ASEAN Integration in Human Rights: Problems and Prospects for Legalization and Institutionalization

This article discusses the efforts of Southeast Asian countries to address human rights issues at the regional level through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It seeks to elucidate the position taken by the ASEAN member states and their representatives towards the design of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR)-the regional body tasked with a non-adjudicative function of assessing and addressing human rights issues in ASEAN. Tracing the discourse from differing viewpoints, this article identifies an evolutionary path down which ASEAN states are pursuing integration in human rights issues through a realist-rationalist perspective. Individual state interests are taken into account in legalization or in the crafting of textual commitments, in institutionalization or in the design of the regional body, and in the granting of powers and functions. The critical lynchpin of the negotiation process is the non-coercive nature of the human rights body. Non-intervention and the lack of a coercive mechanism, embodying the so-called "ASEAN Way," are principles that have been institutionalized in the ASEAN Charter and in AICHR. They have become foundational principles in the crafting of a regional body tasked to uphold a standard of conduct for states over individuals. This article theorizes that ASEAN Member States, through state actors, integrate for their perceived self-interest to avoid the high costs of external pressures and to meet internal demands, and they seek to minimize sovereignty costs by the non-empowerment of the regional authority. Legalization, in this case the regionalization of human rights, becomes an instrumental issue in negotiations. On this background, this article seeks to understand the compromises and negotiations together with the hesitations, the mix of which results in a quasi-functional, quasi-intergovernmental body within AICHR. This article concludes that, despite the seeming incongruence between a human rights body and its non-coercive nature, there is a positive trend of addressing Southeast Asian human rights issues through a regional body in ASEAN. The creation of an AICHR precludes ASEAN from retreating from advancing human rights issues on the regional level. The realist-rationalist consensus to grant an evolutionary mandate for AICHR brightens the prospects for future efforts to integrate human rights promotion and protection in the region.