Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, gives a speech at the South-South Human Rights Forum in Beijing on Wednesday. Photo: Xie Wenting/GT

The 2019 South-South Human Rights Forum drew a conclusion on December 11. Among the 300-strong participants, more than half of them came  from more than 80 developing countries. 

This is the second time the State Council Information Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China jointly held such a forum. The first one was held in Beijing in 2017. President Xi Jinping sent an important message to that forum and the Beijing Consensus was adopted by it. As one who has taken part in the organizing of two forums, I have some deep impressions.

The foremost one is that developing countries are fed up with confrontations in the field of human rights and are calling for cooperation. Some experts and scholars pointed out that the developing countries are still facing a host of pressing problems like wars, conflicts, disease, hunger, deterioration of the ecology and environment, and underdevelopment. They criticized the Western world for putting too much emphasis on civil and political rights while neglecting economic, social and cultural rights, and thus the solution of the issues haunting developing countries was put into oblivion. Participants unanimously commended China for building a community with a shared future for mankind which serves as a feasible solution to the world's  pressing issues. 

The other one is that the participants sternly criticized the double standards practiced by the United States and its Western allies inhuman rights. They pointed out that colonialism has caused immense human rights disasters. Today, the West is still having a superiority complex culturally. The Western World neither respects cultural diversity nor the rights of other countries in choosing their own paths to protect and promote human rights. Some participants strongly criticized the United States and its Western allies for wrongly linking terrorism with a specific religion and making it a pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. 

Some participants even support the idea of making the forum permanent and exploring the possibility of holding the forum in other developing countries.