submitted and if you could tell me what steps are being taken to prepare the report and when you will anticipate it will be submitted.
b. I would also be grateful if you would confirm that the report will be made publicly available at the time of its submission to the UN, as was done with the recent reports to the Human Rights Committee and as has been recommended by the treaty bodies.
3. CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN
Although the United Kingdom ratified the Convention in 1986, the Hong Kong still has the question of its extension to Hong Kong under review. One of the grounds for delay in the review was the enactment of the Bill of Rights, but that is now more than 15 months old.
The government has stated that its hesitation is due to the fact that the Convention would require it to enact laws prohibiting discrimination in private employment (an area not covered by the Bill of Rights). This explanation appears troublesome in view of the fact that there already exists an obligation under article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (extended to Hong Kong in 1976) to take appropriate steps to ensure equality in employment (other than in relation to equal pay in private sector employment -- which on any good faith interpretation of the treaty sixteen years after ratification must surely include some legislative framework to deal with sex discrimination in private employment.
Since China has been a party to the Women's Convention for some years (without substantive reservations), it would seem that, if the United Kingdom government does not extend the Convention to Hong Kong before 1997, it will apply as of 1997, with the United Kingdom delivering to China a situation in which there will be major breaches of that Convention.
I would be grateful for a statement of your government's policy on whether (and when) it will extend the Convention to Hong Kong. If it does not propose to do so, I would also be grateful for some explanation of the reasons why the government feels it inappropriate to extend to the women of Hong Kong the rights protection afforded to the women of the U.K. and enjoyed by every Western country with the exception of the U.S.A., as well as a number of countries in this region (Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines).
4. THE HONG KONG BILL OF RIGHTS ORDINANCE
As you may be aware, the Hong Kong Court of Appeal in Tam Hing-yee v Wu Tai- wai [1992] 1 HKLR 185 held that the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance did not apply to any aspect of litigation between two private parties, even where the Legislature had intervened to create new rights as between those parties. The Court noted in passing that its interpretation of the Ordinance meant that the apparent intention in the Preamble to the Ordinance was not given effect to in the Bill of Rights .
The effect of the court's conclusion is that the Bill of Rights Ordinance does not implement the obligations imposed on the Hong Kong government by the ICCPR as applied to Hong Kong so far as the direct obligations of the State are concerned. The
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