From the CIAO Atlas Map of Asia 

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Human Rights NGOs in Southeast Asia and Japan's Approaches to Democratization

Motoko Shuto
Komazawa University
Tokyo, Japan

International Studies Association
Minneapolis, Minnesota
March 17-21, 1998

Introduction

If democratization is a process of social and political transformation of a domestic system, it must emerge primarily from within and below. But if the majority of urban poor and rural people do not have the proper method by which they can articulate their interests to the public, an intermediary function to represent the voices of the muted and protect the interests of the voiceless majority or marginalized people plays an important role, even if it is not always successful. It is on this point that human rights NGOs in Southeast Asia generally find the purpose and meaning of their activities.

But in the era of accelerating globalization of market economy and communication, a question whether the impact of democratization can come from outside as well as inside isworthy of consideration. In other words, will international networks between human rights NGOs in Southeast Asia and those in Japan develop enough to take the lead to democratic transformation regionally as well as domestically? And will they come to be regarded as an important autonomous component of international relations, in addition to the other two principal components, state and market? Or will these emerging international networks of NGOs remain, in the foreseeable future, merely an alternative avenue, which happen to take advantage of advanced communication technology, for political opposition against the domestic state power?

It is almost certain that a current strong push toward liberalization of market economy,which also requires the Asian states to abolish various controls on the domestic market such as deregulation or privatization will continue to be a major trend in the Asia-Pacific region as well as globally. This means, on the other hand, that it will become a critically important matter who will represent internationally the voices of those who have no access to the decision-making process of governments or multinational corporations to push liberalization, and who may possibly become disadvantaged or further marginalized by globalization.

Also in this context, NGOs have the potential to play an intermediary role enabling the voices of the muted to reach the international arena. As a matter of fact, NGOs actively interested in various fields of society, such as rural development, environment, legal assistance, gender, have risen in the ASEAN countries in the last two decades, particularly in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia. Though the Philippine NGOs have by far the best-developed national organizations compared with those in other ASEAN countries, NGOs who might function as intermediaries between the local society and the local or state administration began to rise in the other ASEAN countries since the 1970s. They have not only increased in number but also developed in terms of the intensity and geographic scope of their activities over the last decade, particularly in the 1990s. Internet communication has facilitated their exchange of information in the 1990s.

Based on this perception of the current situation, this paper discusses the roles and prospects of human rights NGOs in the ASEAN countries and proposes Japan's role for the prospect of democratization in Southeast Asia.

The Debates on Human Rights after the Cold War

It is well known that since the end of the Cold War some Asian governments, notably China,Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, began to argue actively against the traditional conceptions of human rights which originated in the Western countries. These governments officially claim that, though the concept of human rights is universal by nature, there is a distinct conception of human rights based on the particular cultural, economic and political realities in the Asiansocieties. Besides the issue of conceptual content, there are two other main points in this debate; the issues of priority and the proper way of implementing human rights policies.

With respect to priority, these governments claim that the principle of Asian societies is based not on individualism but on the community or "communitarianism" and that "the right to development" of the community must be prior to, but indivisible from, individual civil rights. With respect to the way of implementing human rights, they claim that state sovereignty must be respected above all and criticize the selectivity and arbitrariness of "human rights diplomacy" by the Western countries.

It is important to notice two points in these debates. Firstly, there is no uniform Asian perspective on human rights as such; even in those countries whose political leaders express the arguments mentioned above, there exist human rights NGOs who oppose the argument of the ruling elites. Therefore, secondly, these arguments of the Asian governments are directed at two different audiences, as follows.

One intended audience is obviously the Western countries, particularly the United States and the European Union, whose foreign policies have an inclination to link human rights issues with economic assistance. The political intention of the Asian governments in this context is primarily to reject the human rights agenda of the Western countries as a political campaign which, they claim, would incite social disruption and political chaos in weaker countries whose statehood is still fragile.

