Thus, though the purpose of the BRO is to implement the provisions of the ICCPR as applied to Hong Kong, yet the first year of its implementation has not seen any significant improvement in incorporating the provisions in the domestic laws. They have particularly serious impact on people who are vocal in criticizing the government and expressing their opinions on political and social issues.
4. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
4.1. Exclusion of ICESCR from the Bill of Rights
Theoretically, the ICESCR is extended to Hong Kong. In practice, no administrative procedures nor legislative measures have been adopted to enforce the rights recognized in the Covenant. As mentioned before, the Bill of Rights has totally neglected the legal responsibility of the UK. Government, as a States Party of the ICESCR to "undertake to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximization of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures."2
Obviously, this article should be understood as the state party should employ every possible means, particularly through legislative procedures to protect the rights contained in the covenant. We recognize that appropriate steps should be taken to protect such rights and that these steps should differ from one country to another, depending on their development. However, the spirit of such an article is that when a government has the means to fulfill the requirement of the covenant, it should not use any excuse to delay the legislative process to protect the human rights listed in the covenant. Hong Kong's income per capita is now ranked as the eighth highest in the world. 'Scarcity of Resources' is no longer justifiable to deny the provisions set forth in the covenant.
As the Government stated, the reason for not including ICESCR into the BRO ordinance is that its nature is different from that of the ICCPR and that it will be difficult to execute rights under the covenant in court. This argument is not acceptable as (a) the difference in nature does not constitute the reason of it not being protected by law. Various countries in the world have accumulated a host of experiences and still camp up with a set of corresponding arrangements to facilitate it. Furthermore, it is not hard to find out, that many rights in the covenant can be fulfilled through legalization. Such rights include the rights of education, free choice of job, equal pay for equal work, strike and other rights at work, right to cultural lives and right to social security.
In April 1990 the China's National People's endorsed the " Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China." Some of the rights provided in the ICESC were vaguely touched upon in the chapter 3 of the Basic Law. However, these rights were not dealt with in the BRO. Examples of these are the
2 Article 2 of ICESCR
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