Studies On The China's Voluntary Legislation

Voluntary service originated from religious charitable services in Western countries in the 19th century. It is the product stemming from civilization development. As an important public welfare undertaking, voluntary service has attracted more and more attention, and has got support over the world. Voluntary service in most western countries have formed fixed and mature operation module after 100 years'development, and have adopted legislation to regulate conduct and activities. With high public participation, voluntary service has become an integral part of social life in Western countries.In China, the cause of voluntary service started very late. But as a noble and civilized social behavior and an important public welfare undertaking, it enhanced social security, maintained social security and stability, promoted economic development and spiritual civilization construction. It also played a positive role in building a harmonious socialist society. At present, China is still in need of an authoritative, unified volunteer service legislation, which can solve problems in development of the cause of voluntary service. In order to quickly breakthrough the bottleneck caused by lack of legal regulations, China must speed up research and develop a sound volunteer service regulation to establish a Chinese characterized legal system of voluntary service, to further promote development of cause of voluntary service in China.Based on analysis and comparison between China's volunteer service legislation and voluntary service legislation abroad, this paper studied relevant theories of the voluntary services and classified the legal relationship among volunteers, volunteer organizations, and voluntary service targets. Furthermore, this paper discussed the ways to improve China's volunteer service legislation, and tried to give detailed design of legislation system. The full text is divided into five sections as follows:The first part briefly expounded on the definition of voluntary service, characteristics and the legal characteristics of voluntary activities.When cleared the meaning of volunteers, the core concept of volunteerism, we define voluntary service as services that any person who does not pay for the material return to promote human being's development, social progress and welfare cause. At the same time, this paper analyzed the legal characteristics of voluntary service from theme, objective and subjective aspects.The second part of the paper analyzed current voluntary services related local laws and regulations in China's 21 provinces or cities. China's voluntary service related legislation preliminarily defines volunteer organizations, the rights and obligations of volunteers, and legal registration procedures. It gives scope of voluntary service, financial resources, encouragement, protection and related legal responsibilities;On the other hand, China's volunteer service legislation exists defects, such as voluntary service of the main legal qualifications that have not yet been reunified, the legitimate rights and interests have not been fully protected, the law is not clear, the definition of the voluntary services object is unclear, volunteer organizations is lack of a sound management system, liability and legality is uncertain and the protection of relief and incentive mechanism is not sound, and so on.The third part compared and analyzed foreign volunteer services and their legislative situation. Through investigation of volunteer service legislation in the United States, Great Britain, Japan and France, we got a conclusion that overseas volunteer service legislation have the advantage of protect the legitimate rights and interests of volunteers, adhere to the people-oriented principle, social security features are prominent, and input the oversight provisions into the voluntary service law. Thus, it is seen as inspiration to legislature on China's volunteer service.The fourth part proposed a choice of modules to improve the legislation of China's volunteer service model. This part started from discussing the necessity and possibility of unifying China's voluntary services legislation, then came to the initial vision of purpose, principles, module and framework of China's voluntary service legislation.Part five continued to propose on improvement of China's volunteer service legislation system. This part revealed some thinking on China's promulgation of a unified national voluntary service Law in terms of the legal qualifications of volunteers, legal status of volunteer organizations, legal relations, liabilities, protection and incentive mechanisms and other provisions in-between voluntary services objects.