This assessment of progress in Southeast Asia on human rights begins in the wake of the 'Asian values' debate and culminates in the formal regional institutionalisation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). Chapters examine the arduous negotiation of AICHR, the evolving relationship between ASEAN states' and the international human rights system, and the historical and experiential reasons for hesitancy. The text concludes with a discussion of how the evolving right to development impacts upon AICHR and international human rights in general, and how their preference for economic, social and development rights could help ASEAN states shape the debate.

The adoption of the ASEAN Charter in 2007 represented a watershed moment in the organisation's history - for the first time the member states explicitly included principles of human rights and democracy in a binding regional agreement. Since then, developments in the region have included the creation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights in 2009 and the adoption of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in 2012. Despite these advances, many commentators ask whether ASEAN can take human rights seriously. The authors explore this question by comprehensively examining the new ASEAN human rights mechanisms in the context of existing national and international human rights institutions. This book places these regional mechanisms and commitments to human rights within the framework of the political and legal development of ASEAN and its member states and considers the way in which ASEAN could strengthen its new institutions to better promote and protect human rights.