Indonesia is pushing for the drafting of an ASEAN human rights declaration by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) as a priority when chairing ASEAN next year.
"We are prioritizing the formulation of the human rights declaration draft next year," Rafendi Djamin, Indonesia's representative to the AICHR, said Thursday after a discussion at the Habibie Center in Jakarta.
Despite its necessity, he acknowledged it would be hard to reach consensus on norms laid in the future declaration.
Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights deputy chairman Ridha Saleh said he welcomed the planned declaration, but said he knew that such a declaration would not be legally binding on member states.
University of Indonesia international law expert Hikmahanto Juwana said he doubted the declaration would bring any positive changes to the AICHR's performance.
He said the priority for ASEAN countries was to come up with a mutually acceptable definition of human rights.
"In practice, each ASEAN country has its own ways of upholding and enforcing human rights values," he told The Jakarta Post.
"What is practiced by Indonesia may differ from that in Myanmar, Singapore or maybe even Malaysia. The gaps are too wide."
Hikmahanto also said different countries ratifying different international human rights agreements showed different interpretations of human rights.
"Indonesia has ratified so many international *human rights* agreements, such as on child protection and child labor. But even so, the implementation of those agreements still falls short of expectations," he said.
Another obstacle Hikmahanto cited was that ASEAN countries were still trying to grasp the Asian or even ASEAN version of the concept of human rights, and that it might be different from that in Western countries.
For example, he said, the death penalty had been abolished in most of Europe, but it was still commonplace in ASEAN.
"ASEAN countries tend to be reluctant in addressing human rights violations taking place in other member states. Indonesia, for instance, is reluctant to criticize human rights violations in Myanmar," Hikmahanto said, adding that ASEAN countries naturally shied away from each other's domestic affairs.
But Rafendi said such a policy would be more relaxed with the presence of the AICHR, which was authorized to obtain necessary information on human rights cases from member states, although voluntarily.
That relaxation has been dismissed by Hikmahanto, who said there was no legal foundation to make such a request and that attempts to enforce human rights often clashed with security matters in countries such as Myanmar.
While welcoming the planned declaration, veteran human rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said ASEAN countries should formulate their own human rights declaration based on existing global human rights declarations.
"But this declaration must be followed by clear protocols, for example, pertaining to the death penalty that is still applied in all ASEAN countries, except the Philippines."
He also noted that only Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand were ready for a human rights declaration.
"In the end, what will happen is a compromise. This will be a disservice to human rights values," he said.
