In the past decade, the international community has generally felt China’s proactive role in the international human rights discourse. China has made substantive contributions in the creation of international human rights law and continues to promote a global moral consensus view of human rights. Additionally, China regularly and positively interacts with international human rights mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and special procedures and treaty bodies. It practises the principles of respect, dialogue and cooperation rather than confrontation, while resisting politicization, selectivity and double standards. Since China emphasizes economic, social and cultural rights, there is an impression that it ignores civil and political rights or selectively safeguards human rights. This conclusion is difficult to support when we review the recent movements within Chinese policy and judicature when it comes to human rights. Considering its positive commitment to civil and political rights during the third UPR and in its fourth National Human Rights Action Plan, China is expected to make substantive progress in the comprehensive, balanced protection of all human rights.

Within the United Nations, the Human Rights Committee and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions are most heavily engaged in the promotion of the right to life, but many other treaty bodies and special procedures address the right to life in some form. In a number of instances, this is because the relevant treaty specifically provides for the right to life (the case with respect to children, international migrants, and persons with disabilities). In others, it is because the customary right to life is not respected whether as a result of a form of discrimination (whether racial or gender-based) or because it and related rights are implicitly protected by the treaty in question (enforced disappearance).

This chapter examines cases where the WGAD has declined to find the deprivation of liberty of a detainee arbitrary, either by rejecting the source’s allegations on the merits, noting that the application failed to comply with the procedures explained in its Methods of Work, or for other reasons. Under its Methods of Work, the WGAD makes a case-specific determination of the arbitrariness of any detention.1 They present the WGAD with the following options, outside of finding the detention arbitrary as alleged: file the case without an opinion on the nature of detention in cases where a detainee has been released; classify the case as pending until further information is produced; or refer the matter to a more appropriate rapporteur, independent expert, or working group.2

The UN Commission for Human Rights (UNCHR) created the WGAD in 1991 after a long investigation by the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities into the practice of administrative detention. In his final report to the sub-commission, prominent French lawyer Louis Joinet emphasized the need for “suitable machinery … to prevent and report violations” of international law regarding detention and recommended the UNCHR create either a special thematic rapporteur or a five-person working group. He thought the latter option “might be more effective, by being able to deal with the variety of categories of detention.”