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ivil groups in Southeast Asia urged the region's governments at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to include more protection in the mandate for ASEAN's new human rights body, in an effort to buck the rights slide in the 42-year-old bloc.

A high-level panel of regional officials is finalizing the ASEAN human rights body (AHRB), a mandate assigned under the 2008 ASEAN Charter, after submitting the first draft during the ASEAN Summit in Thailand last month. The draft will be finalized in July and the body will be set up sometime early next year.

Activists have raised concerns that the body will be toothless as it has no clear and strong mandate to press forward with rights reform in member states that have poor human rights records.

Myanmar continues to arrest thousands of political activists, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, despite its commitment to enforcing human rights under the ASEAN Charter it ratified last year.

"Human rights groups across the region are questioning whether the AHRB can really protect human rights if there are no concrete provisions on the mandate to protect human rights," said Rafendi Djamin, Indonesia's coordinator for the Human Rights Watch Group (HRWG).

Djamin said during the two-hour dialogue with the panel, the civil group members of the Solidarity for Asia Peoples' Advocacy Task Force on ASEAN and Human Rights (SAPA TF-AHR), a network of more than 25 ASEAN-based human rights organizations, had also asked ASEAN governments to grant more access to civil groups to get involved in the drafting of the terms of reference for the body.

"It has been eight months since the establishment of the high-level panel in July 2008, and the draft of the terms of reference has yet to be disclosed to the public. Civil society has to rely on the draft from an unofficial source. Without the disclosure of the draft contents to the public, the process is now being questioned as not transparent by the general public," Djamin said.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said recently that the draft would only be disclosed to public after it was finalized or "it would trigger prolonged public debate and risk not being able to reach any deal".

The Kuala Lumpur's session is the second dialogue between the civil groups and the high level panel after the first dialogue session in Manila last year.

ASEAN governments have been reluctant to give the rights body a stronger mandate, because of the differences in rights standards in every member state.

Myanmar is ruled by a military junta, Brunei Darussalam is under the rule of an absolute monarch, Laos and Vietnam have single-party systems, Singapore and Cambodia observe elections with predictable results, Malaysia restricts political rights under its draconian Internal Security Act, leaving Indonesia and the Philippines as the only real democracies in this region of more than 570 million people.

"While we recognize the cultural and religious diversity and pluralism of ASEAN, the AHRB must work to ensure that states uphold their legal obligation under international human rights laws to eliminate cultural and prejudicial norms that perpetuate discrimination and violate human rights," said Wathshlah Naidu, a rights activist from Malaysia.