Experts call for vigilance on rights

Special: Xinjiang

The international community should be vigilant about some trends including the politicization of human rights in terms of global human rights governance, experts said on Tuesday, noting that the right to life and development are top human rights for developing countries.

The global community should cooperate and handle challenges resulting from geopolitics and new technologies, they said at an online event on the sidelines of the 50th session of the United Nations Human Rights Office's Human Rights Council.

"We should support each country to explore its own human rights development path based on its own reality and the needs of its people," said Wang Chao, president of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs. "For developing countries, the right to life and development are the fundamental human rights."

In recent years, global human rights governance has gone through a series of obstacles under the influence of changes unseen in a century and the pandemic. "Hegemonism, racism and narrow nationalism have risen, poverty and inequality have intensified, and double standards have prevailed," he said.

Liu Xinsheng, a member of the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, said the turmoil and humanitarian disasters in Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia caused by the United States, which has been attempting to maintain its hegemony, have indicated that hegemony would bring tragedy to world civilizations and order.

Hassan Njifon Njoya, a political science lecturer at the University of Buea in Cameroon, also shared Liu's view. Njoya criticized the double standards of some Western countries imposing, what they think, more superior values and lifestyles, on developing countries.

"Improving the global human rights governance requires respect for the differences in culture, history and political systems," he said, adding that everyone should consider the cultural uniqueness of each country.

He called for solidarity among developing countries in order to reduce the dependence on developed countries. "Developing countries should unite and set up partnerships in terms of economy, trade and international organizations, such as the UN Security Council, since our interests intersect a lot," he said.

Li Xin, executive director of the Center for International Communications at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, stressed the importance of development rights for developing countries and said only when people in the world live a good life economically can human rights protection have a foundation.

She urged that the global community should abandon ideological bias and strengthen consensus to contribute to human rights governance.