against serious diseases” (NdoH, 2024, p. 75). While acknowledging that many countries want to address immunity to serious diseases, Jackson noted that this research area is fraught with issues because the line for how far is too far is unclear.
Jackson said that engineers face human rights-related challenges and opportunities when deciding, for example, how to site industrial facilities to avoid disparate negative effects on certain communities; how to better control harmful effluents from industrial processes; how to apply appropriate effort to testing and detecting harmful byproducts and avoid their production or release in the first place; and whether less harmful approaches to extractive processes exist. Regarding AI, she said that engineers should focus on designing algorithms that enhance personal protections and improve the detection and prevention of misinformation, disinformation, and malicious use, while optimizing for lower energy consumption.
CONDUCT OF THE SYMPOSIUM
The symposium was organized by an independent planning committee in accordance with National Academies’ procedures.2 The committee members were Charles F. Bolden, Jr. (co-chair), Colleen (Betsy) Elisabeth Popken (co-chair), Davis Chacón-Hurtado, Glen T. Daigger, Wesley L. Harris, and Deb A. Niemeier. More than 70 people attended in person, and webcast analytics reported more than 400 views of the live broadcast. Observers were located in 35 U.S. states and more than 40 countries. Symposium presentations and links to videos of the sessions are available online.3
ORGANIZATION OF THE PROCEEDINGS
This publication summarizes the symposium presentations and discussions and is divided into 12 chapters. Chapter 2 discusses the meaning of “human rights” and how it differs from and overlaps with concepts related to ethics, peace, and social justice. Chapter 3 provides examples of ways to incorporate principles of human rights into engineering higher education. Chapter 4 explores the intersections of engineering, human rights, and climate change, including opportunities for engineers to participate in efforts to minimize climate-related harms and reconcile historical injustices. Chapter 5 examines how engineering can apply a human rights lens to reduce disparities among communities that result from public infrastructure policies. Chapter 6 examines how a human rights–based approach to engineering can inform inclusive transportation infrastructure design.
Chapter 7 summarizes remarks made to open Day 2 of the symposium. Chapter 8 describes methods to ensure a community’s early and continuous participation in engineering decision making, and Chapter 9 describes options to ensure accountability for human rights harms caused by engineering decisions and to mitigate and remedy harms. Chapter 10 explores how human rights standards related to participation, nondiscrimination, privacy, and accessibility can be considered and applied throughout the design process for new systems and products. Chapter 11 discusses approaches to conducting a human rights assessment of an AI large language model. Chapter 12 summarizes the symposium’s key points as noted by the NAE Vice President.
Appendix A reproduces the symposium agenda, and Appendix B presents biographical sketches of symposium speakers, moderators, and planning committee members.
The speakers, panelists, and other symposium participants presented a broad range of views and ideas. Box 1-1 summarizes their observations and suggestions for potential actions. In accordance with National Academies policies, the planning committee did not attempt to establish any conclusions or recommendations about needs and future directions, focusing instead on issues identified by individual participants. Such steps could be pursued in future National Academies consensus studies.
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2 The role of the planning committee was limited to planning the symposium.
3 https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/43591_11-2024_issues-at-the-intersection-of-engineering-and-human-rights-a-symposium
This proceedings was drafted by rapporteur Joe Alper in collaboration with National Academies staff members David A. Butler, Rebecca Everly, Casey Gibson, and Ana Deros as a factual summary of what occurred at the symposium. The National Academies does not endorse or verify the statements.
