Charitable organizations have played an instrumental role in the fight against COVID-19 in soliciting supplies, screening and providing useful information, and connecting people who need help with appropriate local authorities. Ding Peng, director of Wuhan East-Lake Institute for Social Advancement (EISA) and a doctoral candidate of the School of Law at Wuhan University, has been involved in public welfare services for many years, and he has witnessed and personally engaged in the work of charitable organizations during the epidemic.
Ding Peng:
For me, it is my personal aspiration to engage in public welfare services. Thanks to my inspirational teachers during my time as a law student, I have developed certain ideals, and I feel compelled to take responsibility for my country and to help the people. To use a buzzword, an idealist was born in the 1980s and refused to “lie flat.” However, from the perspective of human rights law, which is my field of interest, public welfare is critical. While we say that human rights (protection)are firstly the responsibility of the government, the government cannot do everything for the people. In addition to the government, the promotion of human rights requires the collective efforts of individuals and social organizations.
Charitable organizations in China, compared with those in developed countries, are unique because they are influenced by a Confucian cultural background. Due to the long-term influence of Confucian culture, the Chinese people attach great importance to family, ethics, and the caring of others. Based on the belief that people should honor all the elderly in the same way that they do to their own parents and should care for the children of others as if the children were their own, the motivation for Chinese people to engage in public welfare is unique. With this perspective, everyone else should live as good as my family because we all belong to one big family. That is why we see so many charity teams and volunteers engaging in the communities during the epidemic. In essence, it is a change from a small family to a large one. In the beginning, charitable organizations did not mean to ensure that certain rights were being upheld, but while offering care and support services throughout the country, they indirectly promoted the development of human rights across China.
Civil society organizations have contributed greatly during the epidemic. Responding fast, they provided information regarding the needs of women, people with disabilities, and the elderly to the government departments responsible for epidemic prevention and control, and they were also instrumental in the collection and distribution of anti-epidemic supplies on the frontlines of prevention and control during the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic. In addition, we saw at the middle and later stages of the epidemic that they provided many online services, including fulfilling the needs for companionship and psychological consultation. At the later stages, they highlighted certain gaps in policy and deficiencies in the legal system that stood out during epidemic prevention and control. Among other things, the formulation of some provisions on temporary emergency care in China’s Civil Code was directly related to the issues that were identified by these civil society organizations. Let me share with you a story that took place during this period. There was a visually impaired person in urgent need of medication in the mountainous area of Enshi Prefecture of Hubei Province. Immediately, a local civil society organization, with the help of volunteers, was able to find a source for the medication online, and the medicine was delivered within a day to Enshi. It required the collaboration of various civil society organizations to identify the needs, disseminate the message to a larger audience, connect resources, and to offer local assistance.
Civil society organizations have indeed provided medical supplies and other resources on the humanitarian front. China received a substantial amount of international aid at the beginning of the epidemic, and, in later stages, civil society organizations in Wuhan also helped donate anti-epidemic materials to other countries. At the international level, for instance, in Japan and South Korea, a major function of civil society organizations is policy advocacy. For example, an advisory committee for the rights of people with disabilities in Asia and the Pacific recently pointed out that there has been a high rate of infection and death among people with disabilities in mental hospitals and nursing homes. This was shocking. Many civil society organizations have been vocal both domestically and internationally about these systemic problems, hoping to attract the attention of their government and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to raise awareness about the large groups of people living in these institutions with such limited space during the epidemic. Their intent was to gain wider attention and call for institutional reforms in their country.
In China, the development of undertakings in public welfare is a critical link in the development of human rights. As mentioned above, the government is the major force in the promotion of human rights protection, but we now in China also focus on innovation in government at the grass-roots level, and the combination of self-governance, rule of law, and rule of virtue. It is required that various non-governmental sectors should have full participation at the grass-roots level. Specific groups of people, including women, children, and the elderly must have their interests protected, and we need civil society organizations to step forward and speak for them. In this way, the rights of people in vulnerable groups can be taken seriously, and the rights to equal treatment, epidemic prevention and control services, barrier-free environment renovation, elderly-oriented renovation, and other out-reach services will be available to everyone.
During the epidemic, we noticed many public welfare volunteer teams and institutions from places that we were not familiar with. It was like sparks popping up all over the place. After the epidemic, we arranged meetings for the volunteers in charitable organizations discuss how to connect the dots of public welfare. Even in the remote, mountainous areas or some underdeveloped counties, they may have excellent charitable organizations and volunteers. Now, with the support of the Civil Affairs Department of Hubei Province, we are trying to set up a provincial public welfare and charity research society in Hubei. With the previously scattered public welfare forces centralized and formalized, the public welfare undertakings across Hubei Province can bring new prospects in the future. In recent years, with the Charity Law of the People’s Republic of China, China has adopted various positive measures to promote the development of civil society organizations. We have observed some creative practices in local civil society organizations in Hubei, such as a Disabled Persons’ Federation that directly trains members to establish their own civil society organizations. With this framework, individuals engaging in public welfare services become part of an institution, and they can provide services with government sponsorship, apply for foundation funding, and perform standardized and professional management. In the future, there will be more civil society organizations, with more professional resources, engaging in public welfare. This promotes equal treatment in public services, provides protection of equal rights for specific groups of people, and it helps facilitate the development of human rights in China.
