I

t should have been an historic landmark event. Instead, when the 10 Southeast Asian leaders inaugurated the region's first human rights watchdog last week, few gave it more than a passing notice.

Since the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the ASEAN human rights body was passed earlier this year, the road leading up to its - or its mouthful of a formal name, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) - has been crammed with criticism and literal skepticism.

Some have argued that half a loaf is better than no loaf. Others have shot back that ASEAN, rather than pursuing the opportunity to attain a whole loaf, has instead opted for no loaf at all.

But the deed is now done, and while dissatisfied recriminations will persist, the best recourse is to ensure that the dissatisfying tenets by which the commission was founded are truly developing embryos, not rudimentary doctrines, that can succor human rights in the region.

Thinking positively, though, the ToR contains just enough balance between clarity and ambivalence for creative interpretations to allow room for civil society to push forward its regional rights agenda.

In the context of multilateralism, ASEAN tends to disregard its African brothers. It neglects, however, that as an entity, the African Union is perhaps eons ahead of us in recognizing and enshrining the principles of human rights, democracy and good governance.

The precursor of the African Union, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), was established in 1963 with a similar charter to that of ASEAN, steeped in principles of sovereignty and non-interference.

Like ASEAN, by adopting an unconditional position on non-interference, the OAU became ineffective in promoting and protecting human rights.

But four decades later, the African Union's founding Constitutive Act made human rights an explicit part of its mandate. It moved away from non-interference toward "non-indifference", including the right of the union to intervene in any member state's affairs.

That is why then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2006 described the African Union, not ASEAN, as "the most eloquent testimony of progress, in development, in security, in human rights".

There is much left to be desired on the human rights issues in Africa, but as a grouping, the union has made a conscious decision to fully amend its founding treaties to ensure unhindered efforts for the respect, promotion and protection of human rights.

In this context, the African Union went for the whole loaf, even though many in Africa still feed off the crust and crumbs of human rights.

ASEAN did not raise the bar. The ASEAN Charter and the ToR of the commission were missed opportunities. When it came down to it, Southeast Asian leaders typically negotiated and compromised.

The noted Asianist Donald K. Emmerson conducted an interesting study noting references of "liberal reform" through words such as "human rights", "civil society", "constitutional government", "rule of law", "democracy", "fundamental freedoms" - and found the frequency of the words in the initial draft ASEAN Charter had declined from 57 to 20 references by the final document.

Inferences to the "ASEAN Way" with references to "consensus", "sovereignty" and "non-interference", meanwhile, increased from the initial draft to the final document.

Given these conditions, what can ASEAN civil society, we, truly expect?

The same can be said for the role of the ASEAN Secretariat and its secretary-general. The parameters given to him make him less a leader of the ASEAN than its prisoner.

More than a decade ago, ASEAN elevated the position of its secretary-general.

However, in practice, the secretary-general remains an official prostrate to the member countries.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's joke that he was more a secretary than a general perhaps resonates in the ASEAN Secretariat.

Both the ASEAN Charter and the commission's ToR provide very little space that can be interpreted as giving leeway and room for the secretary-general to take larger initiatives on human rights.

At best, Article 7.1 of the ToR states that the secretary-general may bring relevant issues to the attention of the AICHR.

It is even more problematic when we have to acknowledge that states can invoke sovereignty and non-interference, given that most major international documents place human rights under the preview of the state.

Given this seemingly intractable position on sovereignty and non-interference, what can the ASEAN secretary-general, as a creature of consensus and a subject of the ASEAN Way, do?

One proposal is that rather than focus on issues of human rights abuses per say - which can always be shelved under the label of internal domestic issues by any given state - the secretary-general can be more active and engage in ensuring access and highlighting the role of the defenders of human rights.

It is a recourse provided by the UN Declaration on the Rights and Responsibilities of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Human Rights, which states:

"Individuals, groups, institutions and nongovernmental organizations have an important role to play and a responsibility in safeguarding democracy, promoting human rights and . contributing to the promotion of an international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights instruments can be fully realized."

An endeavor that can be interpreted as falling under the umbrella of Article 7.1 of the ToR.

In other words, while it may be difficult to raise suspicions of rights abuses in places, such as Papua, for instance, the secretary-general can engage civil society groups working on this specific area and help ensure the access to work by raising their profile. This, arguably would not be a violation of the seemingly intractable issue of non-interference.

It is a strategy that can also help safeguard the growth and evolution of nascent national human rights commissions in ASEAN countries.