# UNESCO’s Executive Board establishes the Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science

Date: 2003

## The fact

In 2003 UNESCO’s Executive Board (166th session) established the Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science, a completed intergovernmental prize named for the physician-philosopher and funded by Iran. [Avicenna](/people/avicenna) did not draft 2003. A public ethics prize is a civic-argument heading about science, not a clinic.

## Context

State funding can capture a prize. The row still stores a named, checkable ethics instrument in the UN system. High confidence on establishment.

Avicenna is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

The named official or archival page and the independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science (https://www.unesco.org/en/prizes/avicenna-prize-science-ethics; UNESCO).

## Significance

A 2003 UNESCO ethics prize in this name is a public-reason path, not a thirteenth-century chair.

A 2003 UNESCO ethics prize in this name is a public-reason path, not a thirteenth-century chair.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Avicenna: https://factrail.ai/people/avicenna

## Drivers

- Democratic Resilience: https://factrail.ai/drivers/democratic-resilience

## Sources

- https://www.unesco.org/en/prizes/avicenna-prize-science-ethics
- https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000134475

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/av-unesco-prize-2003