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Interregional Seminar and Symposium on Annex VIOpening Ceremony Opening RemarksProfessor Albert H. Y. CHEN, Dean It gives me great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Faculty of Law of The University of Hong Kong -- and in particular our Centre for Comparative and Public Law -- to this Interregional Seminar on International Norms and Standards relating to Disability. We very much appreciate having had the opportunity to work closely with the United Nations Division for Social Policy and Development and the Hong Kong Equal Opportunities Commission in the organisation of the seminar and we would like to express our sincere thanks to both those organisations for the enormous amount of work that they have done in the lead up to this event. The human rights of persons with disabilities is a field in which there has been much progress in the past 50 years, both in how international and national communities perceive and respond to the needs of those of their members who have disabilities. Internationally, we have moved from an attitude which saw persons with disabilities as deserving of welfare and limited in their capacities as human beings to a situation where persons with disabilities are accepted as equal members of our communities with an equal entitlement to the enjoyment of rights and opportunities enjoyed by other members of the community. We have clear pronouncements of these rights by the General Assembly of the United Nations in a number of declarations and other instruments, although we do not have as yet at the universal level a treaty that specifically addresses the human rights of persons with disabilities. But, of course, the general human rights treaties guarantee the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights as much to persons with disabilities as to others, and the implications and opportunities of these protections have still to be fully explored and exploited. In Hong Kong since 1991 we have had a Bill of Rights, which guarantees equal rights to all members of the community against discrimination based on any form of disability - a guarantee now enshrined in the constitutional document of the Hong Kong SAR, the Basic Law. Since 1995 we have had legislation specifically prohibiting discrimination on the ground of disability in many fields of life and since 1996 we have had an Equal Opportunities Commission tasked with the implementation and enforcement of that legislation. Indeed, it was Ms. Anna Wu, now Chairperson of the EOC, who in her role as a legislator working with many others in the, community, played a critical role in the genesis of that legislation. Yet despite these lofty affirmations, programmes for action, and legislation, we still have a very great way to go before we can truly say that persons with disabilities enjoy full equal opportunities in all fields of life in most countries in the world. Hong Kong is no exception, as no doubt our visitors have already discovered: we ask you to be both critical and tolerant of our failures in this regard and to urge us to do better. Although much has been done in recent years, the geography of Hong Kong, past planning and building practice, present attitudes which embody suspicion and fear of persons with disabilities, models of doing business, government or education which simply fail to take into account the legitimate needs of persons with disabilities still persist in our society and need to be addressed with vigour and persistence. For example, we have few students with disabilities in our University and law school, and as an institution have yet to make a concerted attempt to seek out and encourage talented individuals who may have disabilities to join our community as students, scholars and staff. We all have a responsibility to look into our own attitudes and practices to see what concrete steps we can take to ensure that these guarantees become real. Nevertheless, the Faculty of Law - and in particular the Equality and Law project of the Centre of Comparative and Public Law - has played a role over the years in contributing to the public debate on equality issues, including the taking of measures to eliminate discrimination based on disability. A few years ago two members of the Faculty and Centre, Mr. Andrew Byrnes and Ms. Carole Petersen, had the privilege of working with Ms. Wu in the drafting and introduction of her private member's Equal Opportunities bills which led to the enactment of the Disability Discrimination Ordinance we have today. In 1997, with the financial support of the European Commission and the EOC, the Centre held a major international conference on discrimination law attended by experts from many overseas jurisdictions. The Centre has also conducted a number of research projects in the area, including a legislative history of Hong Kong's anti-discrimination laws and an ongoing project on the impact of the new legislation. We are also grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in the organisation of this seminar, made possible on our side in part by a special grant from the University to support activities in the Faculty's areas of specialisation, of which human rights has been one for over a decade. It would be remiss of me to finish without thanking not only all those at the EOC and the UN Division for Social Policy and Development, but also my colleagues in the Faculty who have contributed to this conference. I would especially like to mention Ms. Kirstine Adams of the Centre, for the enormous amount of work she has put into the organisation of the seminar, as well as Andrew Byrnes, Eddie Leung, Raymond Lam, Nancy Choi and Estella Ng. The tasks which have been set for the participants in the seminar are many and challenging and I wish you the best of luck in addressing them and hope that the outcome of the seminar will contribute to the achievement of a fairer and more just society for all members of our community. Thank you. |
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