Embracing human rights norms in non-democratic regional organizations: a case-study of ASEAN

Regional organizations are instrumental in promoting the adoption and dissemination of norms, influencing their member states to conform to emerging standards. However, many regional organizations have faced criticism for having an elitist outlook, maintaining autocratic practices, a preference for consensus and a reliance on non-binding decisions—all of which hinder the adoption of human rights standards. Furthermore, the adoption of international norms on human rights has been hampered by anti-western rhetoric and the recent rise of autocratic practices. The existing literature predominantly examines factors contributing to rejecting or contesting human rights within international organizations. In this article I offer a new framework by exploring how autocratizing, highly elitist and politically diverse organizations can adopt human rights norms. By unpacking a case-study of the development of norms regulating migration and human trafficking within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), I argue that successful acceptance can occur in non-democratic contexts through the depoliticization and joint ownership processes, each of which is built upon the same three steps: issue framing, soft endorsement and, finally, norm acceptance. The offered framework goes beyond the usual window-dressing and legitimacy arguments to elucidate how regional organizations can wade through a non-democratic environment to encourage norm acceptance.