OFFICE OF HUMAN RIGHTS HIGH COMMISSIONER TO SEND TECHNICAL COOPERATION MISSION TO CHINA

HR/99/16
5 March 1999



The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is sending a technical cooperation team to China from 8 to 21 March to discuss projects whereby the country could strengthen its capacities for the promotion and protection of human rights.

This "needs-assessment mission", which comes as part of the implementation of the Memorandum of Intent High Commissioner Mary Robinson and the Chinese Government signed last September in Beijing, will take the four-member team to Beijing, Urumqui (in Xinjiang Autonomous Region) and Shanghai to identify with Government officials and institutions concrete forms of cooperation.

The mission will also consider what assistance OHCHR may provide in connection with ratification of the two main international human rights covenants, which China has signed.

Based on the team's assessment and recommendations, OHCHR will develop a programme of cooperation with the Government. The actual projects in this programme would then be implemented in the country in cooperation with OHCHR.

The mission, part of OHCHR's programme of technical cooperation, falls within the framework in this field agreed by countries of the Asia-Pacific region in Tehran in March 1998. This framework, reiterated in New Delhi last month during the Seventh Workshop on Regional Cooperation for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Asian and Pacific Region, aims at, among other things, assisting countries to develop national human rights plans of action and strengthen national capacities and institutions.

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For more information about OHCHR's technical cooperation programme, please visit Internet address www.unhchr.ch and click the section entitled, "Programme/Main Activities". Direct location is: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/techcoop.htm