‘No one-size-fits-all model’: China’s top diplomat tells UN Human Rights Council

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – “Human rights for all” is a shared pursuit of humanity but there is “no one-size-fits-all model” in the protection of human rights, China’s top diplomat said.

“Countries vary from one another in historical background, cultural heritage, national conditions, and needs of the people,” China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang told the 52nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Monday night.

Addressing the session virtually, Qin said: “There is no one-size-fits-all model in the protection of human rights.”

The UNHRC session runs from Feb. 27 to March 31 in Geneva, and Ukraine will be on the agenda.

“The right of all countries to independently choose one’s own path of human rights development should be respected. Blindly copying the model of others would be ill-fitted for one’s own conditions, and imposing one’s model upon others would entail endless troubles,” Qin said, according to a statement by China’s Foreign Ministry.

Human rights are “indivisible,” said Qin, adding the right to subsistence and the right to development “are basic human rights of primary importance.”

“Civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights should be accorded equal attention and advanced in a holistic way. Just as all men are born equal, all countries are equal members of the international community,” he added.

He said measures of “unilateral coercion violate” international law and the basic human rights of the people of the countries concerned, and “should be lifted immediately and unconditionally.”

“The advancement of the international human rights cause needs solidarity and cooperation, not division or confrontation. No country is qualified to act as the judge on human rights, and human rights should not be used as a pretext for meddling in other countries’ internal affairs or holding back other countries’ development,” said the top diplomat of China which has faced criticism over alleged rights excesses of Uyghurs in the country's western Xinjiang province.