THE LEGAL SYSTEM
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Legal Aid Services Council
The Legal Aid Services Council is an independent statutory body established to advise the Chief Executive of the HKSAR on legal aid policies. It also supervises the provision of legal aid services by the Legal Aid Department without interfering with its day to day operation. The council is chaired by a non-official who is not in the legal profession. Its members include lawyers, lay members and the Director of Legal Aid. During the year, it made suggestions on several aspects in the provision of legal aid services. The council submitted a report to the Chief Executive in 1998 recommending the establishment of an independent legal aid authority. The administration has considered the matter but concluded that the existing legal aid system, with an open-ended budget administered by a government department accountable to the legislature, was the best way of achieving the Government's policy objective with regard to legal aid, i.e. to ensure that target clients receive the assistance they need.
The Official Solicitor
The Director of Legal Aid has been appointed Official Solicitor under the Official Solicitor Ordinance since August 1, 1991.
The Official Solicitor's main duties are to act as guardian ad litem or next friend in legal proceedings for persons under disability of age or mental capacity, as representative of deceased persons' estates for the purpose of legal proceedings, as Official Trustee and Judicial Trustee, representing patients in proceedings under the Mental Health Ordinance, representing children in matrimonial proceedings and in the Juvenile Court. The Official Solicitor received 108 requests for his representation in 1999, a decrease of 16 per cent over the previous year.
Rights of the individual
The Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China provide that the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as applied to Hong Kong shall remain in force. The HKSAR's first reports in the light of the two covenants were submitted to the United Nations in January and June 1999 respectively. A Hong Kong delegation attended the United Nations hearing of the ICCPR report in November.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region continues to abide by the major international conventions on human rights, namely, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The HKSAR's initial report under the CEDAW was examined, as part of China's report, by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in February. A Hong Kong team attended the hearing as part of the Chinese delegation. The first report under the CAT also formed part of China's third report under that convention which was submitted to the UN in May. As with CEDAW, a Hong Kong team will attend the hearing as part of China's delegation in May 2000.