I.A. Rehman
Director of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

(Ed. note: This article was submitted to a panel meeting of the Asian human rights charter conference in Kwangju on 16 May 1998.)

Feelings of deprivation and backwardness that the Asian peoples have when they look at the achievements of populations of the world’s other regions extend to the field of human rights also.

While the international community has been searching for ways to strengthen the machinery required to achieve practical realisation of the rights enumerated in the 50-year-old Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to define a new generation of humankind’s basic rights, regional initiatives in these directions have fared somewhat better. The European Community takes pride in its own charter of human rights and the working of its human rights court, whose rulings can override the verdicts of the highest national tribunals. The Americans have their charter and court and so have the African countries. Asia alone is the region without a consensus on shared human rights concepts and the means of guaranteeing their respect. To anyone sensitive to human rights values being the highest measure of a people’s commitment to mature civilisational norms, the omission causes dismay, which cannot be exaggerated.

The record of the regional human rights compacts and implementation machineries neither reveals a uniform level of accomplishment nor does it satisfy the criteria held up radical opinion in different member States. But some of the superiority regional arrangements in theory offer over global institutions have already been vindicated by experience. The key issues in human rights enforcement are: the credibility of the actors that are required to intervene in order to promote human rights or to fight their abuse, their accessibility to victims of deprivation or abuse, and their capacity to appreciate the favourable and unfavourable factors in any particular socio-political milieu. Regional mechanisms meet these requirements better than the United Nations machinery. The weight that the U.N. watchdogs enjoy as being agents of the international community is more than offset by Asian people’s perception of a distant body dictating to them on the strength of a consensus manipulated by the richer and hence stronger group in it. The framework of consultation, affirmative action and redress mechanism devised on a regional basis will be far more easily accessible to the people of the region than institutions based in Geneva or New York. The talent pool available to a regional system will also be better sensitised to intra-region realities than outsiders will.

At the same time several objective factors highlight the need, the feasibility and the practical profitability of a regional human rights mechanism for Asia.

Feasibility and Profitability of a Regional Mechanism

A majority of the Asian States are still struggling with the colonial legacy of the British, the French and the Dutch. This includes legal codes, social attitudes and style of governance, each having a bearing on the human rights of the people. South Asia presents a very prominent example of the maximum convergence of these factors.

All countries in South Asia have been formally trying to work the parliamentary system of democracy without paying due heed to the pluralist nature of their societies or taking into consideration the rights and aspirations of the majorities who have been consistently marginalised for centuries. All of them are struggling with a system of justice designed by the British at the time of the rise of mercantilism in their countries and in the light of their own values which never accorded with social imperatives in the colonies. All of them have been stuck up in social codes determined partly by pre-industrial relations and partly by the defensive mechanisms that devised the ruling minorities or the beleaguered sections of population to defend their cultural practices.

Thus, we find that the disadvantaged in the South Asian countries face identical problems whether the issue concerns the rights of religious/ethnic minorities, or women, or children, or working people. By the same token the shared historical experience of the Asian States, or several distinct people of Asian States, provides a useful basis to appreciate the issues of developing human rights norms. That human rights activists in these countries have a great deal to learn from each other’s knowledge, and experience has often been conceded. What is generally not appreciated is the magnitude of obstacles these activists face in establishing effective channels of communication and collaboration in the absence of a human rights paradigm acknowledged by the State authorities.

Some relatively new factors have added to the urgency of developing a regional outlook in Asia. Most countries share natural resources with their neighbours and the determination of their patterns of exploitation from the points of view of both economic justice and environment propriety that requires consideration of human rights norms. Burgeoning national populations and inter-State as well as intra-State conflicts have caused large-scale movements of refugees and workers who only seek space to earn a pittance. There are nationals of one country rotting in the jails of another for no other reason than the absence of a regulatory mechanism to ensure their humanitarian or even legally appropriate treatment. All these issues make the need for regional understanding clamant.

Excuses for Not Respecting Universal Human Rights

Above all, quite a few Asian States, especially in South Asia, have learnt to jointly fabricate excuses as to why universal human rights cannot be respected by them. There is something to be said for their complaints on two points. First, that the human rights movement cannot be developed in isolation from the increasingly neglected agenda for restoring some semblance of balance and justice to the North-South economic relations. And, secondly, the dominant human rights rhetoric erroneously ignores the rights of groups and communities as against other similar formations and puts excessive emphasis on the theory of individual rights being enforceable only in individual terms. But these points are seldom agitated at the State level.

The gravamen of collective Asian resistance to universal human rights is derived from notions of cultural peculiarities or superiority or demands of national security, stability and economic progress. No heed is paid to the alternative thesis which holds that respect for human rights will enhance the States’ capacity to realise the same objectives. Regardless of what attitude the Asian States may collectively or severally adopt in this artificially created "we" and "they" equation, no explanation is offered for their indifference to the need to forge common tools for the creation of a human rights order in mutual interest. Indeed, an Asian regional compact on a collective human rights framework could offer us a means of improving our credentials in exchanges with the outside world besides resolving a host of intra-regional issues that are becoming acute year after year.

Notice may also be taken of one more obstacle to regional understanding - the myth of national sovereignty. That unlike other spheres this myth is involved in respect of cooperation in the field of human rights solely to deprive national populations of their basic rights and dignities is plain enough. Equally obvious is the fact that all Asian States, in varying degrees, have learnt to live with considerably abridged powers to exercise their sovereign rights. It can easily be shown that mutual cooperation in furtherance of human rights will not only strengthen national identities and all that goes with that may indeed help different stakes to discover their true identities and enable them to examine the whole issues of sovereignty in a more enlightened context.

Cooperative Effort Can Overcome Fear

Despite all these arguments in favour of regional mechanisms, one should not ignore the fear of change all people and societies have. The minority elites in Asia who have fattened themselves under the cover of forcibly enforced socio-economic orders fear change most of all. Thus, the targets of advocates of regional mechanisms have in view need to be carefully prioritised. A beginning may be made by persuading the State authorities to accept their common objectives in the area of human rights. This could be no more than a judicious synthesis of what these States have been proclaiming separately in their rhetoric. The next step could be identification of areas that do not lie within political authorities’ core privileges and the creation of joint agencies to resolve them. Fear of cooperation can be overcome only by launching a cooperative effort.