FORUM-ASIA is organising a workshop entitled "Challenges to Participatory Democracy and Human Rights in the Globalised Market：Regional Human Rights Mechanisms in Asia and Europe after 60 Years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" at the 3rd cluster of the 7th Asia-Europe People's Forum in Beijing, from 13-15 October 2009.
The workshop will be committed to perfect and improve Asia-Europe regional human rights mechanisms through debates, and to promote mutual understanding, and deepen their friendship and cooperation for bilateral NGOs.
The general theme of the workshop is to consider to what extent regional human institutions, and interregional cooperation between civil society actors in Asia and Europe can contribute to achieving more human rights development at the local level.
The workshop shall explore/address the following issues:
1. The building of Asia-Europe regional human rights mechanism and the implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
2. The added value of a regional approach to human rights as compared to a global or domestic approach, both in terms of the development of human rights norms and of mechanisms of human rights protection;
3.The means in the building of Asian regional human rights mechanisms, the characteristics of the future Asian regional human rights mechanism；Would it be possible that the European experiences and lessons in this field could be shared in the course of building the Asian regional human rights mechanism?
4. Is the recognition of a degree of plurality within the global human rights system, catering for regional differences, necessary to achieve effective human rights protection at the local level, particularly for disadvantaged communities?
5. What is the usefulness of an interregional dialogue on human rights between Europe and Asia? Should this dialogue focus specifically on human rights issues where there is an impact of one region on the other, rather than on issues that are internal to the region? Should this question be answered differently according to whether the Asian-European dialogue takes place between regional intergovernmental organizations, between governments or between civil society networks?
For more information on the 7th AEF, please go to: http://www.aepf7.org.cn/en/
