Peter Wilson

China: Human Rights Report

The Foreign Office's annual human rights report comes out today.  It includes material on China, where we have a number of concerns.  We raise these regularly with the Chinese Government, at high level.  We have both bilateral and EU dialogues on human rights.  It is important that these work well.

Chinese leaders say that they want to see improvements in human rights.  They also point out that social and economic rights have improved a great deal over the last thirty years.  That is true - and China has lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter time than any other country in history.  But it is also not the whole story.  On civil and political rights, progress has been slow.   A timetable for ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,  which  China signed in 1998 , would be welcomed round the world.

We point this out not because we do not want China to succeed, or because we want to use this as a card to play in diplomacy, or a tool to keep China down.  It's the opposite.  We have an increasingly large stake in China's success.  And as China changes so rapidly, it - and the relationship with us - matter more to people in the UK, not less.  Better human rights contribute to long term stability.  Universal values are not a Western invention, but something we are all signed up to through our membership of the UN.

Posted at 16:51 26 March 2009 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[2]

60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.  That is a cause for celebration everywhere, and there is widespread acceptance that these are universal values, not the values of one country or region.

In China there has been  impressive  progress on economic and social rights in the last thirty years.  Premier Wen and the Prime Minister reconfirmed their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals in New York this September, and China's progress on poverty reduction is remarkable.  But this progress is is not yet matched on political rights.   

We value the dialogue we have with the Chinese government on these issues, bilaterally and through the EU, and will continue to look for opportunities to work together on projects where we can make a difference. The debate about progress on human rights need not be a confrontational one between governments.   And greater transparency in particular usually leads to greater understanding.  In China, experiment and pilots are common.  There are quite a few in this field: when they work they  are often replicated by others, and sometimes on a national scale.

Our big hope is that China will ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that it signed several years ago.  The ICCPR protects individual freedoms, including freedom of expression and freedom of belief.  These sorts of protections can strengthen rather than undermine social stablity.  

I've blogged before about death penalty reform.  There has been some movement in China, although more transparency would be welcome, and the EU continues to oppose the use of the death penalty, in particular for non-violent crimes (the ICCPR also calls for the death penalty to be limited to 'the most serious crimes').  There has been significant movement on this globally - very few countries now actually apply the death penalty, and the number is falling all the time.  Many leading judicial officials think this day will come in China - but not for some time.

Posted at 12:15 10 December 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[1]