Southeast Asian civil society groups April 8 urged the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights to be more transparent in its drafting of an ASEAN Human Rights Declaration.
The statement expressed “grave concern and disappointment over the continuing secrecy in the drafting process.”
The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) has yet to release a draft or consult about the effort, said the statement.
“The peoples of ASEAN, whose human rights the Declaration is supposed to uphold, are being left in the dark,” said Yap Swee Seng, the Executive Director of Bangkok based Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA.) There are 122 signatories to the statement.
The Commission is meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, April 9-11. It “is mandated under Article 4.2 of its Terms of Reference to develop an ASEAN Human Right Declaration with a view to establishing a framework for human rights cooperation through various ASEAN conventions and other instruments dealing with human rights,” according to the statement. “At the 6th meeting of the AICHR in Vientiane on 28 June – 2 July 2011, a Drafting Group was officially established by the AICHR to prepare a draft of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. In January 2012, the Drafting Group submitted to the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) a draft AHRD for deliberation and debate.”
The draft “remains confidential while the public has been excluded from any meaningful participation in the drafting process,” the statement notes, adding, “There has not been any substantive and broad-based regional consultation with the peoples in the region on the draft AHRD.”
The groups commend the representatives of the AICHR from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines for holding consultation with their civil society at national level, bit continues, “we are disturbed that no such initiative has taken place in the rest of the ASEAN countries.”
They call for the immediate release of the draft, more national consultations, translation of the draft into national languages and inclusive consultations.
“Until and unless the AICHR consults and engages with all stakeholders in a transparent, meaningful and substantive manner, the AICHR should postpone its submission of the final draft of AHRD to the AESAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), which is scheduled to take place in July.”
An article on the statement appeared in the Asian Tribune.
Filed under: IFTI Watch