Below are the founding documents of ASEAN and important documents relating to the organization.

There are no legal provisions in the ASEAN Charter that directly address the right to freedom of association. However, the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, which was adopted on November 18, 2012, grants “every person” the right to freedom of association individually or with others (Principle 32), but this right is subject to “regional and national context” (Principle 7).

The ASEAN Charter does, however, make indirect reference to issues relating to freedom of association.  Notably:

• The Preamble to the ASEAN Charter (page 2) states: “ADHERING to the principles of democracy, the rule of law and good governance, respect for and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms;”
• Article 1 [Purpose (page 4)]: “7. To strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, with due regard to the rights and responsibilities of the Member States of ASEAN;”
• Article 2 [Principles (page 6)]: “ASEAN and its Member States shall act in accordance with the following Principles: … (h) adherence to the rule of law, good governance, the principles of democracy and constitutional government.”

Perhaps more importantly, Article 14 of the ASEAN Charter envisions an ASEAN Human Rights Body:

1. “In conformity with the purposes and principles of the ASEAN Charter relating to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, ASEAN shall establish an ASEAN human rights body.
2. This ASEAN human rights body shall operate in accordance with the terms of reference to be determined by the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting.”

On July 20, 2009, at the 42nd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, the Ministers adopted the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the ASEAN Human Rights Body, which is called the ASEAN Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR).  The AICHR was inaugurated and the implementation of its terms of reference was endorsed by leaders of ASEAN Member States at ASEAN’s 15th Summit on October 23, 2009 in Hua Hin, Thailand. The Summit was held amid much criticism by CSOs that believed the AICHR lacked clear protection mechanisms and capabilities to address various human rights issues within ASEAN. In response to such criticism, ASEAN leaders relied on the fact that the TOR of the newly established regional human rights body would be reviewed every five years.

The AICHR is conceived principally as a consultative body, without authority to issue binding decisions, consider cases, or undertake investigative missions. Its decisions are made by consensus, which means that authoritarian regimes like Laos and Vietnam or countries like Cambodia that are influenced by foreign powers (such as China) can wield veto power. Furthermore, the commissioners appointed to the AICHR are accountable to the appointing governments; individual governments can therefore appoint or remove commissioners as they deem appropriate. The TOR for the AICHR states that each member state has the authority to appoint its own representative to the AICHR through a process that it deems appropriate. With the exception of Indonesia and Thailand, where the process of nominating representatives is perceived by CSOs as fair, the selection process in the rest of the member states is exclusively handled by governments, with no consultation or participation from civil society. Each AICHR representative serves a term of three years and may be consecutively re-appointed for one additional term.

No independent observers are presently included on the AICHR. The AICHR is only authorized to develop strategies, raise awareness, promote capacity building, develop common positions, issue advisory opinions, draft documents, undertake research, and facilitate dialogue and consultation between members. Consequently, there is a general perception that the AICHR will never be effective and that instead ASEAN will use the AICHR to whitewash its human rights violations.

The AICHR convened its First Meeting from March 28 – April 1, 2010 at the ASEAN Secretariat. During that meeting, the Rules of Procedure that guide the operations and conduct of the AICHR were formulated. These rules were finalized at the Second Meeting of AICHR held from June 28 – July 2, 2010 in Vietnam and were submitted to the 43rd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on July 19-20, 2010, where they were ratified and approved. In addition, the 43rd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting approved the work plan of the AICHR, which enabled the newly-established body to proceed with its mandate, including the drafting of a regional declaration of human rights.

The ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in November 2012. However, it was criticized as “deplorable” by CSOs throughout ASEAN and internationally. Among the main concerns was that the Declaration implied a lower level of protection of human rights in ASEAN than the rest of the world by subjecting the “realization of human rights to regional and national contexts.” Moreover, the Declaration ironically included in its preamble a pledge by member states to commit to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the United Nations, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, and other international human rights instruments to which ASEAN member states are parties but whose standards the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration fails to meet. In addition, there is no clear mechanism to make complaints of violations of rights or a system of redress, so backsliding on the Declaration by governments is always a possibility. Despite this, there have been few serious attempts to improve the ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2017, CSOs on the sidelines of the 30th ASEAN Summit in Manila proposed to ASEAN ministers to prepare the ground for the establishment of an independent regional court to promote and protect human rights and prosecute abuses by member states. Such a court would be modeled on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights founded in 1979 and the African Court on Human and People’s Rights founded in 2004. To date, no progress has been made towards the establishment of such a court.

