MARUAH Singapore

The Sunday Times
23 August 2009
‘Adopt NMP process to pick rep for ASEAN rights body’
By Kor Kian Beng

Singapore’s representative to an ASEAN human rights body should be picked in a process similar to the selection of Nominated Members of Parliament (NMP).

This is one key proposal that Singapore rights advocacy group MARUAH will make to the Government, said its chairman Braema Mathi.
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2 members of MARUAH (Braema Mathi & Peter Low) were recently interviewed on The Living Room, a radio talkshow on 938LIVE. The interview included discussions on human rights issues in ASEAN, specifically the new ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR)

Click here for more details of the interview.

August 13, 2009

To: The Member States of the UN General Assembly

Your Excellency,

As the Human Rights Council prepares for its 12th regular session, the first session with the new members elected in May 2009, we write to ask your government to commit itself publicly as a matter of national policy to support a competitive, genuinely-contested and principled electoral process for future Human Rights Council elections.

General Assembly resolution 60/251, which established the Council, specifies that Council members shall be elected directly and individually, and that, in casting their ballots, Member States “shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights.” These provisions reflect the spirit of the resolution: UN Member States must be given a real choice in order to elect members that will “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” and “fully cooperate with the Council.”
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The Singapore Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism (MARUAH) would like to invite you to a Consultation Workshop: “Engaging the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) – The People’s Views”. Read more in our e-flyer.

Details below
Saturday, 22 August 2009
8.30 am to 3.45 pm
Novotel Hotel, Clarke Quay
177A River Valley Road
Singapore, 179031

Sign up online here

Alternatively, you can fill up the registration form. Please submit this as soon as possible.

MARUAH (Singapore Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism) would like to invite you, the public, to a Consultation Workshop: “Engaging the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) – The People’s Views”.

The Terms of Reference(TOR) for the ASEAN Human Rights Body, as enshrined in Article 14 of the ASEAN Charter, have been accepted recently by ASEAN Foreign Ministers. This October the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) will be born at the ASEAN Summit. This is a considerable breakthrough for all countries in ASEAN.

This Commission can only get better when stakeholders are engaged. In the next three months countries will select their government representative to the Commission. The TOR will go into effect from October. There are other sectoral bodies on women, children and migrant workers.

How will the people sector engage in this process? How will the people sector ensure that the Commission will become an enabling instrument? Here’s the chance to be engaged. Please come. Please share your thoughts. Please be a stakeholder in this process.

Please download the e-flyer here. The reply slip will be uploaded shortly.

This event is sponsored by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, and partnered with the Insitute of Southeast Asian Studies and ASEAN Studies Centre.

UN Human Rights Chief welcomes important step towards establishment of ASEAN Commission on Human Rights

GENEVA — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday welcomed the endorsement by ASEAN Foreign Ministers of the terms of reference for the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, which she called “an important step forward” in the establishment of a new mechanism to protect and promote the human rights of people living in the ASEAN region.
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The human rights balancing act
by Braema Mathiaparanam

THE ASEAN Human Rights Body is finally on its way to realisation now that all the foreign ministers of the Association of South-east Asian Nations have endorsed the Terms of Reference (TOR) at their meeting in Phuket.

Named the ASEAN Inter-Governmental Human Rights Commission, the body is slated to be officially established at the ASEAN summit in October.
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