The Bangkok Declaration and the Formation of Human Rights Position in Asia

I. Convening of Asian Regional Preparatory Meeting of Vienna World Conference on Human Rights

Most Asian countries began to respond to human rights issues in the 1980s. During the period, influence of the United States in the international community was gradually weakened, while the political and economic development of Asian countries was stable. Therefore, the United States was more eager to interfere in the political and economic order of Asian countries. As a result, Western countries turned their attention to the ideological struggle to criticize the violations of human rights and the lack of democratic freedom in many countries, and began regard themselves as “human rights defenders”, claiming to let the flowers of human rights and democracy bloom all over the world. The long-term poverty and backwardness due to historical reasons in Asia provided Western countries a good excuse to defend human rights, but the foreign policy of human rights caused a strong reaction in Asian countries, and most Asian countries didn't accept it. In the diplomatic confrontation between China and the United States on human rights, the U.S. government once proposed to extend China's most-favored-nation status during the visits and exchanges with China, but attempted to press China to make concessions on human rights issues, which was directly rejected by the Chinese government, leading to human rights diplomacy strategy of the United States came to naught. However, after weighing the trend of Sino-US international cooperation, the United States finally announced the extension of China's most-favored-nation status, and China's most-favored-nation status should not be equated with its human rights policy. It was widely regarded by the international community as a major victory for China's human rights diplomacy against the United States and also a strong response made by China on behalf of the Asian region. As for resisting the Western countries led by the United States using human rights to suppress the political development of other countries, there was another important leader Mahathir Mohammed, Prime Minister of Malaysia, who once publicly criticized the foreign policy of the United States on human rights in the international community. He said, “The United States attempts to use human rights as a tool to exert pressure on other countries and make them to obey. Such method has hit a wall in China, and other countries in Asia will not agree either.” 

Due to the fierce debate between the East and the West, regional arrangements for protection and promotion of human rights were also actively carried out in the Asia-Pacific region during this period to respond to Western attacks on human rights. The Seminar on National, local and Regional Arrangements for Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Asia was held at Colombo in 1982; the First Human Rights Workshop in Asia and Pacific Region was held at Manila in 1990; and the Second Human Rights Workshop in Asia and Pacific Region was held at Jakarta in 1993. All these seminars and workshops focused on the preparatory work for the establishment of national human rights organizations and regional human rights mechanisms in the Asia-Pacific region. During the period, Governments of India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand in Asian countries vigorously made decisions and took preparatory steps on the establishment of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights, which had also received special attention and support from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Later, Malaysia, Philippines and other Asian countries also set up national human rights commissions to respond to the universal appeal of the international community to protect human rights, and to fight back against Western countries' accusations on human rights protection in Asia.1 These meetings and the construction of national institutions prepared for the formation and gradual clarity of the Asian position on human rights, and laid the foundation for the concept of human rights in the Bangkok Declaration.

The preparatory meeting for Second World Congress on Human Rights was held in Geneva In 1993. It was decided, at the preparatory meeting in Geneva, that African, Latin American and Asian regions would hold the preparatory meetings for the region before the convening of World Conference on Human Rights. The Asian Regional Preparatory Meeting was held in Bangkok, Thailand from March 29 to April 2, 1993. At the Asian Regional Meeting, the final declaration of the Asian region for World Conference on Human Rights was adopted, also known as the Bangkok Declaration; and the ideas included in the Declaration were submitted to the World Conference on Human Rights for review. It was expected that the human rights position of the Asian region would be further clarified in the international community through the World Conference on Human Rights.

7 meetings were held for Asian Regional Preparatory Meeting. The Bangkok Declaration was adopted at the 7th meeting. Election of officers was first discussed at the first meeting of the regional preparatory meeting held on 29 March 1993. Based on Thailand's contribution to the organizing and holding of the Meeting, various countries supported relevant personnel of Thailand as chairman of the regional meetings. Vice-Chairmen were the representatives of Bahrain, Bhutan, China, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan and Pakistan. The representative of Indian served as both Vice-chairman and Rapporteur. Ambassador Fan Guoxiang made a remarkable contribution to the Geneva Preparatory Meeting, and Ambassador Jin Yongjian attended the Asian regional meeting as Successive Representative and Vice-chairman. The second meeting of the Regional Meeting approved the work plan based on the recommendation of the General Committee on March 29, 1993. At the same meeting, the Regional Meeting decided to set up the Drafting Committee according to the recommendation of General Committee and appointed the representative of Iran as Chairman of the Drafting Committee. National representatives of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam served as members of Credentials Committee, which was responsible for reviewing the credentials of the representatives of the 34 member states attending Asian Regional Conference of the World Conference on Human Rights.

The regional conference considered the report of the Drafting Committee at its 7th meeting held on April 2, 1993, which included the final draft declaration. After several days of continuous discussions, Asian countries formed the human rights document belonging to Asia on issues such as human rights and development in the Asian region, i.e., the Bangkok Declaration. The forming process of the draft declaration was very smooth. Asian countries had almost the same opinion on unity and cooperation, and the draft resolution was adopted without a vote. At the final meeting, only the representatives of Cyprus and Japan made statements to explain some of their delegations' positions on the Declaration. Finally, the Bangkok Declaration was submitted to the World Conference on Human Rights in accordance with the regulations to reflect the human rights claims of the Asian region. Many of the claims were reflected in Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.