The principal means for civil society to participate in ASEAN affairs (i.e., to establish a working link with an ASEAN body) is through written submissions to the ASEAN Secretariat. Specific details of establishing such affiliation are listed in “Guidelines on ASEAN’s Relations with Civil Society Organizations.”  However, CSOs have found this participatory mechanism to be weak and ineffective.

According to the above-mentioned Guidelines, an application for affiliation shall include, at a minimum, information regarding the nature and purpose of the application of the CSO, its constitution and by-laws, a copy of its registration papers, its membership, background on its key officials, its function, activities, and projects. All applications for CSO affiliation must be submitted to the Secretary-General of ASEAN. If the ASEAN Secretariat considers the application in conformity with the Guidelines, it shall be referred to the appropriate link body, or if an appropriate link body cannot be identified, to the ASEAN National Secretariats for their views. After four months, unless there is an objection, the application shall be submitted to the ASEAN Standing Committee for its consideration. The ASEAN Standing Committee shall consider the application for participations based on detailed criteria, relating to membership and conformity of CSO objectives with ASEAN aims, among others.

Historically, ASEAN has been adverse to the participation of CSOs. During the 1990s, however, opportunities arose under “Track Two meetings” for some forms of representation from research institutes and CSOs in ASEAN. [Track One activities are carried out by governments; Track Two activities are carried out by strategic institutes and NGOs in the region.]  In 2000, the first ASEAN People’s Assembly was convened.

In the 2000s, peripheral engagement with ASEAN expanded, with more CSOs convening satellite meetings. For example, there is now the ASEAN Civil Society Conference, which was initiated in 2005; the Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy (SAPA), which was initiated with a coordinating office in Jakarta in 2005; and the ASEAN People’s Forum, which was initiated in 2008.  The Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism that lobbied for the establishment of an ASEAN human rights commission succeeded with the establishment of the AICHR, whose first meeting was held from March 28 – April 1, 2010.

Since 2010, the focus of CSOs has shifted to establishing a better framework for human rights cooperation through ASEAN conventions and other ASEAN instruments dealing with human rights, especially in light of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, whose protections are below international standards. Nonetheless, CSOs continue to demand more “meaningful engagement” on a range of issues with ASEAN human rights bodies. In October 2013, for example, ASEAN convened at the 6th Regional Consultation on ASEAN and Human Rights in Jakarta, where more than 60 CSOs and member states discussed reviewing the AICHR Terms of Reference (ToR) and business and human rights in ASEAN. In March 2015, ASEAN announced they still intended to revise the ToR, with human rights groups urging ASEAN to use the opportunity to increase AICHR openness to civil society and ensure an effective decision-making process in the interest of transparency and integrity.

Yet, memories of prior rifts between member states and CSOs remain strong among CSOs. For example, in October 2009, at the 15th ASEAN Summit, prior to a scheduled “interface meeting” with Heads of Government, five member states – Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, and Singapore – refused to meet the five CSO representatives from those respective countries. The other CSO representatives were instructed that they would not be permitted to speak at the event. Moreover, in 2012, the ASEAN Summit was marked by clashes between the chair, Cambodia, and CSOs. CSOs were forced to cancel workshops on land grabbing and human rights in Myanmar due to political pressure. There were also two separate ASEAN Civil Society Conferences (ACSC) held simultaneously in Phnom Penh: one was supported and massively attended by CSOs close to the Cambodian authorities; and the other was sidelined from the official Summit and attended by hundreds of independent CSOs.

The ASEAN Summit in Yangon, Myanmar in 2014, similarly, was a test for Myanmar when it was chair. Although there were no outcries against Myanmar’s actions during the ASEAN Summit as with Cambodia in 2012, attention still focused on whether the country could deliver on its theme of “Moving Forward in Unity for a Peaceful and Prosperous Community.” This proved to be elusive for Myanmar, with its domestic instability and other regional security tensions, such as the South China Sea dispute, overshadowing any progress that Myanmar could claim to have made.

