Build a sustainable human rights development environment

Chen Shiqiu, vice- president of China Society for Human Rights Studies

Directed by the "people-first" principle, all basic guidelines, development strategies and measures adopted by China basically start by respecting people's rights, protecting their interests, listening to their appeals and satisfying their demands.

Building a sustainable economic environment is critical to human rights development. Development is a prerequisite for the improvement of people's likelihood, and the material basis and guarantee of fulfilling all human rights. Development is an unalienable part of human rights. The right to development is important especially for people in developing countries.

It is the correct choice given the situation in China. China views the right to development and subsistence as the basic tenet of human rights, but that does not mean it neglects or denies the importance of other aspects of human rights. China has always held that economic rights, social rights and cultural rights are as important as individual's rights and political rights, and that all these rights are interrelated and interdependent, and cannot be separated.

After a period of extensive development since it launched reform and opening-up, China has taken the path of sustainable development based on the principle of "scientific development". Sustainable development is closely related to the right to development and all the other aspects of human rights.

Human rights cannot be protected without building an effective human rights guarantee system.

Since launching reform and opening-up, China has amended and enacted many laws to safeguard human rights, and legalized and institutionalized the constitutional principle to "respect and guarantee human rights".

China has also made an important transformation in terms of the rule of law. For example, it lays equal emphasis on the fight against crime and protection of human rights, it treats on par procedural law and substantive law, considers a suspect innocent until proved guilty, strictly prohibits torture to force a suspect to confess, and ensures a suspect gets a lawyer to defend himself/herself in a court of law.

Besides, the State supports and encourages non-governmental organizations to lawfully participate in activities to guarantee and maintain human rights. In fact, non-governmental human rights organizations, the people and news media have come together to form a social force to guarantee human rights, and partly perform functions similar to those of a State human rights department.

China is moving forward with its research to establish a human rights department at the governmental level. After such a department is established, China's human rights guarantee system will improve further .

China's human rights protection system

Yang Chengming, professor and director of Human Rights Research Center of Law School at the Beijing Institute of Technology

The letters' and visits' system is an important embodiment of China's efforts to fulfill its international commitments on human rights protection. In 1998, China officially joined the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a fundamental human rights multilateral treaty aimed at fulfilling the demands of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

According to Article 2 of China's Regulations on Letters and Visits, which was enacted in 2005, the term "letters and visits" means that citizens, legal persons and other organizations give information, submit opinions or forward suggestions to, or lodge complaints with governments at all levels and relevant departments at or above the county level through letters, e-mails, faxes, phone calls, visits and other channels, which are dealt with by the relevant administrative departments according to law.

China's letters' and visits' system reflects the spirit and content of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has become an effective way, according to China's national conditions, of fulfilling the country's international commitment to human rights protection.

The letters' and visits' system guarantees human rights and humanitarian relief. Compared with judicial relief, the letters' and visits' system represents a bottom-up relief approach which is more convenient and less costly. Moreover, the people whose rights are violated usually occupy a comparatively dominant position in the process, which means they control the progress of relief proceedings and their requests and petitions can be responded to and addressed more quickly and effectively.

Education as fundamental human rights - case study in Tianjin municipality

Xue Jinwen, director of Center for the Study of Human Rights, Nankai University

As one of the fundamental human rights, the right to education is not only concerned with equality, but also lays the foundation for people to exercise their rights in other aspects, such as employment, politics, culture and society. Thus it is a prerequisite for many other human rights.

That's why in China we attach great significance to protecting citizens' rights to education, ensuring the priority of developing education. In Tianjin municipality, where I work, we conducted a case study on education hoping to offer a glance into the protection of education as a fundamental human right in China.

As a form of elementary education for all social members, compulsory education is considered a prerequisite for everyone to live and develop normally in a nation or society. China has a compulsory education law to protect people's human rights.

Tianjin pays a lot of attention to the development of compulsory education, particularly to equal distribution of educational resources by constructing more schools in rural regions, and regularly evaluating them to make sure rural students get equal opportunity for education. Besides, considering its annual inflow of millions of migrant workers, Tianjin has also issued regulations to protect their children's rights to receive education. Now about 140,000 such children are receiving education in Tianjin, or 18 percent of the total.

As a significant symbol of human rights development, special attention is paid to protecting the right to education for the disabled. In this field, Tianjin is also making efforts to promote educational development of three different groups of children, namely the visually challenged, the hearing impaired and intellectually challenged. During the stage of compulsory education, the admission and retention rates for physically challenged children have been stabilized at 95 percent of the total, with the rates peaking at 98 percent in 2011.

The right to education is especially important for developing countries like China, because it enhances citizens' ability for self-development and self-fulfillment. We hope the Tianjin example would serve as a model for other cities and provinces all over the country in promoting this basic human right.