LUSAKA, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The Zambian government on Tuesday said it was committed to putting in place measures aimed at upholding the human rights of citizens.
Minister of Justice Given Lubinda said this will be done through legal reforms which were currently underway aimed at improving the country's human rights situation.
The Zambian minister, in remarks delivered at a Universal Period Review dissemination meeting, said the government has already started working on improving on some of the issues of concerns such as amendment of a law that governs public gatherings and processions, the review of the penal code and the criminal procedure code as part of efforts to improve the human rights situation.
He, however, said efforts to improve the human rights situation in the country requires concerted efforts from all stakeholders and added that the government was ready to listen to views from stakeholders.
According to him, government has accepted to work on 90 percent of the recommendations of the Universal Period Review, a process adopted by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (UN) as a way to show that it was committed to improving the human rights situation in the country.
The Universal Periodic Review is a process which gives all UN member states to declare the actions they have taken to improve the human rights situation in their respective countries.
According to the Zambian minister, the country submitted her first cycle review report in 2008, which provided the benchmark on which subsequent reports would be anchored.
The second report was submitted in 2012 while the third report was presented on November 17, 2017.
