Moving on the rights track

To promote the rule of law and deepen judicial reforms, the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a guideline in November that says the country will "strengthen judicial safeguards for human rights". It was the second significant step toward guaranteeing better human rights protection in nine years. In March 2004, the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, passed a constitutional amendment to include "respecting and guaranteeing human rights" as a new clause.

After issuing legislation for decades, China now has a well-developed legal system in place. The government, however, should include the measures to protect human rights in the Constitution and make institutional arrangements to implement them so that people can enjoy their political, economic and social rights.

By legalizing human rights protection, China has fulfilled the basic precondition for the realization of such rights. But such rights can be effectively protected only when administrative organs at various levels meticulously fulfill their responsibilities in accordance with the laws and regulations, and implement the written legal clauses and measures aimed at boosting and protecting human rights.

Judicial safeguards, which serve as an indispensable means for better human rights assistance and protection, have played a unique role in guaranteeing human rights.

China attaches great importance to safeguarding human rights through legislation, law enforcement as well as through judicial and constitutional reinforcements. It attaches equal importance to people's rights for subsistence and development, as well as their political, economic, social and cultural rights. Besides, the government has issued a series of legal measures to protect the human rights of senior citizens, women, minors, the physically challenged, defendants and prisoners.

But compared with the efforts to build legal safeguards, the country still has a lot to improve in terms of judicial safeguards for human rights. This is where the Party's guideline comes into play, because it outlines the building of an all-round, well-off society by 2020 while drawing a series of measures to deepen the judicial reforms to strengthen judicial safeguards for human rights.