The Drafting Group of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) has finalized a preliminary draft of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, which is being considered by the AICHR this week. [AI] The draft, which has not been made public, is an important step towards the adoption of a final Declaration, which the Cambodian chairman of the AICHR has promised to deliver in 2012. [Jakarta Post] The mandate of Drafting Group, which began work in July 2011 and was expected to finalize a first draft last month, was extended to allow it to finalize the draft in January. [ASEAN] Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, criticized the lack of transparency that has characterized the drafting process and called for consideration of civil society input as the draft is reworked and adopted.
While welcoming the first draft, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights “call[ed] upon the AICHR to ensure meaningful consultation with all stakeholders during the drafting process by making the draft AHRD available to the public as soon as possible.” The organization further stated:
The drafting process of the AHRD to date has been marred by a lack of transparency and consultation with either the public or civil society. Neither preliminary drafts of the AHRD nor even the terms of reference of the Drafting Group, which was established by the AICHR to oversee the formulation of the AHRD, have been shared with the public. Consequently, no interested parties have been given the opportunity to provide input on the first draft of the AHRD. It is not clear, for example, whether there will be any enforcement mechanism at a national level as regards the AHRD.
The Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, a body independent from the AICHR, notes that the Drafting Group:
is composed of officials and experts from the ten ASEAN countries who possess a background on human rights and knowledge on the ASEAN Charter and ASEAN processes. They will be working on the draft AHRD based on a two-tiered process. The first phase will entail the preparation of a draft AHRD, taking into account the balance of rights and responsibilities. International human rights standards as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as other human rights instruments ASEAN Member-States are parties to shall be upheld by and incorporated into the draft. Once the draft is completed, it will be submitted to the AICHR Representatives for the second phase of the process, where the AICHR Representatives will discuss and deliberate on the draft.
As has been extensively discussed, the AHRD is not expected to embody any new rights for the ASEAN Member States’ populations, since it will reference only those norms these States have already ratified, and it will not create an individual complaints mechanism. For more on the AICHR, see this page.