Campaigners stand in front of the Chinese embassy in London to protest the Chinese government’s human rights violations against its Uyghur community.
Mark Kerrison | In Pictures | Getty Images
China’s growing global influence poses a serious threat to global human rights, according to a new report, which suggests that the United Nations Human Rights Council – the body established to safeguard such international protections – has failed to combat those danger.
The UNHRC is an inter-governmental body composed of 47 member states of the UNwho are elected on a three-year rotational basis with the stated purpose of strengthening the “promotion and protection of human rights” worldwide.
However, research released Thursday by risk and strategic consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft suggests that it has instead become a “battleground for competing norms,” with China and allied member states showing signs of ” curtailing international action” and pushing their “own brand of human rights. .”
In particular, it said China was pushing a “statist ‘development first’ view of human rights” among council members and undermining individual freedoms by “emphasizing the development of economy above all other rights.”
China’s ministry of foreign affairs did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the findings.
Beijing’s increasingly active role in the global human rights system comes at a time of global democratic breakdown.
Sofia Nazalya
senior human rights analyst at Verisk Maplecroft
The research, part of the company’s broader annual Human Rights Outlook, is based on quantitative data from sources including the UN, the US State Department and Human Rights Watch, as well as internal qualitative analysis by Verisk Maplecroft .
It also found that China is using its economic power to sway council votes, with China’s “Belt & Road Initiative” grants most easily swayed.
At least 35 of the UNHRC’s 47 member states belong to the BRI — China’s global infrastructure development project — many of which are Asian or African countries with similar, or worse, scores on the indices of company’s human rights, says the study.
The UNHRC’s acting spokesperson, Pascal Sim, rejected the claims, stating that “no single state runs the council or dominates the agenda.”
“All states, large and small, have an equal voice and enormous potential to inform and influence the action of this intergovernmental body charged with promoting and protecting human rights around the world,” Sim added in the remarks. -emailed comment to CNBC.
Political maneuvering
Among its criticisms, the report highlighted China’s approach to civil and political rights — and above all freedom of speech and expression — as particularly concerning.
Such behavior has been denounced by other UNHRC states, it said, with almost three-quarters (70%) of current members ranking as high or severe risks for such rights. Among those are Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Spokesmen for the respective governments did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
More than half of members also rank poorly on three other metrics that the research considers important for promoting humanitarian protections: labor rights, human security and human development.
Of the 30 members rated as extreme or high risk for labor rights, 18 recorded a decrease in their score from 2017, 15 of which are BRI signatories.
Nearly three-quarters (70%) of UNHRC members rank as a high or severe risk for civil or political rights, according to risk and strategic consultancy form Verisk Maplecroft.
Verisk Maplecroft
The report also found that China is using increasingly sophisticated manipulation of key UNHRC mechanisms to contain criticism, with states increasingly engaged in whitewashing Beijing’s rights record.
It said that the most “stunning diplomatic success” came in the rejection of a draft resolution proposed by the US on holding a debate on Xinjiang in October 2022supported by Muslim-majority states and BRI signatories including Indonesia, the UAE and Qatar.
Human rights groups accuse Beijing of abuses against Uyghurs, a major Muslim ethnic minority group native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. The US has accused China of committing genocide. Beijing has vehemently denied that it engaged in any abuses.
The findings come at a time of heightened Western skepticism over China, with US and European allies raising various concerns over potential national security threats posed by the technology. Chinese until Beijing’s alliance with Moscow.
“Beijing’s increasingly active role in the international human rights system comes at a time of global democratic breakdown, economic slowdown and intense geopolitical polarization – all with implications for human rights,” Sofia Nazalya, senior human rights analyst at Verisk Maplecroft and the author of the report, said.
“The result can be a weakening of international human rights standards at the expense of vulnerable populations, while businesses have to navigate and decode competing, and often conflicting, views of what constitutes an abuse and what not from the Council itself.”
Separate analysis Released on Tuesday found that China has significantly increased its bailout lending for troubled countries in recent years, lending $185 billion to BRI debtors in the past five years alone.
The report, co-authored by the World Bank, said the increase marked a shift toward a more “opaque and uncoordinated” global system for cross-border rescue lending, which threatens to undermine the existing monetary architecture and the role of traditional institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.
On Monday, Amnesty International released its latest “the state of human rights of the world” report, in which it said that the world has experienced increased war crimes, crimes against humanity, suppression of universal liberties, economic crises and rising inequality in the past year.
