He Yafei expounds China's human rights policy

  China respected the universality of human rights and believed all human rights were "universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated," He Yafei, China's new ambassador to the UN Office in Geneva, said on Wednesday.

  "The principle of universality has been included in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments," He told Xinhua in an interview.

  "China has ratified more than 20 international human rights instruments, including seven of the eight core human rights instruments. This demonstrates clearly China's affirmation of the universality of human rights," said the ambassador, who was China's vice foreign minister before taking his new position in Geneva earlier this month.

  While acknowledging the universality of human rights, He also stressed that countries might have different understandings about human rights and different ways and means of promoting and protecting human rights because of the "diversity of culture, history, religion and the difference of social systems and development levels."

  "The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action (VDPA) adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 has confirmed that the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind when promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms by states," he said.

  According to the Chinese ambassador, the UN Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva and comprises 47 member states, is an agency aimed at promoting and protecting human rights through dialogue and cooperation.

  Nearly four years after its creation, the Council "has basically accomplished its work and is on the right track," he said.

  He noted the Council had been able to review all the items on the agenda and provided timely responses to the substantive human rights issues.

  In addition, the Council had reviewed human rights situations in 112 UN member states, including China, through its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism, which was a "worth mentioning" result.

  He admitted the Council was not a "perfect" agency and still suffered from problems such as double standards and politicization.

  The functioning of the Council needed to be reviewed so that its work could be improved and better aligned to the letters and spirit of the UN resolutions, he said.

  However, the ambassador expressed opposition to any attempts to "rebuild" the agency or to "renegotiate what has been agreed upon."

  "It is not the time to reform it or rebuild it when it is only four years old... What we should do at the present stage is to find the gaps and fill them in a pragmatic and forward-looking way," he said.

  The Human Rights Council replaced the former widely discredited and highly politicized UN Human Rights Commission, created in 1946.

  One of the Council's major duties is to conduct a Universal Periodic Review of all 192 UN member states to scrutinize their human rights records at home, regardless of their size, wealth, military or political importance.

  Besides its three regular meetings each year, the Council can also hold special sessions to discuss crisis situations.

  While the Council's Universal Periodic Review mechanism has been widely praised, some nongovernmental organizations still criticize the agency for not working effectively to tackle human rights problems around the world.

  A review of the Council's working methods is expected to take place in 2011, in accordance with a UN General Assembly resolution.

  In the interview, He also highlighted China's increasing   contribution to the United Nations and its deeper integration into the international system.

  "From the start of this year, China becomes the 8th largest contributor to the UN regular budget, just following the seven industrialized countries," He said.

  He added China was by far the largest troop-contributing country among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Currently more than 2,100 Chinese soldiers are participating in some 10 UN peacekeeping missions.

  The ambassador stressed China would never shirk from international roles, and that it would continue to meet its global obligations.