In October and November, three United Nations committees will hold hearings to scrutinise Hong Kong's human rights record. Hong Kong officials will attend as part of the British delegation. The Legislative Council House Committee has decided to submit its own reports and send delegations to Geneva.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will hold hearings on October 3, the UN Human Rights Committee in late October, and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on November 26.
Next March, hearings will be held by the UN committees on Racial Discrimination and on Torture.
Instead of lumping Hong Kong together with other British colonies, the hearings will be on Hong Kong alone, treating it like a sovereign state.
The spate of hearings may well be the last time that human rights in Hong Kong are so closely monitored by the UN. After the Chinese takeover next July, the submission of reports may be handled differently.
While China is a signatory to the UN covenants on the Rights of the Child, Racial Discrimination and Torture, it has adamantly refused to accede to the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Yet China promised cryptically in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that the two covenants would continue to apply in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) after 1997. This undertaking is also enshrined in the Basic Law.