In 2015, the chair was Malaysia, whose overall theme was “Our People, Our Community, Our Vision,” reflecting its leadership’s focus on “bringing ASEAN closer to the people.” However, ASEAN observers were quick to dismiss this as paradoxical. They noted that Southeast Asia continues to be dominated by authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes that often restrict civil society and that activities and projects of ASEAN are often known to only political leaders, government officials, and elites, while little information is disseminated to the citizens and concerned stakeholders and CSOs. As chair, Malaysia did not bring many tangible benefits for either the region’s business community or civil society in part because it was unable to bring all member-states into consensus on commitments.

In 2016, when Laos became the chair of ASEAN, it duplicated Cambodia’s leadership example by undermining the voice of CSOs. For example, Laotian civil society representatives attending an annual meeting during the ASEAN summit were unable to address human rights issues in Laos because the only CSOs allowed to speak were those selected by the Government of Laos.

In 2017, which was ASEAN’s 50th anniversary, the ASEAN chair turned to the Philippines. In 2016, Duterte had made global headlines with his criticism of the United States and call for a break in relations as well as reduced security cooperation with Washington. In addition, his favorable policies towards China in the handling of the South China Sea disputes quickly became a signature of his diplomacy. Nonetheless, Duterte pledged to “highlight ASEAN as a model of regionalism and a global player with the interest of the people at its core.”

In 2018 and 2019, the ASEAN chairs were Singapore and Thailand, but hope for greater civil society engagement proved mostly futile. There was, for example, no mention of “civil society” or “human rights” at the 2018 ASEAN Summit and in 2019, the reported atrocities against Rohingyas of Myanmar continued to be a human rights concern weighing on ASEAN, with CSOs calling for an international response and ASEAN maintaining that Myanmar must only “exercise responsibility.” Moreover, in 2019, Thailand’s agenda was focused on economic cooperation and regional security, and at the 34th ASEAN summit in Bangkok CSOs were denied a meeting with ASEAN leaders.

The year 2020 began with hope that the new ASEAN chair, Vietnam, would engage civil society more than ASEAN chairs have in previous years. However, the COVID-19 pandemic shifted focus to developing collective efforts against COVID-19, with government coordination with CSOs being largely limited to national and regional health initiatives. With Brunei as the ASEAN chair in 2021 and a theme of “We Care, We Prepare, We Prosper,” the focus remained on strategic and coordinated emergency and disaster response, as well as on public health and economic recovery from the pandemic. At the ASEAN Summit, the Sultan of Brunei emphasized that ASEAN would also continue to create optimal conditions for young people to become more dynamic and resilient in knowledge and skill development and that ASEAN would make efforts to protect vulnerable groups through the ASEAN Comprehensive Recovery Framework (ACRF).

The 2022 ASEAN Summit, which was held in Cambodia, did not see any significant mention of human rights, including in the joint post-summit “vision statement,” which only referenced human rights concerns related to the situation in Myanmar. Moreover, although more than 60 CSOs signed a joint letter urging U.S President Biden to raise Thailand’s restrictive NGO law in discussions with the Thai government at the Summit, that law did not receive mention or criticism at the Summit. Likewise, Indonesia, which chaired the ASEAN Summit in 2023, was criticized by CSOs at the Summit for a lack of engagement with civil society and the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN People’s Forum (ACSC/APF). The ACSC/APF is recognized in the “ASEAN Socio-Cultural Blueprints 2015” as an annual forum for civil society engagement in ASEAN.

ASEAN engages with academia, civil society to shape regional economic integration post-2025 (November 2023)
The High-Level Task Force on ASEAN Economic Integration (HLTF-EI) held two direct interfaces to engage with representatives of the academic community and CSOs and gather their insights on the development of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Post-2025 agenda. The discussions focused on best practices and lessons learned from ASEAN’s ongoing economic integration efforts, as well as aspirations for the AEC in the post-2025 environment.

