Dr Tan Hsien-Li has published a research article – Adaptive Protection of Human Rights: Stealth Institutionalisation of Scrutiny Functions in ASEAN’s Limited Regime – in 22(3) Human Rights Law Review (2022) 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngac017

Established as a limited regime that mainly carries out promotional activities such as human rights public education, strengthening the ASEAN human rights system seems impossible when member states remain sovereignty-centric and thus wary of instituting protective mechanisms of scrutiny such as data transparency, reporting, monitoring, and complaints portals. This challenging outlook is compounded by human rights taking a backseat to economic development in the ASEAN Community’s agenda. However, tracking the rarely-examined ASEAN human rights reports reveals a counter-phenomenon quietly arising. This empirically-grounded article presents Adaptive Protection as a process where ASEAN human rights officials (rather than civil society or ASEAN member state actors) have worked into strengthen the system. This is done by building upon member states’ growing familiarity with the ‘intrusive’ oversight of the United Nations human rights system to stealthily adapt (albeit loosely) similar functions of protective scrutiny—namely, data transparency, reporting, monitoring, and hearing complaints—into their limited mandates. Surprisingly, this process has not encountered pushback but instead has garnered grudging acquiescence by ASEAN states.