China praised for leading South-South cooperation

The idea of "building a community of shared future for mankind", first floated by President Xi Jinping in 2013, is highly consistent with the UN Charter and will serve as a bedrock of global efforts to safeguard human rights, said human rights officials and scholars at a two-day conference in Beijing that concluded on Friday.

"A single thread cannot make a cord, and a single tree cannot make a forest," said Bat-Erdene Ayush, director of the Development Rights Office under the United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. "China's vision for a shared future for all humanity points to a way forward to realizing the right to development."

The 10-year, $1 billion China-UN Peace and Development Fund, proposed by Xi in 2015 and inaugurated a year later, is evidence that China is determined to take this vision forward, Ayush said at a panel discussion of the South-South Human Rights Forum on Thursday.