SDG16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Background
HKU’s Human Rights Programme was established by the Faculty of Law to nurture local and international talent for a career in human rights advocacy and protection. While the curriculum draws on international best practices, it maintains an interest in issues relevant to Asia. Beyond classroom teaching, the faculty created the Human Rights Portal, a centralized and comprehensive database of human rights related information, to propel the work of human rights advocates, policy makers and researchers. Open for public use, the website contains nearly 200 web pages of human rights content from academic reports to media coverage, organized by areas of interest such as women, equality and criminal justice.
Input from the public is essential to developing policies and shaping a society that is peaceful and just. Hence, the Public Opinion Programme was created to collect public opinions for use by academics, journalists and policy-makers. The polls conducted range from perspectives on political issues to sentiment on social justice. On the political front, there are regular surveys on HK government’s budget and policy addresses as well as one-off polls regarding the South China Sea disputes. In the social realm, research is conducted annually to derive the Public Sentiment Index.
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of courses and research.
Teaching
58
courses
5,912
students enrolled
Research
85
papers (in 2017)
Proportion of graduates from Law and enforcement related courses*
13%
*Including graduates of all academic levels. Relevant disciplines include programmes and majors from Faculty of Law and double degree involving Law, Politics, Public Admin, International & Public Affairs, Criminology, Urban Governance (Data of 2016-2017)
Initiative
To promote the rule of law and facilitate equal access to justice, the University maintains a public website called Community Legal Information Centre (CLIC). It provides foundational knowledge and information on the laws that might likely affect the public. The website is designed to be easy to navigate and to serve as a reference point on common legal issues or a precursor to seeking professional legal advice. It outlines information like definitions, matters of consideration, and legal processes on topics such as commerce, bankruptcy, traffic offences, defamation and more.
To further empower and equip different segments of the community with free access to legal knowledge that are specific to their needs, the CLIC launched three separate websites to serve as information hubs for families, youth and seniors. The family site contains a wide range of information and FAQs on issues such as marital matters, neighbour disputes, consumer rights and pet-related legal issues. The youth site covers topics such as theft, drug use, sexual offences and cyber bullying through both written overviews and videos. For the senior site, the information offered aims to help the elderly lead peaceful and healthy lives from their retirement rights to health care and end-of-life preparations. The content is available in audio format in Cantonese to make it easily comprehensible for senior citizens. All the CLIC content is bilingual and accessible via web and mobile apps to conveniently provide the information to any interested individual.