BY XIONG LEI

   Nobody can become an expert on the United Nations in one week. But a week-long training workshop on international human rights treaties in Geneva, Switzerland may herald more active participation of China's civil society in the country's commitment to these principles.

   The training workshop that ended early in October 2007 was part of the result of a memorandum of understanding reached between the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chinese Foreign Ministry in 2005.

    According to Dong Yunhu, vice-president and secretary-general of China Society for Human Rights Studies (CSHRS), China's leading non-governmental organization specialized in research and dissemination of human rights, the Treaty Body Training Workshop for Civil Society Representatives from China was the first project put up by the memorandum that has been realized.

   Sponsored by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 23 activists, law experts and advocates representing eight NGOs in China, including CSHRS, went to the headquarters of the UN human rights body in Geneva for the training.

   To date China has ratified five of the seven major international human rights treaties. Although some members of civil society contributed to China's country report on the implementation of these treaties as required of the state party, the UN human rights mechanisms expect greater and more extensive involvement of the public.

   After reviewing China's initial report on the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2005, for instance, the Committee on this treaty, which is composed of independent experts, requested that in its next periodic report due in 2010, China should provide "detailed information on the public consultation process in the preparation of the report," with a list "of all civic organizations or non-governmental organizations consulted."

   "Public consultation is a requirement in the reporting process," states the committee's recommendations to the Chinese government. The objective of the consultation "is to inform the general public and to generate interest and debate on the steps the State party has undertaken in fulfilling its treaty obligations under the Covenant." Hence the necessity of capacity building for China's civil society, said Dong Yunhu, who was glad the training workshop finally came true.

   While in Geneva, the Chinese participants had lectures on core principles of the seven major international human rights treaties, UN mechanisms to oversee their implementation, procedures of reporting to the treaty bodies, and civil society's role in the preparation of country reports. 

   They also observed proceedings of Human Rights Council in session and attended a meeting of the Committee on the Convention of the Rights of the Child reviewing Venezuela's second report on its implementation of the treaty.

   Chinese participants keenly embraced the notion that the reporting to the concerned UN human rights treaty bodies is not only an obligation of the state party, but also means to maintain ongoing monitoring of the implementation so that the treaties will benefit every citizen of the country.

   As Ms. Wan-Hea Lee, facilitator of the training workshop and an official with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, emphasized, the reporting "is not the end but a means" to carry out the principles of the treaties to the letter. 

   The message is strong and clear that the process to prepare the report overrides the report per se. "We should not only introduce what we have achieved and how wonderful we are in human rights undertakings, but also report the obstacles we have come across, problems we are still confronting, and measure we have taken and are going to take to improve them," noted Chang Jian, a council member of the CSHRS and a professor with Nankai University in Tianjin.

   Liu Hainian, also a council member with CSHRS and a senior research fellow from the law institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was delighted that the workshop helped brush up his knowledge of the mechanisms of the Human Rights Council set up in June 2006 to replace the Human Rights Commission in Geneva. 

  "The Human Rights Council will have universal periodical reviews of the state parties, each every four years, and the review will start from its member states," he said. "China as a member on the council will be among the first groups to be reviewed."

    In this regard, he found the training workshop "timely" to help China's civil society "play a more active role in the preparation for the review." As a law expert, he said scholars and NGOs in China have been more and more involved in drafting laws in the past decade, and much has been done to apply the core principles in the major international human rights treaties to the legislation of Chinese laws.

   "But there is still much room for the civil society to be more active in promoting human rights and socialist democracy," he said.

   Civil society is also encouraged to prepare alternative report to the government report on their own. 

    "We as an NGO have offered consultation to the preparation of several state party reports on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women," said Guo Jianmei, director of the Beijing University Women's Law Studies and Legal Aid Center. "We'll continue the efforts to have the interests of vulnerable groups reflected and have their voices heard in future reports."

   Meanwhile, she said, "we are considering to produce independent reports in the future."

   Guo's center has been providing legal assistance to woman in need of safeguarding their legitimate rights. She said in this field China has made remarkable progress in the past decade, yet it is weak in international communication.

   "We NGOs have our advantages in this regard and we feel the need to have more dialogues between NGOs and government departments," she said.

   Several participants were struck by some to-the-point comments made by the treaty bodies' consideration of the state party reports and by special rapporteurs upon their inspection tours to China, which are open to the public.

  "Quite a few of their suggestions are objective and have led to improvement in legislation and law enforcement with regard to human rights protection," said Yuan Hong of the All-China Women's Federation. 

Participants attending the review of Venezuela's report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, first left in the front is Liu Hainian, and beside him is Qi Yanping.

   She could see their input in China's revised Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests in 2005, which "incorporates a number of breakthroughs in the six areas of rights."

   "More than 20 government departments have been in the coordinating mechanism led by our federation," she said. "Officials are getting more conscious of wome's rights and interests."

   Qi Yanping, a council member of CSHRS and professor of the Chinese University of Political Science and Law, was particularly interested in several treaty bodies' suggestion that China should consider establishing a national commission for human rights.

   "More than 100 countries have set up such an institution based on the Paris Principles, which is independent of the government and legislation to have coordinate human rights issues within the country," Qi said. 

   Qi revealed he has been on a research project on introducing the mechanism into China. "In fact we have some functional organs taking care of human rights issue," he said. "For instance, every government department, from central level down to the township, has special staff handling letters from the people, which are in fact very similar to the teams dealing with complaints under the treaty bodies."

   The training workshop made Qi feel all the more pressed to have such an organ institutionalized in China. "We'll work harder towards that end," he said, expecting more technical support from the UN. 

   Some of the comments, however, are not very factual, as participants pointed out. "The report of the special rapporteur on education asserted that China's laws still regard girl children and children with physical disability as worthless," noted Song Wenyan from the All-China Women's Federation. "This is not true."

   Zhang Wenjuan, an attorney at law with the Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center, agreed, saying some considerations "pay too much attention to certain ethnic minorities while ignoring the fact that China has 55 ethnic minorities and they enjoy the equal political, economic, social and cultural rights by law." The training workshop also revealed to Chinese participants where the UN human rights treaty bodies need improvement. 

   "I hope the treaty bodies streamline their mechanisms to be more just and more efficient," said Liu Hainian. "Focus should be put on the implementation of the seven major treaties centering around the two covenants, namely the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China is yet to ratify. Don't make too many treaties and create too many bureaucratic bodies."

    Liu held that human rights guarantee at the UN level is more of promotion rather than arbitration or making a ruling as if in court. "The treaty bodies could have a positive role to play to facilitate the state parties's implementation of the treaties."

   But he and other participants think more about their own work after the training. "We all have our plans of action," said Guo Jianmei. "We'd share what we have learned in Geneva with our peers and initiate more training programs among law enforcers, educators, government officials, social workers and other members of society to disseminate the principles of the international human rights treaties." Liu and his colleagues are to enhance the studies on legal guarantee of human rights and endeavor to legislate or revise concerned laws in the spirit of the treaties.

   The intensive training provided Chinese participants with "useful applied knowledge"  they could use in their research and day-to-day work, said Rory Mungoven, coordinator of Asia Pacific Unit with the OHCHR. He looked forward to the follow-up with them and would see how much the training could work.