Justice We Can Work For
by Beate Engelen
China's civil law has continually been expanded and amended over the last decades. Among many specifications, it spells out the rights of ordinary people. Advocates of civil society have long argued that these rights need to be realized. When it comes to China's poor and marginalized people, however, progress has been slow. This is where our work can make a difference.
First and foremost, Amity wants to relieve poverty and misery by meeting people's basic material needs. But there is more to development work than building homes, digging wells and installing biogas systems. People need to be assured that they are full members of society and that they are entitled to their rights, no matter how poor they are. We see it as our responsibility to work towards justice for those who happen to be born in Western China, in the countryside, into poor families or as disabled persons - in one word: we need to care for the powerless among us. Amity has pursued this goal in different fields and has tried to inspire others to do the same.
1.
Maybe the most conspicuous of these fields is legal aid. Giving poor and underprivileged people access to the judicial system so that they can assert their rights is the least we can do. Several recent amendments to the Chinese Labor Contract Law, which becomes effective in January 2008, will bring substantial improvements in working conditions and workplace safety. But how many of China's millions of workers know about this, and how many of them can afford legal assistance for prosecuting a claim?
Too few! State funding is not yet sufficient to solve this problem. This is why Amity supports legal education. Amity staff go straight to the construction sites and job centers in order to inform workers of their rights. Amity also provides funds to help workers to get legal assistance at the Legal Aid Station in Nanjing. Left to their own devices, workers would be powerless; but with our help, at least some of them can assert their basic rights.
2.
Children in western China face a high risk of dropping out of school because their parents are too poor to pay for schooling expenses. In early 2005, the central government promised financial relief for the poorest schoolchildren in the countryside. This was supposed to ensure that every child would be able to receive nine years of compulsory education.
Still, for a great number of Chinese children, access to education has not yet become reality. Therefore, Amity staff travel to regions where this is a big problem, finding out about the causes and giving support to the affected families.
3.
Mentally disabled people need our special attention. Today, parents of disabled children are barely coping with prejudice, ignorance and lack of understanding for the problems they face. Amity has founded the Home of Blessings, not only to help mentally disabled people and their families but also to lobby for them, demonstrating to the public what can be done to claim these people's rights. They are part of the human family and need to be treated as full members of society.
A lot of people in today's China are working to realize everybody's basic rights - rights which are guaranteed by law. This issue of the Amity Newsletter will give you a few glimpses of what all of us can do in order to achieve justice for the powerless.
