The [third periodic report under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)] was only drawn to the attention of the public when a visiting member of Amnesty International told the local media of its existence in August 1988.

The tendency [on the part of non-govermental organisations (NGOs)], rather, has been to zero in on two or three issues to the exclusion of all else, and then for all the NGOs to do the same thing. So the result – and it was especially marked, I think, at the examination of the third periodic report of the United Kingdom – was that the United Kingdom was deluged with questions relating to Hong Kong and to the Northern Ireland terrorist provisions. Now the selection of one or two important issues, no matter how important … precludes a well-informed across-the-board examination. Important issues receive no attention.

Introduction

As a dependent territory of the United Kingdom until its return to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997, Hong Kong benefited from the United Kingdom's participation in the six major United Nations human rights treaties, the implementation of which is subject to monitoring by committees of independent experts. While the United Kingdom did not always extend the treaties to Hong Kong at the same time as it ratified them in respect of its metropolitan territory, by the end of 1996 it had extended all six of the treaties to Hong Kong.