BOX 1-1
Observations and Suggestions Offered by Individual Symposium Participants for Incorporating Human Rights Principles into Engineering
Chapter 2: Bridging Human Rights and Engineering
- Science and engineering are fundamental to human rights, as recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which establishes governments’ responsibility to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to science and thereby ensures that everyone benefits from scientific advancements and their applications. (Harris)
- Because the human rights movement is often reactive and centered on accountability for harms, partnering with engineers and scientists can foster proactive solutions—such as the right to cooling—to tackle urgent global challenges and build systems that prevent harm before it happens. (Giannini)
- Operationalizing the right to accessible information requires collaboration between lawyers and the people who generate technical documents. (Giannini)
- A human rights framework is the starting point through which measures of accountability and standardization in practice can be enforced in defining how the engineering profession conducts itself. (Carrasquillo)
- A conceptual framework that applies the principles of engineering for human rights includes attending to distributive justice,4 broad-based participation, consideration of duty bearers to ensure the fair distribution of benefits of new technology, accountability when problems arise, and indivisibility of rights across generations. (Hertel)
Chapter 3: Human Rights and Engineering Education
- Engineering courses focused on human rights should cultivate a shared mindset among students and establish a common understanding of key terminology. (Zaman)
- Existing engineering curricula emphasize design-based courses that do not provide sufficient background or context on the challenges students are meant to address. Interdisciplinary teaching is essential to equipping students to face these complex global challenges. (Zaman)
- Understanding the lived experiences of the people for whom engineering students are designing adds significant value to their work. (Zaman)
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4 Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness in the way that rewards and costs are allocated across different societal groups.
- Conflict-sensitive engineering frameworks can help students think beyond technical solutions, prompting them to consider underlying causes of problems, their social impacts, and alternative solutions that may or may not be typical engineering approaches but address human needs, rights, and peace outcomes. (Olson)
- Unlike in the past, when engineers used local materials to meet immediate needs, today’s engineers design with globally sourced materials for people they may never meet, which results in loss of a critical feedback loop. This shift necessitates questions about what we are designing, what resources are required, who we are designing for and with, and whether our designs are sustainable. (Olson)
- Engineering and engineering education must be lifelong pursuits based on reflective and adaptive practice, systems thinking, and a holistic approach to global problems. (Amadei)
- Engineering students are rarely taught about human rights, and when they are, human rights are loosely integrated into an ethics course. (Amadei)
- An engineer’s role is not simply to design technology but also to contemplate how engineering solutions (including technology) affect people and the environment, create partnership, and contribute to prosperity and peace. (Amadei)
- With appropriate training and guidance from professionals, students who work directly with communities in the field can gain essential hands-on experience and a deeper understanding of the intersection between human rights and engineering. Engineers Without Borders, a form of citizen engineering, is an example of this approach. (Amadei)
Chapter 4: Engineering to Promote Climate Justice
- Current engineering codes of ethics primarily apply to professionally licensed engineers. A code of ethics that applies more broadly, and that emphasizes the human impact of engineering, would help raise the ethical norms of the profession. (Waterhouse)
- Human rights provide a floor of acceptable treatment of people by the government and others. (Waterhouse)
- Certain parts of society bear a disproportionate burden of pollution because of where they live. Engineers can champion environmental justice by playing a role in addressing this situation. (Waterhouse)
- The United States still faces unresolved environmental damage from WWII-era mining, highlighting a recurring disconnect between ambitious technological initiatives (such as critical mineral mining for the e-revolution) and their long-term environmental and human health consequences, which are worsened by the lack of input from engineers and scientists in decision making. (Waterhouse)
- Cumulative impact assessments are critical for promoting environmental justice. (Karwat)
- Engineers and scientists need to increase their attention to resilience and adaptation to climate change, which focus on the present, rather than only on mitigation, which focuses on the future, as many communities are presently experiencing serious harms due to climate change. (Waterhouse)
Chapter 5: Addressing Inequalities in Public Infrastructure
