Better protecting human rights

Peace and stability as essential rights

Gao Xinman, director of the Training Center for Chinese Peacekeeping Police and member of the China Society for Human Rights Studies

One of the most precious lessons drawn from past peace-building operations is that peace and the right to development are closely connected. Currently, most of the military conflicts take place in underdeveloped countries; the immediate causes of the conflicts vary, but extreme poverty is often the root cause.

To prevent conflicts, it is essential to eliminate poverty and promote sustainable social development. Only with enough resources for all residents can an inclusive social environment be possible. Only an inclusive social environment will be able to maintain social stability, legal order and morality.

That requires developed countries better perform their duties as members of the international community, by providing more funds and other support to help conflict-torn countries recover.

Huo Guihuan, director of the Department of Philosophy & Culture, Institute of Philosophy, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

As national security is a basic guarantee for human rights protection, so too is regional security for the protection of human rights in each state in a specific region.

The maintaining of regional security is critical. If the basic human rights of a region are threatened, countries from other regions may decide to make economic, political or even military interventions. The lessons from the Iraq War and the ongoing Syria crisis reveal how important sustained regional security is to the protection of human rights.

There is no consensus on whether sovereignty weighs more than human rights. But human rights are upheld and protected based on the presence of state sovereignty.

Some Western powers maintain that human rights are above sovereignty and they are willing to intervene in sovereign states in the name of safeguarding their human rights. Turning human rights into an ideological excuse to intervene in other countries' internal affairs often leads to more human tragedies.

On the online environment for human rights development

Daniel Joyce, project director, New Media and Human Rights Project, Australian Human Rights Centre, and lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales

Online environment, and especially the communication networks of social media such as weibo or Twitter, can assist in raising human rights awareness and encouraging public participation. But several challenges remain, including those relating to spectacle, privacy and the role and influence of transnational media companies.

The online environment does offer a powerful new avenue for human rights advocacy, but perhaps its power is strongest in the areas of communication and coordination. It remains to be seen whether these connections made online, along with increasing awareness, will translate into meaningful protection for human rights.

There remains much optimism about the potential for new digital media forms, and especially the Internet, to enhance the fields of human rights and international law and to refocus their message and impact. Yet if international law is a discipline of crisis and subject to its own existential challenges, so too are the media, who face serious questions regarding their lack of regulation and responsibility.