These Asian governments, furthermore, realize that the global power configuration has shifted considerably to the Asia-Pacific region, and unless the ASEAN countries involve themselves in the formulation of the new world order in the post-Cold War era, " the world order" so conceived would reflect only the view of the advanced Western countries which are the winners of the Cold War. They apprehend that Western individualistic cultural values would predominate in the world's value system. The Asian countries including ASEAN would, then, be merely receivers of instructions from the Western countries. 1 Therefore, it is important for the ASEAN countries to assert their conceptions of human rights in order to make non-Western perspectives a part of the new world order.

At the same time, these arguments by the Asian ruling elites intend to justify the present political system, which is generally a combination of authoritarian rule and personal, to some extent informal, networks. There is also another political concern in the domestic context, though it is rarely explicitly mentioned in the multi-ethnic societies such as Indonesia and Malaysia, that if individual political rights are allowed too generously, it might bear on the political rights of the minority groups or non-indigenous groups, and consequently threaten the social stability. This concern has made the ruling elites claim that political power is legitimated in its effect of bringing about political stability and the benefits of economic success to the nation as a whole, which a liberal distribution of human rights would undermine.

Human rights NGOs in the ASEAN countries, on the other hand, claim that stability and economic success should not be an excuse to restrict civil rights. They commit themselves to causes such as empowerment, social justice, participatory development, and democracy. Therefore, the debates on human rights in Asia have both an international and a domestic context. In other words, the intended audience is the domestic public as well as the Western countries.

Japan's Position in the Human Rights Debates

Where does Japan stand in the above debates? Though there is now extensive literature on the debates above, Japan's position is remarkably inscrutable both from the Western and the Asian perspectives on the arguments. This can be interpreted as the reflection of the inherent and continuing ambivalence of Japan's policies toward the Asian countries. This political ambivalence results partly from the strategic requirements, which are partially governed by Japan's economic vested interests and the historical memory of Japan's military aggression and occupation in these areas prior to or during the Pacific War.

But this ambivalence is partly an output of the inherent weakness of the general public's conviction about the ideas such as democracy and human rights, much less about the compassion for the human rights problems in the Asian countries. While materialism had become prevalent along with the economic growth and the expansion of the Japanese companies in Asia, the expansion of cognitive framework of the Japanese society did not automatically accompany it. The public had been mostly unaware of the unethical practices and environmental degradation by the Japanese companies in Asia until and even after the local riots happened in the mid-1970s.

Concerning the first point, namely Japan's ambivalence due to strategic requirements, her perception of Asia had been ambivalent through the 20th century. Historically speaking, up to the end of the 19th century, "Asia" was tantamount to China and Korea, and in the early 20th century, particularly after World War I, Japan's perception of "Asia" somewhat expanded to include Southeast Asia. What was important was that Japan's perception of "Asia" had been formed in comparison with "the West", and this perception-making process historically accompanied a deep-rooted psychological ambivalence toward "Asia" in the following sense.

On the one hand, "Asia" was the object of Japan's expansion in order to acquire more political and economic power, in rivalry with the Western powers. In this context, to be a member of "Asia" was regarded as a humiliation and dishonor, because it accompanied the image of being an unenlightened, underdeveloped and amorphous society. Thus, modern Japan struggled for "deAsianization", stressing her Western identity in the foreign relations.

On the other hand, "Asia" became increasingly recognized as her partner in resisting the domination of Western colonial powers in Asia, particularly in the 1930s. In this context, Japan intentionally stressed the distinction, from the Western nations, of her political intention toward the Asian nations.

Though this political ambivalence of modern Japan toward "Asia" eventually resulted in the institutional collapse of the Imperial regime, Japan's self-image as being closer to the Western countries than to the rest of Asia had deeply remained both on the foreign policy level and on the public perception for decades after the Pacific War, and became more complicated. The political background for why Japan's attitude toward Asia became more complicated since the 1950s can be explained as follows.

