NGO Proposals for an Asia-Pacific Human Rights System

The Asia-Pacific region is the only area of the world without. a human rights regime. This piece evaluates current NGO proposals. Since 1982, regional workshops have been held between Asia- Pacific state representatives under the aegis of the United Nations. The most recent was held in Tehran from February 28 to March 2 1998.

At that meeting it was agreed that the first building block for a regional regime would be a technical cooperation program to further develop national human rights structures and education programs. This approach would help to foster local human rights protection, and explore the possibilities of regional co-operation by identifying the issues of concern common to the countries involved.