Sciences-Citoyennes (France)

Sciences Citoyennes was founded in 2002 by several scientists and whistleblowers to tackle whistleblowers’ protection and freedom of expression in science. We advocate for the effective handling of disclosures concerning health and environment and, more generally, science linked whistleblowing. Since our creation, we have been asking for a law to protect whistleblowers and whistleblowing concerning Health and Environment and we have launched several campaigns to support individual whistleblowers.

In 2009, we wrote a law proposal, which parliament voted for in 2013. We eventually obtained the first global law addressing whistleblowing in France in December 2016.

Since 2012, we have been carrying out advocacy activities to improve the law on national and European levels. We chose to mutualise our advocacy effort with other organisations and thus had to go beyond our inital remit of health and environment. In 2015, we were invited to work with Conseil d’État (the French supreme court for administrative justice) on a study about whistleblowing.

More recently, we have been working on the creation on Maison des Lanceurs d’Alerte, a non-profit organisation gathering civil society organisations, whistleblowers and citizens to support whistleblowers and whistleblowing in France. We also joined WIN and other national and international coalitions.

Our definition of the term Whistleblower (Lanceur d’alerte, in French), written in 2003, was included (not by us) by Wikipedia contributors in 2008 and is still on the page.

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