On the one hand, under the new Constitution promulgated in 1946, democratic practices and human rights were instituted, and since Japan joined in the United Nations in 1956, the diplomacy based on the UN has been one of the three principles of Japan's foreign policy. The other two principles were to attach great importance to the Asian countries, and to build primarily economic relations. Judging only from the spirit of the new Constitution and these three principles of her foreign policy, Japan could have shown a keen interest in human rights problems in the Asian nations since the 1950s.

On the other hand, however, there had been an inherent contradiction in these principles from the outset. Japan's post-War economic recovery and later, especially after the late 1960s, the increase in foreign direct investment, depended a great deal upon the political stability of, and good relations with, the Asian governments, which generally were not in a situation to pay legal and political attention to human rights issues at home. As the priority was to create diplomatic relations with the Asian countries, Japan supported the principles of respect of state sovereignty and non-interference in the domestic matters, which were unanimously endorsed in the Asian-African Conference held in Indonesia in 1955.

Against this background, Japan projected universal ideas such as democracy, peace and humanitarian aid primarily through UN-based diplomacy, while in her foreign policies toward Asia Japan never addressed the agenda of human rights issues even nominally up to the end of the 1980s. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, the still vivid memories of military aggression psychologically constrained Japan from taking a high profile in human rights issues in Asia for the pragmatic purpose of avoiding counter attacks from the Asian governments. Even so, careless or deliberate remarks by the ministers with respect to the Japan's military occupation could quickly be politicized and damaged the foreign relations with some of the Asian countries.

In the post-Cold War era, Japan has tried to project her ideas more explicitly; the human rights agenda was mentioned in the Guidelines of Official Development Assistance(ODA) 2 in 1992, because of the impact of the Tiananmen Square incident and more importantly because of the disappointment that Japan's huge contribution of $11 billion in the Gulf War was not appreciated by international society. However, Japan's low-profile, or moderate, attitudes toward the human rights problems in Asia have not yet basically changed. There was an essentially common attitude in Japan's official reactions toward the Tiananmen Square incident, the reckless violation of human rights in Myanmar, and the massacre in East Timor, in the sense that they were not so accusatory, if not uncritical, as those of the Western nations and neither the business sector nor public opinion demanded strong sanctions against these incidents in Asia.

When all these background issues are taken into consideration, it is not a surprise that Japan has rarely been mentioned in the human rights debates in the post-Cold War era. Objectively speaking, however, there is one more important factor to explain Japan's ambivalent approaches toward the human rights issues in Asia. That is the complexities of "human rights issues" in Asia, which have made Japan uncertain as to what measures are more effective than others.

Dimensions of Human Rights in Asia

What human rights NGOs there are in Asia depends upon what the human rights problems are in Asia. Taking the realities of Asian societies into consideration, human rights problems can be categorized into five dimensions as follows.

The first dimension is the problems related to poverty, for example child labor, slums in the cities, and the lack of primary education or primary health care in rural areas, all of which restrict the opportunity of social mobility and consequently development of civil society from within. In this sense, "human development" is an important part of the conception of human rights in Asia.

The second dimension is the problems related to policy enforcement, particularly of development policies by the governments. The decision-making process which rarely considers the impact on, nor compensation for, the local people has often brought about the land disputes with the local people. Actually many petitions for help from legal assistance groups in Indonesia belong to this category. The purposes of legal assistance groups, development NGOs and environmental NGOs in the ASEAN countries, though seemingly different from one another in their sector-based activities, often converge and call for a joint action in their programs.

The third dimension is related to the fundamental structure of the political and legal system. The nations in Southeast Asia, except for Thailand, had to start nation-state building by fighting against the external powers and reforming the political system which they had inherited. The rise of "citizenry" independent of state power did not accompany this political process, as was the cases of nation-state building in the European countries.

