Building human rights in the region through the role of horizontal transnational networks : the role of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions

In 2007, Andrew Byrnes and Andrea Durbach received a grant from the Australian Research Council to investigate the role played by the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions in promoting international human rights norms across the Asia Pacific. The project's central question was whether, for the vast and heterogeneous Asia Pacific, a regional network of national human rights bodies might offer a more effective form of human rights governance than a supra-state regional human rights system. Fieldwork was carried out in every sub-region of the Asia Pacific: Fiji, Samoa, New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, India, South Korea, Jordan and Palestine. A decade after the project's conclusion, we analyse the project's impact and influence. We conclude that the key intuition that drove the project forward, which was that strong and independent institutions within states are the most effective bulwarks against rights violations, remains as valid now as it was a decade ago. In a region that still lacks an overarching human rights institution, networks of national human rights institutions are an original and creative response to the challenges of human rights governance into the twenty-first century.