August 04, 2007	Saturday	Rajab 19, 1428

MANILA: Foreign ministers said all the right things this week about human rights and cooperation in Southeast Asia, but analysts warn the gap is large between their promises and the reality ahead.

Mulling the most significant re-vamp in the 40-year history of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), ministers sketched out the bloc's first-ever charter, complete with a regional human rights body.

The charter aims to transform Asean into a rules-based organisation like the European Union, including norms on rights and other matters which would apply equally to all 10 countries.But that means giving up some sovereignty for the sake of the group — and that, sceptics say, is where the obstacles begin.

“Once you cross that boundary of sovereignty, you will begin to slide into disintegration,” says Clarita Carlos, a political scientist at the University of the Philippines.

“Heads of government and their ministers are elected by the people of that state, not by Asean as a whole. It's not like Europe, where people are elected to a European parliament,” Carlos says.

“Asia is not ready for that.” Founded with five nations at the height of the Cold War to stop the spread of communism, the bloc now comprises 10 countries that run from the democratic Philippines to communist Vietnam to the monarchy of Brunei.

Even Asean’s critics acknowledge that the organisation has worked well to keep the peace between nations, and that a wider Asean Regional Forum which includes China, Japan and the two Koreas has also played a useful role.

But when it comes to tensions inside a country's borders, Asean’s principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states has let rights abuses go unchecked in many corners of the region.

Ministers made a vague pledge this week to create a rights body under the new charter, but the disagreements were so deep that all the details were left for later. Not even a timeframe for its creation was agreed.

“The announcement of a human rights body is aimed at Asean’s international audience,” says Hiro Katsumata, a research fellow at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

“The core issue is its image,” he says. “But when it comes to the actual implementation, we have every reason to be suspicious, or even be pessimistic.” Analysts point to the fuzzy language used to announce the rights group, and the days of bitter back-room arguments about it, as a sign that any eventual rights mechanism for the region may end up being all bark and no bite.

From the Philippines, where waves of killings have been blamed on the army, to Myanmar, where the junta has effectively shut down the political opposition, many nations go their own way when it comes to human rights.

“What worries us is if they are going to have just another body without any real impact in our society,” says John Tan, one of the few pro-democracy activists in Singapore.

The city-state is another Asean member which has been criticised for its strict political controls, and Tan suggests a toothless rights mechanism would let nations get away with seeming to address the issue without doing much.

If the mechanism has no real power, he says, “Then what is the point? Singapore can use it to boast that they are supporting human rights.” “The likes of Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos do not want others poking into their domestic affairs when it comes to human rights,” says Clarita Carlos.

“That is why the charter now has some vague reference to a human rights body — minus the technical details.” She says that while the bloc has made strides in cooperating on issues like bird flu, leaders are unwilling to take the further step and give up their national prerogatives for the sake of the international whole.

And that means that a charter which would be effective in holding individual states to collective standards — not only on human rights, but a whole range of issues — is still a long way from becoming reality.

“Charters and talk of clauses that bind member states, and sanctions — the member states of Asean are not ready for that, despite what their leaders may say,” Carlos insists.

“Because here you are moving into areas of sovereignty. And at the end of the day, that is not negotiable.”—AFP