But now, after the sustained economic success and the rise of educated middle classes, there have emerged NGOs working for the civil political rights of the people. Their direct targets are, for instance, the Internal Security Act or Societies Act in Malaysia and the laws which restrict political, social activities in Indonesia such as the Law on Political Parties and Golkar, and the Law on Mass Organizations. It is these legal and political systems that human rights NGOs try to change. Thus, they actively prosecute the debates on human rights mentioned earlier. They demand that civil rights should be protected at large by reforming the legal system, without linking civil rights protection to political stability or development. Otherwise, economic growth without accompanying social justice would produce social instability by deepening economic gaps and social grievances. 3

The fourth dimension is related to the friction between traditional culture and the current trend of modernization or Westernization, and between the dominant political culture and the process of national integration. The problems concerning indigenous groups or distinct ethnic groups, and the improvement of women's status, particularly in Islamic societies, can be placed in this category.

The fifth dimension of human rights in Southeast Asia concerns the problems which transcend the national boundary, such as the human rights of migrant workers. There has been no formal regional mechanism in Southeast Asia to deal with human rights problems, much less those of migrant workers in informal sectors, who will probably increase in number with the current strong push toward globalization of the market economy.

If all these dimensions are taken into consideration, it is difficult to say exactly what kind of NGOs do not belong to the human rights NGOs in Southeast Asia. Actually, NGOs working for a certain target such as peasants, children, workers, consumers, women or the minority groups almost always mention the protection of human rights in their aims and principles. The difference lies in their target population and methods. And if they are faced with problems related to the abuse of, or inefficiency of, administrative power over the local people, they try advocacy activities in cooperation with other NGOs.

On this point, the definition of human rights NGOs is different from that in the advanced countries. The international human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists primarily deal with the violation of the individual civil rights by state power, but in the Asian societies the scope of activities of human rights NGOs in its broad sense is more indefinite and closely intertwined with various aspects of the society. In other words, the issues of human rights NGOs diverge widely from the defensive aspect, the protection of people's rights and environment for the people, to the proactive, the advocacy of a pressing agenda, policy reform, and legal innovation.

The Emergence of Human Rights NGOs in the ASEAN Countries

Of the five dimensions of human rights mentioned above, the human rights NGOs in a narrow sense are those which supply legal assistance to protect the legal rights of victims, who are often legally-illiterate and vulnerable to the decision of the state or the corporations, for example in case of seizure of land or forests for development projects. In this narrow sense, the human rights NGOs are generally lawyer-based groups. It is interesting that active human rights NGOs of this kind in the ASEAN countries started their activities in the early 1970s.

In Indonesia, the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) 4 evolved into a remarkably effective legal assistance NGO under the leadership of the founder, Dr. A. Buyung Nasution, a prominent and aggressive advocate of human rights. From the outset, LBH had a basic plan in both the legal and political dimensions. The legal dimension is to defend the people of low income, free of charge, on an individual basis, and the political dimension is to develop a conceptual framework of democratic values, human rights, and rule of law for taking the initiative to reform laws or improve what is lacking in the legal system. The latter dimension is based on the concept of "structural legal aid", according to Buyung himself. 5 In this way, LBH has had an important function of representing the voices of the public through the legal measures in a political system, which has virtually prevented politicization of social organizations and the institutionalization of political opposition groups.

Since the 1970s, LBH has been committed to defend the human rights of defendants in political trials and has actively supported the establishment of other NGOs such as Walhi, the biggest environment NGO in Indonesia, INFID which was known as the International NGO Forum on Indonesia since 1988 till 1994, and the Independent Committee for Elections Watch (KIPP) in 1996. Though some leaders left LBH because of the internal conflict over the new leadership in 1996, they set up a new human rights NGO. In late January of this year, together with LBH, INFID, KIPP and other NGOs, they have submitted a joint appeal to the Parliament to officially fix the responsibility for the present currency and political crisis on the President.