- Water is not only a fundamental human right in itself but also essential to the fulfillment of other rights. (Jones)
- Even in the United States, millions of citizens are exposed to unsafe water sources, and the burdens of the water crisis affect communities disproportionately. (Jones)
- Water infrastructure is expensive and relies on tax subsidies, making it difficult for low-income communities to afford maintenance and meet regulatory requirements. Thus, ensuring safe and consistent water access requires aligning engineering, policy, economics, and management. (Jones)
- Understanding the historical context of a problem is essential to making equitable engineering decisions. (Gordon Hoy)
- The concept of positionality—the social and political context that shapes a person’s identity—can enhance engineers’ decision-making process. (Gordon Hoy)
- Engineers should practice reflexivity, whereby they question how their positionality influences their work, as well as accountability and reciprocity, whereby they acknowledge and compensate the expertise of lived experience of others. These concepts move engineers from a position of needing to maintain their credibility by holding power to one that builds relationships and trust with communities. (Gordon Hoy)
- Inadequate infrastructure—including structural integrity of facilities, roads and transportation systems, access to clean water, and electricity—is the primary barrier to health care access all over the world. (Buckley)
- The link between engineering and human rights is very direct in terms of health care access and health equity. Every infrastructure decision is a health care decision, and every health care decision is a human rights decision. (Buckley)
- The engineering for human rights framework integrates human rights principles into core engineering practices by stating how these engineering duties can help prevent harm, remedy harm when it occurs, and proactively fulfill rights. (Chacón-Hurtado)
- A human rights–based approach to engineering provides a new paradigm for engineering design, which leads to a better understanding of the role of engineering in society, enhances public awareness and understanding of engineering, and improves recruitment and retention in engineering education. (Chacón-Hurtado)
- Although not necessarily fundamental human rights themselves, instrumental rights, such as transportation, enable the fulfillment of fundamental human rights. By addressing instrumental rights, engineers can contribute to the fulfillment of fundamental human rights. (Chacón-Hurtado)
- A human rights framework is intended to complement, and not compete with, other engineering frameworks such as universal design or humanitarian engineering. (Chacón-Hurtado)
Chapter 6: A Case Study of a Human Rights-Based Approach to Engineering and Inclusive Transportation
- Many solutions developed by engineers to accommodate people with disabilities are now used by all of society, a phenomenon known as the “curb cut effect,” which refers to curb cuts in sidewalks at intersections that not only allow people using wheelchairs to move from the sidewalk to the street, but also make that transition easier for older individuals, people pushing strollers, and bicycle riders. (Stein)
- A human rights framework can help engineers operationalize what they should be doing to accomplish the outcomes embodied in codes of ethics. (Daigger)
Chapter 7: Introduction to Day 2
- It only takes one insightful caution about disparity or human rights at one particular point in time to create generations of benefit. Achieving that insight, however, requires an engineer to understand the broad strokes of human rights, including the laws and binding treaties that provide a basic framework for a wide range of rights. (Niemeier)
Chapter 8: Participation and Inclusion in Engineering Decision Making
- Inclusion and participation in the creative problem-solving process can lead to intangible benefits that humans need to live fulfilling lives. (Smith)
- Participation takes different forms—for example, consultation, partnership, and leadership—that offer different degrees of community agency and influence. (Smith)
- The motto “nothing about us without us” is essential to the disability rights movement and underscores the importance of meaningful participation. (Stein)
- A climate justice approach views people with disabilities as change agents, knowledge holders, makers, and doers and posits that co-designing climate-responsive solutions alongside people with disabilities ensures that those solutions will be inclusive, desired, functional, and intuitive. (Stein)
- From an efficiency standpoint, co-designing accessible and inclusive solutions from the start is much simpler and less expensive than retrofitting them later on. (Stein)
- Balancing the different values, lived experiences, and talents of stakeholders is essential for effective co-design. (Kleba)
- Consideration of the unique circumstances in which you are working—such as differences in language and expectations about participation, as well as dimensions of empowerment/disempowerment—is crucial to ensuring responsible engineering. (Kleba)
- Engineers need to shift their mindset and realize that, in some situations, it may be more appropriate to be a facilitator of the problem solving rather than the actual problem solver. (Smith)
Chapter 9: Seeking Justice and Remediating Human Rights Harms
