The 2015 Beijing Forum on Human Rights, held from September 16-17, focused on "Peace and Development: the Victory of the World Anti-Fascist War and Human Rights Advancement." Over 100 officials and scholars from more than 30 countries attended the forum and discussed major human rights issues. The following are excerpts of speeches delivered at the forum by Huang Mengfu, Chairman of the China Foundation for Human Rights Development, and Lord Davidson, a member of the UK's House of Lords.

Huang Mengfu: The World Anti-Fascist War victory 70 years ago greatly promoted the progress of the international human rights movement and set China on a new path of national renewal. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, particularly since economic reform and opening up began in 1978, the Chinese economy has rapidly developed, leading to improvements in people's livelihoods.

We have made it our priority to guarantee people's rights to life and development. Since 1978, China has pulled 660 million of its citizens out of poverty, accounting for 93.3 percent of the decline in the global population living in poverty. The Chinese Government has spurred the creativity of the Chinese people and embarked on a historic path to transform the country into a prosperous nation. This "China model" has stunned the world and laid a solid foundation for the realization of a person's rights to life and development.

We pursue an independent foreign policy of peace and are committed to safeguarding the right to peace for people all over the world. We have always advocated peace and opposed war. We have promised the world never to seek hegemony or expansion. President Xi Jinping has stressed on multiple occasions the initiatives of building a community of shared destiny and forging a new type of international relations characterized by mutually beneficial cooperation.

The Chinese Government has also advanced the goal of world peace by participating in UN peacekeeping operations. Since 1990, China has sent 30,178 troops to participate in peacekeeping missions, the most among all five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and has thus won respect for shouldering the responsibilities of a major country.

The right to development has been recognized as a basic human right by the international community. However, an equitable and sustainable international order that guarantees the realization of that right is lacking, and developing countries still face tough challenges. In addition, terrorist attacks that occur from time to time and the ongoing European migrant crisis pose threats to world peace and security and raise concerns over the future of mankind.

Against this backdrop, we should improve the system of global economic governance and try to build a new international order that affords all countries equal development opportunities. We will work together with other countries to increase the representation and voice of emerging markets and developing countries in global economic development. We will promote the realization of the goals set out in the UN Declaration on the Right to Development and urge developed countries to fulfill their promises of financial aid, the transferring of technology, debt reduction or exemption and preferential market access for developing countries. China will also provide new cooperation and development opportunities for other developing countries through the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative and the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

We will adhere to a path of peaceful development and strive to build a new type of mutually beneficial international relations. We will strengthen economic and trade cooperation with other countries and expand our common interests in areas such as the economy, trade, industrial capacity, energy, and science and technology. We will also join forces with more countries to confront global challenges such as climate change, energy and resource security, cybersecurity and major natural disasters.

China will continue to safeguard peace, human rights and justice. We oppose so-called human rights defenders who interfere with other countries' domestic affairs using human rights as a pretext, some of whom even use force or sanctions to sabotage or overthrow governments of the countries in question. We advocate a cooperative and sustainable security concept and will work together with other countries to prevent and fight any form of terrorism. We oppose any attempts or actions to deny, distort or falsify the history of World War II, defend the outcome of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War and are committed to establishing a fair and just international order built on peace, equality and human rights.

The rights to life and development of people in all countries, particularly developing countries, should be fully respected. We should prioritize these rights in the human rights movement. The rights to life and development are basic human rights of primary importance that serve as preconditions for the realization of other rights. Nevertheless, the realization of the two fundamental rights, the right to development in particular, is far from easy owing to an inequitable international order. Developing countries should choose a development path in keeping with their national conditions. They must also secure respect and support from other countries, especially developed countries, which are supposed to shoulder more international obligations.

Lord Davidson: Many of the representatives to this forum come from states remembering this year as the 70th anniversary of the war against fascism and aggression. In the aftermath of that war, the nations of the world decided to set out broad principles that humanity should adhere to in the future. These principles were put in place in light of the inhumane and barbarous acts of the aggressor nations. This was a point in history when the nations considered that there was an imperative to do what was possible to prevent the reoccurrence of such aggression leading to the establishment of the UN.

Not only were the consequences of the aggressive war all too vividly in evidence, but there was also the question of how the aggressor nations had from a position of relative development, embraced policies that included racist mass slaughter, widespread torture and the use of humans for medical experimentation. It is clear that the right to life in the broadest sense was rejected within the aggressor nations and it was that rejection, which led to the cruelties they visited on other peoples they perceived as different from--even less human than--themselves. It was to resist this dehumanizing impetus that humanity came together in a remarkable concurrence that the right to life must be explicitly identified and respected.

What was the postwar consequence of this global agreement? In Europe, the principal aggressor nation, Germany, engaged with its former enemies in a profound manner taking as a major policy imperative that there must never be a repetition of its fascist past. The acknowledgement of the inhumane treatment of populations resulting from the policies of its wartime leadership was both very public and sincere. The education of children in the postwar period included a full recognition of the horrors that had been carried out in the name of Germany. Concentration camps were preserved to act as a reminder of the barbarity to which Germany had descended. Symbols of the Nazi regime were destroyed and banned. It made clear that future generations bore a responsibility to ensure that their society would never again be corrupted by fascist ideologies. The embrace of a human rights agenda was one of the basic aspects of the rule of law in that new postwar society.

The result of this approach was that Germany gained the respect of former adversaries who accepted the sincerity of their determination never again to engage in aggressive war, never again to subject other peoples to inhumane treatment, and that as a people, they truly and deeply regretted their actions that had brought about the world war. The war was seen as an aberration, and, as a result of their profound sincerity, a restoration of normal relations between nations took place and endures to this day.

To institute total war across large areas of the world can be seen as aberrant behavior, a suspension of rationality--that most human quality. An integration of a respect for human rights into a state's guiding ideology is a protection. In accepting the rule of law in its society, the state creates the basis for that integration. This is not to argue there cannot be differences between nations in the content of their human rights law or indeed the processes whereby the rule of law is engaged.

What is clear, however, is that for normal relations to be restored fully, it is an essential step that the aberrant nation, the aggressor, must recognize its errors, fully acknowledge these and take objectively unequivocal steps to demonstrate its sincerity. The absence of such steps is to leave doubt in former adversaries whether lessons have been truly learned and whether there is a sincere recognition of the errors of the past.

Copyedited by Eric Daly

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