In the Philippines, after the imposition of martial law in 1972 a systematic violation of human rights such as arbitrary arrests and "salvagings" by the police became widespread. With the increasing abuse of power under martial law, human rights NGOs became active, and the Catholic church-based Task Force Detainees (TFD), the Free Legal Assistance Group(FLAG), the Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood, Integrity, and Nationalism(MABINI) were inaugurated, to mention a few. The issue of human rights was raised as a ground of political advocacy against the Marcos dictatorship. The Philippine NGOs, which previously had few links with the human rights NGOs in the other ASEAN countries, have begun to join in the regional actions and networking of the 1990s.

In Thailand, on the other hand, the Union for Civil Liberty (UCL) was set up in the mid-1970's during the "democratic period" by an activist lawyer Somchai Homlaor. UCL played a key role in setting up the Coordinating Committee of Human Rights Organization of Thailand (CCHROT) in 1983, the main activities of which are monitoring human rights violations, public education through its radio program and publications, and lobbying for an independent human rights committee at home and for a regional mechanism in Southeast Asia.

In Malaysia, the proactive human rights NGOs started their activities mostly in the late 1980's or early 1990's. Suaram (Suara Rakyat Malaysia) is a Kuala Lumpur-based human rights NGO which was formed to protect the detainees arrested in the "Lalang Operation" of 1987. Sivarasa Rasiah, a highly efficient and energetic lawyer, has been one of the key actors of Suaram.

This brief survey of the rise of the human rights NGOs in its narrow sense shows that they emerged out of the pressing domestic necessities, and there was hardly any regional interest, which is understandable, except for CCHROT and a few other Thai NGOs. However, these human rights NGOs are distinguished from other lawyer-based human rights NGOs which have been active internationally since the 1960's onward either through UN-sponsored seminars or professional conferences, the Regional Council on Human Rights in Asia or the Law Association for Asia and the Pacific being well-known regional human rights NGOs, in the sense that they are more action-oriented and grass-roots oriented, though they themselves are not grass-roots NGOs.

However, as mentioned earlier, it is not only these lawyer-based NGOs that work for the cause of human rights. There are many other pro-active NGOs in Southeast Asia that work for human rights issues. Aliran, set up in 1977 in Penang, has actively involved itself in both norm-setting activities through conferences, its regular publications, and policy advocacy activities. In Penang, there are other active NGOs such as Consumers' Association of Penang (CAP), Third World Network and Just World Trust(JUST). 6

The Asian Cultural Forum on Development (ACFOD) , set up at Bangkok in 1975, also had from the outset regional networks in the Asia-Pacific region. Since 1983, it has made action programs for workers, 7 peasants, fishermen, and women. Each corresponding forum has four sub-regional groups: South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific region. Since 1992, joint action programs of all four forums started focusing on human rights, environment, and empowerment. The Asian Regional Resource Center for Human Rights Education (ARRC) was also set up in the same year at the office of ACFOD. It was ACFOD and other human rights NGOs in Asia which made up the "People's Plan for the 21st Century " (PP21) in 1992. This has become the platform for pursuing people-oriented development by building the trans-border cooperation of the NGOs in Asia.

Forum Asia (Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development), set up in 1991 at Bangkok, consists of about 20 human rights NGOs in Southeast and South Asia. 8 It has been involved in fact-finding researches and advocacy campaigns for the democratization of Indonesia, Myanmar and Cambodia. Altsean (Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma) was one of the products of the workshop in 1996, which Forum Asia and other two Thai-based NGOs 9 coordinated. They have been actively lobbying on Myanmar's problems at the ASEAN meetings.

The Thai human rights NGOs such as ACFOD, CCHROT and Forum Asia played the key role as coordinators of the Asia Pacific NGO Conference on Human Rights at Bangkok in March, prior to the UN World Conference on Human Rights in June 1993. In many joint statements of extensive agendas, they have proposed the establishment of regional human rights mechanism as well as adequate national human rights institutions 10 They also urged the Asian states to repeal the internal security laws that conflict with international human rights norms.