II. Core Human Rights Idea in the Bangkok Declaration

Through the Asian regional Conference and the World Conference on Human Rights, the human rights values advocated in the Bangkok Declaration were respected and supported by Asian countries and other countries in the world. The logical structure of the Bangkok Declaration was roughly divided into three following levels: The first level was to respect and affirm human rights conventions and ideas at the international level, and affirm the universality of human rights, which was the major premise for Asian countries to conduct human rights discussions. The second level referred to the rights principles that Asian countries need establish and universal human rights issues they faced, such as the rights to development and self-determination, as well as differences, racial discrimination and other problems in human rights development. The last level was to emphasize the establishment of cooperation mechanisms at the international and national levels.

The idea of the Preface to the text of the Declaration ran through the entire text, which required countries to respect and recognize the World Conference on Human Rights and international human rights principles, recognized the universality of human rights, and avoided the politicization and double standards of human rights. Asian countries attached great importance to the significance of the World Conference on Human Rights and conferences of countries in the Asian region. They believed that it was a valuable opportunity to take a comprehensive look at the current international human rights, rather than focusing solely on human rights development in the Asian region, let alone trying to establish another set of standards independent of universal human rights norms. During the discussions at the regional conference, Asian countries also actively invited various representatives and international institutions for communication and exchanges so as to ensure the fairness and balance of the main ideas of the Bangkok Declaration.

The Bangkok Declaration declared the human rights principles that Asian countries need establish and universal human rights issues they faced.

First, universality and indivisibility of human rights should be respected and any content that separates human rights should be objected. It was clearly stated that citizens' political, economic, social and cultural rights were interdependent and indivisible, and that equal attention should be given to all categories of human rights. However, there were still many dissenting voices claiming that Asia was trying to establish dual human rights standards. Some Western scholars had mentioned in their articles that “at the Asian Regional Conference held in Bangkok in March 1993 as the Preliminary Meeting of Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, Asian governments proposed the Bangkok Declaration as a challenge to the applicability of universal standardization of human rights in Asia. Besides, they claimed China had played a leading role in posing the challenge. The Bangkok Declaration took the position of cultural relativism, advocating the importance of unique Asian historical, cultural and economic factors in determining human rights standards”. Such an interpretation took a one-sided view of the logic ideas of the Bangkok Declaration. It could be seen from two parts of the Declaration that Asian countries respected international human rights conventions and ideas and emphasized the cooperation of international human rights mechanisms at the beginning. The discussion of the conference and the presentation of the text were all carried out in an international context. Foreign ministers of Thailand and Kenya, respectively, went on to state this view at Vienna Conference on Human Rights, powerfully demonstrating human rights position of Asian countries.

Second, emphasis should be placed on collective human rights such as the right of peoples to self-determination and the right to development. This idea was set forth not only in the Bangkok Declaration, but also in regional preparatory conference of the same period, such as the Tunis Declaration and the San Jose Declaration. Reaffirming the right to selfdetermination was an important international human rights principle for countries freed from colonization and occupation; and attempts to create national contradictions and split national sovereignty under the banner of the right to self-determination. At the previous Asian-African Conference, China, as a representative, put forward the human rights principle on the right of peoples to self-determination, which laid the ideological foundation and was further affirmed at the Asian regional Conference. The right to development had been prominently recalled and established in the Bangkok Declaration. Although Declaration on the Right to Development had been officially promulgated, many developing countries were far from achieving their development goals due to the irrational tendency of the international economic order. The issue related to the new international economic order was first put forward in the international community through the Bangkok Declaration, “The international macroeconomic level is the main obstacle to the implementation of the right to development of countries, which has led to the increasingly widening gap between the North and the South and between the rich and the poor.” China also put forward amendments to Declaration on the Right to Development in Articles 17 and 18 of the Bangkok Declaration on the right to development, and added the following sentence, “The main obstacle to the realization of the right to development is at the international macroeconomic level, which is reflected in the increasingly widening gap between the North and the South, and between rich and poor countries.” Before Asian Regional Conference was held, Western countries had never taken effective measures on the right to development, and they had also tried to combine the development of human rights with economic assistance and trade development. China clearly refused the link the right to development with economic and trade cooperation. At Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, the representative of Government of Bangladesh continued to state the idea of the consensus reached among Asian countries at Asian Regional Preparatory Meeting, “The current unjust international trading order, the undemocratic international financial system and the unfair international financial institutions have denied international economic rights.” Therefore, the Bangkok Declaration expressed the intention to break the irrational economic phenomenon in the world economic order, improve the current situation that human rights of poor and backward people in Asia and other regions in the world cannot be fully protected, and promote common prosperity of developing countries. An American scholar also expressed his support for promotion of the right to development in developing countries. He pointed out, “If development means that wealth is gathered in the hands of a few people, it is not called development”; “If the development process is controlled by a few people with power and the majority of people have no opportunity to participate in it at all, it is not called development”.

