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Reconfiguring the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration
The AHRD remains a document of relevance and ambivalence.
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Security troops walk past the National Convention Center in Vientiane on Oct. 6, 2024, during the ASEAN Summit. (Antara/M Agung Rajasa)
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t has been 12 years since the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) was adopted in 2012 by the 10-member regional grouping, embodying key standards of human rights for Southeast Asia. How has it fared after all these years?
The AHRD remains a document of relevance and ambivalence. While its adoption helped to integrate the notion of human rights into the ASEAN mindset, thus being a document of “validation”, it was one that was circumscribed by the political nature of ASEAN itself. Over half of this grouping then and now does not fulfil the conditions of democracy, such as multi-party system and free and fair elections. This configuration represents much of the ASEAN psyche, shaping its hesitant response to at least the civil and political angle of human rights.
From the outset, the declaration was vehemently criticized in many quarters for being substandard, and ASEAN leaders had to issue an accompanying Phnom Penh Statement on the adoption of the AHRD which stated the bottom line: implementation of the AHRD must be consistent with international law, particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights treaties to which ASEAN countries are party.
The AHRD itself was drafted by the overarching human rights body of ASEAN, namely the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). It is composed of six parts starting with general principles followed by civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; the right to development; and the right to peace and cooperation.
The AHRD is credited with including references to non-discrimination against persons with HIV, development and peace. Increasingly, its advocacy of the right to a safe, clean and sustainable environment has taken on a new meaning with the advent of global warming and climate change, especially now that the UN has consecrated a new right in the form of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. It has been cited some twenty times in the current Workplan of AICHR (2021-2015) to justify actions, some of which are creative.
For instance, the latter has been evolving a draft declaration on the right to environment which would not only advocate procedural rights and substantive rights, but also remedies, both formal and informal as part of access to justice.