Indonesia must not fail its commitment to ASEAN socio-cultural agenda (May 2023)
Ahead of the opening of the 42nd ASEAN Summit in Labuan Bajo, the Indonesian government announced its commitment to prioritizing the regional socio-cultural pillar, aiming at strengthening cooperation in the protection of migrant workers, regional health architecture and enhancing the development of rural regions. However, Indonesia, the chair of ASEAN 2023, has so far omitted engagement with civil society and the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN People’s Forum (ACSC/APF), which is recognized in the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Blueprints 2015 as an annual forum for civil society engagement in ASEAN.

A Missed Opportunity on the EU-ASEAN Summit (December 2022)
In 2020, the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) upgraded their longstanding relationship to a strategic partnership. However, even unofficial side events seem to be tackling more consequential issues than the official summit itself, which smacks of indifference and does not do justice to the countless hours spent by EU and ASEAN civil servants, diplomats, and civil society actors who have tried to address these challenges—be they military, supply chain geopolitics, or human rights—in other fora.

US Withdraws from ASEAN Counter terrorism Meeting (July 2022)

How Will Cambodia as ASEAN Chair Handle the Myanmar Crisis? (December 2021)

A Way Forward For The ASEAN Identity (August 2021)

A Wish for ASEAN (August 2020)

ASEAN must uphold human rights during virus crisis (March 2020)

ASEAN Summit, other meetings postponed (March 2020)

No room for civil society groups at ASEAN Summit (June 2019)

As ASEAN chair, Thailand must support states to address regional rights issues (December 2018)

ASEAN peace registry to advance women, security in the region (December 2018)

ASEAN Parliamentarians and civil society call for greater regional refugee protection (September 2018)

Singapore’s ASEAN Chairmanship: What’s on the Security Agenda? (April 2018)

Civil society leaders push for peoples’ participation in development talks (March 2018)

Civil society leaders push for peoples’ participation in development talks (November 2017)

People-centred ASEAN: not quite there (October 2017)

AICHR organizes Judicial Colloquium on the Sharing of Good Practices on International Human Rights Law (June 2017)

Civil society Groups push for Asean human rights court (April 2017)

Waiting for Duterte to take the reins at Asean (November 2016)

Lao Government Muted Representatives to ASEAN People’s Forum (August 2016)

Upcoming Asean forum must listen to Lao civil society (August 2016)

Three years since disappearance of Sombath, Laos fails to initiate credible investigations (December 2015)

ASEAN Civil Society Members Say They’re Ignored (November 2015)

Evaluating Malaysia’s ASEAN chairmanship (November 2015)

Laos Refuses to Host Meeting of ASEAN Civil Society Groups (October 2015)

Asean civil society want more meetings with leaders (April 2015)

Civil society demands for better acknowledgement from Asean (February 2015)

Laos Tries But Fails to Make ASEAN NGOs Ignore Plight of Missing Activist (March 2015)

Malaysia as ASEAN Chair in 2015: What To Expect (November 2014)

Largest-ever ASEAN civil society conference urges regional governments to establish human rights protection mechanisms (April 2014)

Timor-Leste’s Road to ASEAN (February 2014)

JOINT STATEMENT OF THE ASEAN CIVIL SOCIETY CONFERENCE/ASEAN PEOPLES’ FORUM (May 2013)

Controversial ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights endorsed (November 2012)

ASEAN needs formal civil society engagement mechanism on human rights (November 2012)

ASEAN leaders adopt lame-duck rights declaration (November 2012)

Najib signs ASEAN’s first human rights convention (November 2012)

Civil society rejects flawed ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (November 2012)

Cambodia disrupting civil society events and restricting freedom of assembly ahead of ASEAN Summit (November 2012)

UN Human Rights chief calls for review of ASEAN draft human rights declaration (November 2012)

ASEAN backs Vietnam’s bid for UN Human Rights Council in 2014 (October 2012)

AICHR meeting on the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (September 2012)

Southeast Asian civil society groups call for improvements to Internet governance (August 2012)

Civil society organizations meet ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (June 2012)

FIDH banned from attending the ASEAN People’s Forum in Vietnam (September 2010)