The United Nations Human Rights Council (“HRC”) is conducting the fourth cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (“UPR”) from 2022 to 2027. According to the tentative timetable, China (including Hong Kong and Macau) will be reviewed on 23 January 2024. Civil society organisations (“CSOs”) were invited to submit information as to human rights situation of the reviewed State.
Accordingly, Hong Kong Centre for Human Rights (“HKCHR”) made a submission regarding Hong Kong to the HRC on 18 July 2023. The submission focuses on the human rights situation in Hong Kong since the last UPR review (the third cycle) in 2018, consisting of 9 major human rights aspects, namely national security, police violence, rule of law, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to political participation and immigration detention.
In the last UPR review, China accepted most of the recommendations made by other States regarding the above 9 aspects. However, HKCHR found that at least 18 accepted recommendations had not been implemented or enforced, while some of the relevant human rights were in fact further eroded. For instance, although China has accepted France’s recommendation to guarantee freedom of expression, assembly and association in the last review, the fact remains that these freedom has been severely violated recently.
The submission makes a number of proposed recommendations to the Chinese and Hong Kong governments, and urges them to implement recommendations made by other United Nations human rights bodies in their previous reviews, including recommending the Chinese and Hong Kong governments to repeal the National Security Law and sedition offence, discontinue all cases against people charged for exercising their free speech, establish an independent mechanism with adequate powers and mandate to conduct investigation into complaints against Hong Kong police’s misconduct, and protect lawyers, particularly those who represent political dissidents, from harassment, intimidation and attacks.
The full submission can be accessed here: https://hkchr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/HKCHR-UPR-HK-July-2023.pdf
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Background
The UPR is a unique process which involves a review of the human rights records of all 193 UN Member States. It is a State-driven process, under the auspices of the HRC, which provides the opportunity for each State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations. The UPR is designed to ensure equal treatment for every country when their human rights situations are assessed.
The HRC will firstly form a UPR Working Group which is composed of all 47 Members States of the HRC. The Working Group will then conduct the review based on three types of documents, namely: 1) information provided by the State under review; 2) information contained in the reports of independent human rights experts and groups; 3) information from other stakeholders including national human rights institutions and non-governmental organisations. During the review, both the Working Group and other States can make recommendations to the reviewed State. At last, the reviewed State will indicate whether it accepts the recommendations.
From 2006 to 2022, the Working Group has finished three cycles of UPR review. It means that all Member States have been reviewed at least three times already. The Working Group is conducting its fourth cycle of review from 2022 to 2027 in which China is scheduled to be reviewed on 23 January 2024.