Start of difficult journey on rights

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THE newly formed Asean Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) starts its first meeting today, the beginning of what could well be a long, difficult but necessary journey towards achieving a common standard on rights across the region.

Malaysia's first representative to the commission, lawyer Datuk Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, is however optimistic that one day the region will come to a certain common level of acceptance of human rights.

It has not been easy, even to form the commission itself, Shafee told Malaysian journalists after the AICHR was inaugurated here yesterday, as each member state within Asean has a different value system towards human rights.

"There are countries that wanted human rights to be promoted right up to the similar level currently practised in Europe where the European courts have jurisdiction and there are countries in Asean that wanted the AICHR to be only a consultative body without any binding decisions on the member states," he said.

Due to the wide gap in observing human rights across the 10 member states, there is every likelihood that the AICHR will first work towards achieving a relatively low target as Shafee said at the present stage, educating Asean members in human rights would take greater importance than imposing rules.

He said for Malaysia, there should be little problem as the country had long adopted the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, upon which the Commission on Human Rights (Suhakam) was eventually formed.

"Among the 10 Asean states, Malaysia's adherence to human rights ranks as one of the highest but there is always room for improvement," said Shafee, who himself is a commissioner in the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia. Asean groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

He acknowledged that in the AICHR's terms of reference there were certain restrictions on the Commission's powers but said that Asean had to start somewhere. He said every Asean member would be examined according to their present levels of development.

The AICHR was officially formed yesterday at the ongoing 15th Asean summit here. Whether or not it will achieve the same level of prominence as its counterpart in Europe is a question Shafee could not answer now.

But he said human rights was a universal value and the AICHR would be successful in these early stages by just increasing the level of awareness among Asean member states towards human rights.