Third, emphasis should be placed on different understandings of human rights based on history and national conditions of different countries. As is clearly states in the Declaration, “Despite the universality of human rights, we should be aware that the condition in each region has its own characteristics, and we should take different historical developments, cultural, educational and religious backgrounds into account.” The international community had collected many human rights ideas, but the diverse cultural traditions and regional differences in Asia led to more thinking. Long-term historical development and the experience of colonization in Asia made the development of human rights not smooth. In the new era, the penetration of authoritarianism under the slogan of caring about international human rights should be resisted in order to usher in the development of human rights in the real sense. Development of human rights should be promoted through sincere consultation and cooperation, and some values incompatible with the Asian region should not be imposed on such region.

III. Contribution of the Bangkok Declaration to the Formation of Human Rights Position in Asia

Asian countries expressed their human rights position in the international human rights field for the first time. After the Cold War, the international community and the United Nations continued to implement Universal Declaration of Human Rights and did important work on basic human rights, worked to eliminating racism, apartheid, colonialism and other large-scale human rights violations, and opened up bright prospects for protection of human rights for people all over the world. A series of human rights documents such as Tehran Declaration and Declaration on the Right to Development adopted successively by the international community expanded the situation in the field of international human rights and enriched international human rights activities. Before the convening of World Conference on Human Rights, the Asian region adopted the Bangkok Declaration, expressing the human rights issue of urgent concern in the Asian region with the vast majority of the world's population, and sending out unified voice of human rights in Asia to the world for the first time. With regard to promotion and protection of human rights, together with the declarations formed in the regional conferences in Africa and Latin America, it served as the basis for Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights and contributed to its formulation.

Secondly, it theoretically enriched the discourse system of human rights in Asia. (1) In terms of development of the theory of human rights and sovereignty. According to different political, historical, and cultural backgrounds, the Asian region has also realized national and social harmony and stability. Western countries have always been interfering in developing countries under the pretext of human rights issues, but instead turning a blind eye to human rights violations in their own countries, and even interfering in the sovereignty of some developing countries. The Bangkok Declaration reaffirmed the collective view of Asian countries on the above-mentioned issues, rejected interference in the internal affairs of various countries and called for respect for human rights characteristics of all countries. The spirit of the Bangkok Declaration continued to be conveyed at the World Conference on Human Rights. Liu Huaqiu, head of the Chinese delegation, powerfully expounded the view of the Asian region at the Conference: “No country has the right to arbitrarily criticize other countries' human rights issues or forcibly apply its own human rights standards to other countries. Such moves have violated the sovereignty and interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, and are very likely to lead to social unrest in other countries. Full realization of citizens' human rights is highly dependent on the state subject. Just like a castle in the air without the foundation, it will be more difficult to realize citizens' human rights without state sovereignty as the basis.” (2) In terms of the theory of human rights and the right to development. Asian countries have effectively incorporated these economic and political development themes closely related to human rights into the Bangkok Declaration and emphasized and reiterated the themes, having made certain ideological contributions. Through history and experience, we can say without hesitation that the right to development is the natural extension of the people's basic human rights and right to self-determination in a country, since political independence cannot be consolidated without economic independence. As for the majority of Asian countries, establishment of a new international economic order remains a step in the process of promoting economic independence and development in the real sense. The reaffirmation of the right to development in the Bangkok Declaration marked a new phase. Countries in the Asian region have once again succeeded in awakening the world to the issue of dependence on development in backward regions, and made everyone realize that the people here, i.e., majority of the human, are still suffering a lot. (3) In the aspects of human rights and international peace theory development. There are still some large-scale violations of human rights in the field of human rights, which has posed threats to the development of international human rights. Some Western countries even act as “human rights defenders” and blatantly enter other countries by force. In face of such violations of human rights and power politics in the world, the Bangkok Declaration solemnly affirmed its position on behalf of the countries in the Asian region, “Asian countries have expressed concern about all forms of human rights violations, including racial discrimination, racism, apartheid, colonialism, foreign aggression and occupation, and the establishment of illegal settlements in the occupied territories.” It reflects the determination of Asian countries on this issue and the raised international attention. Moreover, the World Conference on Human Rights also agreed with this.

In conclusion, the Bangkok Declaration epitomizes the understanding of various countries in Asia on human rights issues, reflects the attitudes of Asian countries towards respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. Besides, discussions have also been carried out on taking appropriate measures in accordance with the actual conditions of the region and their respective countries, demonstrating the determination of Asian countries to guarantee the full enjoyment of all human rights by their people. Moreover, the successful convening of Asian Regional Conference on Human Rights has brought about the full reflection of opinions from various channels, perfectly fulfilled the tasks of the Regional Preparatory Meeting for World Conference on Human Rights, promoted the activities in the field of human rights in Asia to be more comprehensive, normal and healthy, and made the results of the World Conference on Human Rights more universal.

(The author Hua Guoyu is associate professor of Law School of People’s Public Security University of China; Bai Boyu is master of Law School of People's Public Security University of China, cadre of Hohhot Urban Management Comprehensive Law Enforcement Bureau.)