​Liu Xinsheng: regional human rights protection mechanisms in Europe, America and Africa

Liu Xinsheng: regional human rights protection mechanisms in Europe, America and Africa

On the morning of September 23, 2021, Professor Zhang Wei, co-director of the Institute for human rights at China University of Political Science and Law—taking the chair, a series of lectures of the global human rights forum were held online in the campus of Xueyuan Road of CUPL.

Liu Xinsheng, former Chinese Ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus and current human rights expert of the Advisory Committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council, gave a special lecture to teachers and students of the Institute of human rights on the theme of "Europe, America and Africa of regional human rights protection mechanisms".

As an opening remarks, Ambassador Liu Xinsheng briefly introduced the three major conventions arising from the regional human rights protection mechanism, namely, the European Convention on Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and National Rights.

1、 European human rights protection mechanism

First of all, the Ambassador introduced the reasons why the European regional human rights mechanism came first, including the early human rights thought of European western countries, the same religious, cultural and historical traditions of European countries, the common experience of the two world wars and the impact of the European reunification movement. When introducing the history of the European human rights protection mechanism, Ambassador Liu Xinsheng divided it into four main stages. The first stage is the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, which is the first convention under the regional protection mechanism earlier than the United Nations and the Convention mechanism. It creatively provides a complaint mechanism for dealing with inter—state allegations and individual communications, and provides a basic framework for future international human rights protection activities. The second stage is the European Social Charter of 1961, which mainly complements the economic, social and cultural rights which are not explicitly mentioned in the first stage. The national reporting procedure has been revised and a collective complaint procedure has been set down. In the third stage, protocol No. 11 of the 1998 European Convention on human rights creatively abolished the Committee and retained only the European Court of human rights, however, it also made the European Court of human rights overwhelmed. Therefore, in the fourth stage, the new composition and authority limit of the European Court of human rights were stipulated to guide it to continue to play a greater role.

2、 Inter—American human rights protection mechanism

Secondly, Ambassador Liu Xinsheng introduced the Inter American human rights protection mechanism. The organization of American States first put forward the American Declaration of human rights and obligations, subjecting to the backward American mechanism, then it later developed the American Convention on human rights. The Convention has played an significant role in establishing and promoting regional human rights protection, which is mainly reflected in: it stipulates a wide range of rights and freedoms, including not only citizens' political rights, but also economic, social and cultural rights; In addition, by learning from the European model, the Inter-American human rights protection mechanism has created many human rights protection systems. This mainly includes national reporting system, national accusation system and individual complaint system. In the national reporting system, the Convention implements a dual track system of political rights and economic, social and cultural rights; In the individual complaint system, it is proposed that the state cannot make reservations to this article. Even though, the role of the American court of human rights is difficult to compare with that of the European Court of human rights. The main reasons for this result are the non -participation of regional powers such as the United States, the interference of political diplomacy, and the defects of the human rights court itself in the support of political organizations, the weak execution of judgments, and the low quality of judges.

3、 African human rights protection mechanism

Finally, Ambassador Liu presented the African human rights protection mechanism. Its background is the gradual independence of African countries, the establishment of the organization of African Unity and the promotion of international human rights activities. The main convention is the African Charter on human and national rights. The Convention formally uses the Charter rather than the Convention in order to demonstrate the unity and cooperation of African countries; national rights are emphasized in the title. At the same time, the content not only stipulates a wide range of rights, but also includes individual obligations. Under the Convention, the human rights committee examines state reports, inter state allegations and complaints from individual communications. On the other hand, the African Court of human rights can only claim jurisdiction over the four categories of subjects: the African Commission on human and national rights, States parties, the state of nationality of victims and African intergovernmental international organizations, so in fact, it excludes the right of individual litigation. Compared with Europe, the human rights protection mechanism in Africa is also weak. In conclusion, the African Human Rights Commission faces many difficulties, the provisions of the African Charter on human and national rights are vague, the functions of the Human Rights Commission and the court are chaotic, and the mechanism is lack of coercion and efficiency.

The lecture was successfully concluded with warm applause from the students in the end.

Written by Tang Mengshuo