This writer thinks that this Conference has become a turning point in the two senses. First, the idea of regional mechanism which used to be proposed by eminent persons' groups in the 1980s, or at the earliest since the 1960's, has changed into the action program of the more action-oriented NGOs, which try to catalyze empowerment in the Asian societies. Second, after this conference, regional networking of the participant NGOs has begun to be institutionalized, and in the first follow-up meeting held in New Delhi in late 1996, the NGOs decided to meet every three years 11 This means that the regional networks have engendered a norm-setting activity within the ASEAN societies and that this solidarity making process simultaneously gives each NGO a sense of confidence for its purpose and action.

While it is too early to evaluate the effect of this regional networking, at least an official response has emerged from the governments, which carried on the debates on the human rights mentioned earlier in this paper. But the reaction is not on the level of debates alone. The ASEAN Ministerial Meeting felt obliged to respond to this trend by stating that "ASEAN should also consider the establishment of an appropriate regional mechanism on human rights" in the Joint Communique of 1993 12 The human rights NGOs in the ASEAN countries have set forth action plans collectively entitled "the Initiative for the Establishment of an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism", and presently endeavors to establish regular dialogues with the senior officials meeting prior to the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. 13 Compared to the 1970s and 1980s, the emerging regional network in the ASEAN countries is now willing to work regionally to set universal agenda activities.

Japan's Approaches to Human Rights Issues in Southeast Asia

It would not be an exaggeration to say that neither the Bangkok NGO Conference nor the less salient but emergent regional networking of human rights NGOs in Asia has attracted enough attention in Japan, except for only a handful human rights NGOs. Why, in this era of rapid and abundant flow of information, or as the Japanese express it, in this "era of internationalization", have these issues fail to attract attention in Japan? This writer thinks that three aspects can be pointed out. They are characteristics of Japanese NGOs in general, Japan's official policies, ODA policies in particular, and the conceptual difficulties for Japanese society as well as for NGOs in considering the human rights issues at the regional level.

Firstly, it is a relatively new phenomenon, especially in the 1990s, that the mass media as well as the public began to pay attention to the NGOs and volunteer activities for certain pressing needs in domestic situations. Actually, Japan's NGOs are, generally speaking, relatively new. About 48% of them were set up in the 1990s, 40% in the 1980s, 14 and less than ten NGOs were established in the 1970s, which deserve to be regarded as pioneers. This partly results from the social atmosphere in which "non-governmental" activities used to be regarded as "anti-governmental", during the decades under the Liberal Democratic Party's single dominant system.

Either because they are mostly involved in domestic affairs, which is not bad in itself, or because they lack the funds and the experienced staffs to work with the Asian NGOs, only a few Japanese NGOs have collaborated in advocacy activities with the Asian NGOs at the regional level. But, as the human rights NGOs in the ASEAN countries also started in the 1970s in the earliest cases and mostly in the 1980s or '90s, as was mentioned earlier, there is no big difference in terms of the shortness of history between them and Japanese NGOs.

The primary difference lies in the motivation and field of activities. With respect to the 185 Japanese NGOs which are involved in overseas activities, 68 NGOs are motivated by a wish to help the people in emergencies such as refugees, starvation or natural disasters. 15 This is the most common activity of the Japanese NGOs. The second most common activity is to supply medical equipment and school materials. Out of these initial motivations, some NGOs have expanded operations into direct development assistance such as digging wells, building schools, and planting trees. 16 Considering that poverty hinders the fulfillment of human rights, as was mentioned earlier, these activities may be said to be motivated by human rights problems, primarily of humanitarian concerns.

However, such operations are reactive, in nature, to the situation, like the symptomatic treatment. Very few NGOs have sufficiently informed personnel to address human rights issues, comprehensively, in other words, to link human rights issues with the legal and political system in which they are involved. It would be hard to actively participate in the advocacy activities of human rights NGOs in the ASEAN countries, unless those NGOs focused on core issues of human rights and knew specifically what should be changed and how. This seems to be one of the reasons why, with a few exceptions, the Japanese NGOs working in overseas operations have not collaborated with the NGOs in Asia in agenda-setting activities of human rights protection.

