Human Rights in ASEAN--Setting Sail or Treading Water?

In November 2007, a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)1 in Singapore adopted the ASEAN Charter (the ‘Charter’).2 By the end of the next year, all 10 member states—Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos (Lao PDR), Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam—had ratified the Charter,3 turning the hitherto loose ‘Association’ into a union consolidated by a legally binding treaty. Another innovation was the inclusion in the Charter of several provisions pledging the promotion and protection of human rights, not least a provision for the establishment of a regional human rights body. Within a year, in October 2009, that body (the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR)) was launched; followed in March 2010 by the launch of the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC). These were accompanied by a string...