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ASEAN urged to expand rights body’s role

The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) has yet to deliver on its mandate to protect human rights in Southeast Asia a decade after its establishment, human rights activists have concluded

Dian Septiari (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Mon, May 13, 2019

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ASEAN urged to expand rights body’s role

T

span>The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) has yet to deliver on its mandate to protect human rights in Southeast Asia a decade after its establishment, human rights activists have concluded.

AICHR was established in 2009 as a consultative body consisting of representatives from ASEAN member states, who as a collective are responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights in Southeast Asia.

However, the agency’s scope of work detailed in its terms of reference (ToR) has placed more emphasis on promoting rather than protecting human rights.

From 2010 to 2018, the body spent US$6 million to conduct 21 activities that include thematic studies, youth debates and dialogues that serve the purpose of mainstreaming human rights.

The organization, however, had yet to come up with an answer to the human rights situation on the ground, said Rachel Arinii, program manager of Forum-Asia, a consortium of civil society groups from 19 Asian countries.

Rachel said the body’s lack of responsiveness to the development of the human rights agenda in ASEAN was most apparent in the resounding silence on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, where sectarian conflict and a military crackdown have driven more than 700,000 Rohingya from the country’s westernmost region into neighboring Bangladesh.

“We took note of some closed door meetings by the AICHR but we think public information is very important,” she said at a recent discussion in Jakarta.

She said the AICHR should use its ToR to focus more on the rights protection dimension while putting pressure on ASEAN foreign ministers to revise their mandate to be more explicit, enhance norm- and standard-setting functions and improve engagement with civil society.

Former Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda, who was actively involved in the establishment of the agency, said Indonesia had initially rejected the drafted mandate because it was considered inferior to that of Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights, but then later agreed to it under the condition that the ToR would be up for review five years later.

ASEAN member states have yet to review AICHR’s ToR.

“I think there is a need to replace the ToR with a clear-cut mandate for the AICHR to receive complaints, investigate and make their report and recommendations public. This is a way to make the AICHR more relevant,” Hassan told The Jakarta Post.

To add to the list of things in need of improvement, Hassan suggested that the AICHR be renamed the ASEAN Commission for Human Rights, omitting the “intergovernmental” element because he believed the enforcement of human rights should be more people-centered and not monopolized by government actors.

Only Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are the countries in ASEAN who elect their representatives openly, while the other seven countries appoint their representatives directly.

Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, a researcher from the Human Rights Resource Center, said the organization would not achieve its ultimate goal so long as representatives to the AICHR were not completely independent of their countries’ national interests.

“Many of [the representatives] are unable to speak up because they could lose their jobs. This is difficult indeed but it does not mean it’s impossible,” she said recently.

Indonesia’s recently appointed representative to the AICHR, Yuyun Wahyuningrum, said one of her priorities to make the AICHR more relevant was to elaborate and make use of the provisions in the ToR, namely articles 4.10 and 4.7.

Article 4.7 of the ToR stipulates that the AICHR should provide advisory services and technical assistance on human rights matters to ASEAN sectoral bodies upon request, while Article 4.10 requires that the AICHR can obtain information from ASEAN member states on the promotion and protection of human rights.

“There are a number of things that we should and can do in the next 10 years, so we shouldn’t give up,” she told the Post.

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