Secondly, Japan's official policies toward the Asian countries have predominantly focused on material development assistance, taking the legal and political system of the recipient countries for granted. A couple of new methods of Japan's relations with NGOs have been introduced, such as the new categories of Subsidy to NGO Programs and Grant to Grassroots Organizations, both of which started in FY1989 and have greatly increased in the budge allocation of Japan's ODA. 17 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, moreover, established an office to support private foreign assistance activity in the Department of Economic Cooperation in 1994, and since 1996 has instituted regular meetings with representatives of Japanese NGOs.

However, the subsidy to NGOs, for which there are stringent application conditions and accordingly only projects requiring large amounts such as the construction of schools, medical facilities, water supplies or drainage systems are accepted, are financed for the purchase of materials. The same policy pertains to the Grants to Grassroots Organizations in the recipient countries.

These new methods are primarily an extension of the delivery system of aid, through a different channel, so that it might reach the people more efficiently. If the good point in these new methods is the strengthening of complementary relations between the government and NGOs, the bad point is virtually making the recipient NGOs supplementary components of Japan's foreign policy within the framework of governmental relations. Then, these methods would result in reinforcing the status quo of the aid delivery system. But, what the ideas of human rights and democratization as stressed in the Guidelines of Japan's ODA really require would be a sociological approach, which takes into consideration what the human rights NGOs in Asia, with an increasing regional identity and networking, have been trying to change.

The conceptual difficulty of Japanese society and NGOs with regard to human rights issues in Asia concerns primarily the difficulty to find the conception of an alternative vision to mass consumption and abundance which Japan has enjoyed in the present international economic system. Japanese NGOs working seriously in development assistance also feel that the international economic system which sustains abundance in the advanced countries produces destructive, instead of sustainable, development at a greater speed than their efforts can repair.

For instance, the currency crisis caused by distrust of the international market badly harmed the people, for whom they are working, to the extent of the present national predicament in Indonesia. Another conceptual and pragmatic difficulty for Japanese NGOs is to find the proper position on human rights issues in Asia, on which local NGOs in Southeast Asia have occasionally taken the same position with their governments in the international forums, especially with regard to "right to development" and environmental rule-setting. Without ideas concerning sustainable development as well as international structure, it is hard for Japanese NGOs to determine how they should stand in the advocacy activity of the human rights NGOs in Southeast Asia.

Conclusion

While the NGOs working for the cause of human rights in various aspects have created an increasingly large regional network in Southeast Asia, their network is still too limited to represent the voices of the muted at the grassroots and regional levels. Human rights issues in Asia require consideration of the issues of democratization, transparency, accountability of the political system, sustainable development, and the inter-governmental relations on economic assistance at the same time. This being so, it is important for the human rights NGOs in Southeast Asia to develop along with their enlarging network a normative power to appeal for democratization and sustainable development from inside.

As for Japan, while many NGOs are interested in human rights, including humanitarian aid and development assistance, they have concentrated primarily on giving physical and material assistance, just like the pattern of ODA. It seems to be necessary both for ODA policies and for the public to commit themselves to more proactive engagement in the consolidation of the rule of law and democratization in the Asian societies. It is clear that neglect of human rights negatively affects many areas of international relations and eventually leads to the social and political disorder, or to anarchy as may be the case of Indonesia at present.

Because in the Asia Pacific region states and business sectors are predominantly principal actors now, international civil society in this region must emerge in the years to come, in order to represent the interests of the majority of local people, to give a regional voice to their needs and hopefully to counterbalance the development-oriented liberalization of the world economy. The emerging people's network at the regional level in the 1990s, as briefly mentioned in this paper, shows that it is not too optimistic an aspiration in this era of globalization.