- The very features that make technologies useful in human rights work are the features that make them dangerous. Thus, engineers must be active and intentional when making decisions about technologies that can promote human rights. (Aronson)
- Engineers should prioritize communication with the most vulnerable and least powerful by actively engaging with them, listening to their experiences, and learning from their perspectives. Rather than imposing solutions on these populations, engineers should meaningfully involve them in the development and design of solutions that affect them. (Aronson)
- Public comments, which are a form of participation, have critically informed Meta’s work to improve interactions with people and communities. (Owono)
- Scientific and technical knowledge not only are essential for protecting human rights but also can be leveraged to help achieve justice and accountability for human rights harms, including through expert testimonies. (Torero)
- There is a human right to scientific advancement, so we need to embrace the positive outcomes of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) while assessing the present and potential future risks associated with their use. (Popken)
Chapter 10: Integrating Human Rights Principles into Systems and Product Design
- “Design as freedom” is a human-centered design approach that places greater responsibility on the designer to understand the kind of life that product users value before developing solutions and empowering those users to co-design solutions with them. (Agogino)
- Recognizing design as a human right and enabling people to co-design their own communities requires challenging many of the assumptions that engineering team members may bring to a project. (Agogino)
- Solving the right problem in the right way that respects human rights is no longer an additional consideration in the design process. Rather, human rights considerations are integral to all design phases and across the product’s or application’s lifespan. (Brown)
- Communities must feel confident and equipped to engage in engineering projects—contributing to design and decision-making, questioning and rejecting or approving technologies, shaping their development, and taking part in their implementation. (Brown)
- Engineers must find alternatives to materials that are derived from conflict regions and often involve child labor. (Brown)
- Impactful, intentional design is a win-win-win because it increases societal resilience, leads to technical success, and produces sustainable business outcomes. The outcomes of impactful and intentional design benefit not only the users of an application but also everyone else in the supply chain. (Brown)
- The operationalization of responsible AI requires embedding concrete controls into engineering processes, such as applying privacy principles (e.g., data minimization), limiting retention periods, and establishing robust protocols to handle government data requests in ways that respects human rights. (Shay)
- Diverse training datasets result in a better and more inclusive user experience. Oversampling certain training data can produce more equitable outcomes and better overall performance in some circumstances, as illustrated by Webex Meeting’s virtual background feature, where a dataset that oversampled women led to better outcomes for all users. (Shay)
- Engineers have displayed an interest in incorporating human rights frameworks into their work. Integrating human rights into engineering education could help enable this transdisciplinary work in industry. (Shay)
- Social media echo chambers are not accidental but a byproduct of algorithms that amplify polarizing and atypical engagement—especially shared dislikes—giving such information more weight in shaping user experiences and connections. (Chun)
- Addressing biases in algorithms requires intentional inclusion of ambivalent or marginalized viewpoints to build more accurate, inclusive, and representative systems that reflect the full complexity of human experiences. (Chun)
Chapter 11: How to Conduct a Human Rights Assessment of Artificial Intelligence
- All the people involved in the development and use of a technology tool—including the engineers—make decisions that are connected to human rights impacts. (Popken and Andersen)
- A human rights perspective can help identify potential risks to people when developing or deciding how to use a technology tool. (Popken and Andersen)
- A human rights perspective helps reduce risks by guiding people to consider their role in addressing them, and whether that goal is best accomplished individually or through collaboration with others. (Popken and Andersen)
Chapter 12: Summary Observations and Closing Remarks
- The purpose of exploring the intersection of engineering and human rights is to define a more useful and inclusive path forward for what humans do, which is to create at a scale beyond that of any other organism. (Harris, W.)
- Engineering is a process developed by humans. As such, humans have a responsibility to nurture and develop the practice of engineering. (Harris, W.)
- There is an opportunity to strengthen the link between engineering and human rights, but the process to do so will be complex and entail legal, social, and economic challenges. (Harris, W.)
- The engineering field needs champions to make the intersection of its work with human rights more robust. (Harris, W.)
