RtoP by increments: the AICHR and localizing the Responsibility to Protect in Southeast Asia

The inclusion of the three paragraphs in the Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit that make reference to the obligations of the state and the international community under the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has effectively raised a challenge to the traditional understanding of the principle of sovereignty in international relations. More importantly, their inclusion in the Outcome Document has effectively committed its signatories to RtoP as briefly outlined in the Document. The question, however, is whether or not states will hold themselves to this commitment? Among the member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the commitment to RtoP under the Outcome Document is clearly at odds with the oft-emphasized commitment to the principle of non-interference that the members of the Association have long identified with. The establishment of new institutional forms, mechanisms, and blueprints within ASEAN, however, create opportunities for introducing emergent norms into the region. The ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) is representative of these new institutional forms. It is the immediate manifestation of the ASEAN declaration of support for the promotion and protection of human rights in the region. Though criticized as "lacking in teeth" especially on the provisions that have to do with the protection of human rights, the AICHR's mandated functions are very generally ambiguous in the way they are presented in its Terms of Reference. These "ambiguities" arguably open up the interpretation of its functions to a more liberal perspective, more so in terms of opening the envelope on the protective functions of the AICHR. In the same context, the same ambiguities in the TOR of the AICHR may be utilized as entrypoints for introducing elements of RtoP into the region. It also illustrates the need to consider a strategy of incremental localization in pushing the normalization of RtoP in Southeast Asia.