References


Notes:

Note 1: Wanandi,Jusuf, "Human Rights and Democracy in the ASEAN Nations: the Next 25 Years", The Indonesian Quarterly, Jakarta: CSIS, vol.21, no.1, 1993, p.15. Back.

Note 2: They were initially announced in April,1991 and accepted by the Cabinet Meeting in June, 1992. Back.

Note 3: Lubis,Todung Mulya, In Search of Human Rights, Legal Political Dilemmas of Indonesia's New Order, 1966-1990, Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama, 1993, pp.40-44. Back.

Note 4: Yayasan Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Indonesia was originally set up as LBH in 1970 and started its operation in 1971. YLBHI became its formal name in 1981, but hereafter it is written only as LBH. Back.

Note 5: Andan Buyung Nasution, "Intensifying democratic movements; the experience of LBH", in Rustam Ibrahim ed., The Indonesian NGO Agenda toward the Year 2000, Jakarta: CESCA-LP3ES, 1996, p.23. Back.

Note 6: CAP was established in 1970 and helped to establish Friend of Earth Malaysia(SAM) in 1976, and Third World Network in 1984 in Penang. JUST, which was set up in 1992, moved to Petaling Jaya close to Kuala Lumpur in February 1997. Back.

Note 7: The Workers' Forum now belongs to the Asia-Pacific Workers' Solidarity Links(APWSL) in New Zealand. Personal interview with Mr. Boonthan T. Verawongse, Peace & Human Rights Program of ACFOD, on August 1,1997. Back.

Note 82: 8 Representatives of YLBHI, Suaram, Philippines Alliance of Human Rights Advocates and two other NGOs in Sri Lanka, and Pakistan are members of the Executive Committee of Forum Asia in 1997. Back.

Note 9: 9 They were Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma and Burma Solidarity Group in Malaysia. Personal interview with Ms. Debbie Stothard, Coordinator of Altsean on July 31,1997. Back.

Note 10: 10 Joint Statement by NGOs on Regional Human Rights Instruments and Mechanisms in the Asia Pacific Region and National Institutions, Our Voice, Bangkok NGO Declaration on Human Rights, Bangkok: ACFOD, 1993, pp. 189-192- Back.

Note 11: Asia Pacific NGO Human Rights Congress, New Delhi, December 1996, Bangkok: ACFOD, 1997. Back.

Note 12: Joint Communique, 26th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, Singapore 23-24 July 1993. ASEAN Documents Series, 1992-1994, Supplementary edition, Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, 1994, p.8. Back.

Note 13: Its first contact with the Senior Officials meeting was established in 1996. The Workshop aims to prompt the ASEAN Meetings to encourage the creation of national working groups in each country, to place human rights on the regional agenda. It also seeks to have regular dialogues with the Senior Officials Meeting. A copy of the Workshop documents was given to this writer by courtesy of Forum Asia in Bangkok in July 1997. Back.

Note 14: Japanese NGO Center for International Cooperation(JANIC), Data Book on Japanese NGOs 1996, Tokyo: JANIC, 1996, pp.2-3. Back.

Note 15: JANIC, op. cit., pp.5-7. Back.

Note 16: Kitazawa, Yoko, "Overview: NGOs in Japan", AMPO Japan-Asia Quarterly Review,vol.25, no.3, 1994, pp.14-15. Back.

Note 17: Subsidies to NGO Programs are financed exclusively to the Japanese NGOs which operate in the developing countries. It started with a budget of 82 million yen in FY1989, and has increased to 816 million yen in FY1996. Grants to Grassroots Organizations are financed directly to the local NGOs in the recipient countries, the budget for those grants was 300 million yen in FY1989 and has increased by more than 10 times to 5 billion yen in FY1997. Both operations participated in about 55% of the activities in the Asian countries. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Economic Cooperation, Japan's Official Development, White Paper of ODA, (in Japanese), part 1, 1997, p.189. p210. Back.