ASEAN, anti-politics and human rights

Through the lens of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), this chapter considers the political impacts of ASEAN’s recent reform. Prevailing explanations of why and how ASEAN has come to govern human rights frame this as a process of normative change. This chapter departs from these accounts by examining the structural context in which political processes have been reformed, considering how human rights governance has been rescaled and restructured, the drivers of this process, and whose interests these reforms advance. The chapter highlights the AICHR’s depoliticizing impacts at the level of the polity and at the level of politics, where ASEAN’s elites have been empowered as opposed to rights advocates. The chapter argues that the AICHR gives the appearance of expanding rights protections, while enabling elites to manage conflicts over human rights abuses according to their preferences.