Constructing an environment for human rights development is a large, comprehensive project as well as a long and arduous mission. Although constructing an environment for human rights development was not mentioned much in the past, in actuality it began early and achieved sustained progress. It is a gradual process that is also a prerequisite for earnestly respecting and ensuring human rights. There are five dimensions to building a sustainable environment for human rights development.

 

First, creating a political environment in which great attention is paid to human rights. With the thriving and development of China’s reform and opening-up, China’s emphasis on human rights and people’s human rights perception and awareness have been raised in an unprecedented way. The concept of respecting and ensuring human rights has been written into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the Constitution of the Communist Party of China, becoming a fundamental principle of both the ruling party and the government. Guided by the idea of putting people first, the starting point of various national guidelines and development strategies is to respect the rights of the people, safeguard the interests of the people, listen to the voice of the people and satisfy the requirements of the Chinese people. China initiated the National Human Rights Action Plan in 2009, which was an important measure for comprehensively pushing forward human rights construction. The action plan designed human rights education programs that were aimed at spreading human rights concepts in society, popularizing human rights knowledge and creating a social environment for valuing human rights. The second national human rights action plan is now being carried out. Reality proves that the political environment for attaching great importance to human rights as well as respecting and ensuring human rights is right now healthily developing.

 

Second, building a sustainable economic environment. Development is a must for raising the quality of people’s livelihood and the material basis for realizing all human rights. Development itself is a human right that people should not be deprived of. The right to development is particularly important to people in developing countries. China puts the right to development and existence as the first and foremost human right, which is the appropriate choice suitable to Chinese conditions and does not necessarily mean China ignores or denies other human rights. China has always believed that economic, social and cultural rights are of the same importance as civil and political rights. They are closely connected, interdependent and inseparable. To a nation like China with a huge population and a developing economy, human rights will become empty talk if development is not achieved. Only when sustained development is achieved can human rights be continuously improved. After reform and opening-up, China experienced a period of extensive development. Since the adoption of the Scientific Outlook on Development, China has tried to maintain an appropriate growth rate and has paid more attention to environmental and ecological construction, which has required the reasonable use of resources and sustainable growth. In actuality, the transformation of the development mode enriches the meaning of the right to development. Sustainable development is vital to the realization of the right to development and other human rights.

 

Third, building a harmonious, stable, fair and just social environment. Full realization of human rights requires a good social environment, which should be harmonious, fair, just, nondiscriminatory, tolerant, civilized, law-abiding, just and nonviolent. It’s not easy to create such an environment. In the process of reform and opening-up, many social contradictions and disharmonies have appeared, which indicate conflicts of interests and rights. To address such contradictions and conflicts, the country set the goal of building a harmonious society. It also especially emphasized building a social justice protection system characterized by equality of rights, opportunities and rules, creating a just social environment and ensuring people’s rights to equal participation and equal development. The guidelines, policies and measures targeted at strengthening social construction and management and improving human rights have been successful. However, social contradictions cannot be resolved in one strike. New conflicts emerge even as old ones end. Therefore, building a harmonious society is a long-term mission. The process of resolving social contradictions and building a harmonious society is the process of improving and promoting human rights. Construction of the social environment should be enhanced, thus continuously pushing forward human rights development.

 

Fourth, building a healthy and prosperous cultural environment. The cultural environment is closely related to the content of culture, which includes knowledge, belief, literature, art, law, ethics, systems of etiquette, customs and traditions, and social networks and social groups. Nevertheless, culture in daily reference often refers to literature, art, publications, media, the Internet and social customs. The cultural environment mentioned here is close to the popular understanding of culture. In tandem with economic growth and the continuous improvement of people’s material living standards, people have an increasing demand for cultural satisfaction, with better cultural products and higher quality cultural services. The construction of the cultural environment should be compatible with the growing cultural demands of the people and be integrated with raising the level of civilization of both the people and the society. The two goals of building the cultural environment are prosperity and wholesomeness. A healthy atmosphere should be promoted and evil trends should be curbed. Progressive and positive culture should be encouraged and negative, decadent culture should be opposed. The cultural environment should be cleaned up to prevent the negative impact of bad culture. From the human rights perspective, negative and corrupt trends in culture not only cannot promote human rights, they also directly violate and harm human rights. Therefore, a good cultural environment is an important part of building a good environment for human rights development.

 

Fifth, building a strong mechanism for protecting human rights. The fundamental principle of modern international human rights law is that the state takes the primary responsibilityfor ensuring human rights. The state must ensure human rights in line with the law. Therefore, the state must build a strong legal system for protecting human rights. Since reform and opening-up began, the state has revised or created many laws for protecting human rights, and has legalized and institutionalized the constitutional principle of respecting and ensuring human rights. China has also realizedsome major changes in the concept of the rule of law, such as paying equal attention to fighting crime and protecting human rights; balancing individual rights protection and collective rights protection; balancing procedural laws and substantive laws; putting into practice the principle of the presumption of innocence; prohibiting torture in interrogation; prohibiting the use of evidence collected illegally; ensuring that lawyers are involved in case procedures and protecting defense rights, etc. Meanwhile, the state encourages individual and social groups to participate in ensuring and safeguarding human rights. Nongovernmental human rights groups, individuals and media are positively influencing society and sometimes play functions similar to those of governmental human rights organizations. Research on establishing a national human rights agency is under way. When conditions are ripe and after such a national human rights agency has been established, China’s human rights protection system will be further improved.

 

The aforementioned five major means of building a sustained environment for human rights development are the main guarantee for achieving the goal of earnestly respecting and ensuring human rights.

 

(The author is vice president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies.)