- 3
As regards human rights education, the spokesman highlighted a number of ·· measures to promote human rights education and to increase awareness of children's rights.
"These include incorporating human rights topics into the school curriculum and into the Education Department's Civic Education Guidelines," he said..
"Publicity efforts are made by the Committee on the Promotion of Civic Education to heighten public awareness of human rights.
"To evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts, we shall consider including questions on human rights in the Opinion Survey on Civic Education, which is conducted every two years with the next one in early 1998."
On the Committee's comment that the Bill of Rights Ordinance (BORO) does not make specific reference to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the spokesman said: "The purpose of the BORO is to provide for the incorporation into the law of Hong Kong of the provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as applied to Hong Kong.
"Moreover, at the time of the enactment of the BORO, the Convention did not apply to Hong Kong."
The Committee recommends that measures be taken to protect Vietnamese children in detention. The spokesman said: "The situation of Vietnamese children in camps is under close monitoring of the Government and their interests are high on our agenda.
"We have no intention to detain the Vietnamese migrants (VMs) at all. In the interests of the VMs themselves as well as their children, they are repeatedly urged to join voluntary repatriation to return to Vietnam which is their home.
"Sadly, many VMs did not choose to do so. This important decision lies in the hands of the VM parents concerned."
The Committee also expressed concern over split families who await reunification. In response, the spokesman stated that the daily one-way permit quota was raised from 105 to 150 in 1995.
"Thirty of the 45 additional places are allocated to children who will have the right of abode in HK after 1997", he said.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.