Pub Date : 2022-01-18DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2022597
Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings, S. Son, Danielle Chubb
ABSTRACT The further isolation of North Korea in response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a timely reminder that when it comes to the question of how to bring about change with relation to North Korea, a combination of creative and differentiated approaches are needed. In this piece, we argue that preparations for a just future transition on the Korean peninsula must start now. This commentary considers the possibilities for Australia to support just transition, in whatever form it may take, through immediate action not focused on bilateral or state-centric relations, but instead through other spaces in a broadly defined civil society. Effective Australian support for transitional justice and overall wellbeing of North Koreans must overcome structural barriers to opportunity for North Koreans within Australia, as well as barriers of overly securitised paradigms.
{"title":"Preparing for transitional justice in North Korea","authors":"Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings, S. Son, Danielle Chubb","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2022597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2022597","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The further isolation of North Korea in response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a timely reminder that when it comes to the question of how to bring about change with relation to North Korea, a combination of creative and differentiated approaches are needed. In this piece, we argue that preparations for a just future transition on the Korean peninsula must start now. This commentary considers the possibilities for Australia to support just transition, in whatever form it may take, through immediate action not focused on bilateral or state-centric relations, but instead through other spaces in a broadly defined civil society. Effective Australian support for transitional justice and overall wellbeing of North Koreans must overcome structural barriers to opportunity for North Koreans within Australia, as well as barriers of overly securitised paradigms.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"121 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42458765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-04DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2016611
Ji-Young Lee, Eugeniu Han, Keren Zhu
ABSTRACT As the U.S.-China strategic rivalry has intensified, Washington has looked to its close allies and partners to counter Chinese clout in global technology leadership. With the Huawei ban as a proxy for the U.S.-China competition, the paper focuses on the concept of the alliance halo and analyzes how the three key U.S. allies in Asia—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—responded to Washington’s expectations of mutual support on the decoupling of Chinese technology companies from global supply chains. We argue that given that the Huawei ban is about future risks associated with China’s economy, as opposed to demonstrated military threats, it was more challenging to establish allied reliability within the U.S. alliance network as a whole. Our comparative analysis shows that Australia’s reactions have been the most direct, banning Huawei before the United States, showing a contrast with South Korea’s relatively muted responses. Japan’s decision to ban Huawei was as decisive as Australia’s but Tokyo sought to keep a low profile. Rather than the diplomatic pressure from the Trump administration, these allies’ varied responses resulted from their own assessments of security risks associated with Huawei.
{"title":"Decoupling from China: how U.S. Asian allies responded to the Huawei ban","authors":"Ji-Young Lee, Eugeniu Han, Keren Zhu","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2016611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2016611","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As the U.S.-China strategic rivalry has intensified, Washington has looked to its close allies and partners to counter Chinese clout in global technology leadership. With the Huawei ban as a proxy for the U.S.-China competition, the paper focuses on the concept of the alliance halo and analyzes how the three key U.S. allies in Asia—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—responded to Washington’s expectations of mutual support on the decoupling of Chinese technology companies from global supply chains. We argue that given that the Huawei ban is about future risks associated with China’s economy, as opposed to demonstrated military threats, it was more challenging to establish allied reliability within the U.S. alliance network as a whole. Our comparative analysis shows that Australia’s reactions have been the most direct, banning Huawei before the United States, showing a contrast with South Korea’s relatively muted responses. Japan’s decision to ban Huawei was as decisive as Australia’s but Tokyo sought to keep a low profile. Rather than the diplomatic pressure from the Trump administration, these allies’ varied responses resulted from their own assessments of security risks associated with Huawei.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"486 - 506"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42714660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2017840
Maria S. Guevara
ABSTRACT As part of the ‘UN Security Council and Health Emergencies’ collection, this article provides the humanitarian perspective in the collection. Over the last two decades, the UN Security Council has come to play an increasingly prominent role in global responses to health emergencies—including in COVID-19. In this article, scholars from International Relations, Public Health, International Law and humanitarian aid organisations reflect on this developing role, and the consequences (both positive and negative) for global health security efforts. From the humanitarian perspective, the nexus of health and security has become a war on words and a double-edged sword. The article highlights the difference between the ‘securitisation’ of health and securing health, where the latter is what is truly needed in ensuring health for all. It does so by bringing out examples of real field impact and challenges humanitarian actors face when narratives are manipulated as such and what role the UNSC can and should play in allaying negative repercussions.
{"title":"A humanitarian perspective: keeping people and their health, not national security, at the centre","authors":"Maria S. Guevara","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2017840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2017840","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As part of the ‘UN Security Council and Health Emergencies’ collection, this article provides the humanitarian perspective in the collection. Over the last two decades, the UN Security Council has come to play an increasingly prominent role in global responses to health emergencies—including in COVID-19. In this article, scholars from International Relations, Public Health, International Law and humanitarian aid organisations reflect on this developing role, and the consequences (both positive and negative) for global health security efforts. From the humanitarian perspective, the nexus of health and security has become a war on words and a double-edged sword. The article highlights the difference between the ‘securitisation’ of health and securing health, where the latter is what is truly needed in ensuring health for all. It does so by bringing out examples of real field impact and challenges humanitarian actors face when narratives are manipulated as such and what role the UNSC can and should play in allaying negative repercussions.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"17 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43720219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2017839
S. Harman, C. Wenham
ABSTRACT Operative paragraph 7 of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2532 (2020) acknowledges ‘the critical role that women are playing in the COVID-19 response efforts’, the ‘disproportionate negative impact the pandemic is having on women and girls’, and ‘calls for concrete actions to minimise this impact and ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and youth in the development and implementation of an adequate and sustainable response to the pandemic’. This Resolution is clear in its language: states must recognise and respond to the gendered effects of the pandemic. The adoption of Resolution 2532 and subsequently 2565 (2021) is an important opportunity to further integrate health emergencies and UNSC’s Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. The language is deliberate: it offers global health a set of mechanisms on how to integrate gender into complex crises and, in turn, offers WPS a chance to engage with health and pandemics as a security challenge for women and girls. However, as previous health emergencies and the WPS agenda show us, Resolutions are not a panacea: they are political compromises often riddled with contradictions and are dependent on states and the international community to implement them.
{"title":"The UN Security Council and gender in health emergencies: what comes next?","authors":"S. Harman, C. Wenham","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2017839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2017839","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Operative paragraph 7 of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2532 (2020) acknowledges ‘the critical role that women are playing in the COVID-19 response efforts’, the ‘disproportionate negative impact the pandemic is having on women and girls’, and ‘calls for concrete actions to minimise this impact and ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of women and youth in the development and implementation of an adequate and sustainable response to the pandemic’. This Resolution is clear in its language: states must recognise and respond to the gendered effects of the pandemic. The adoption of Resolution 2532 and subsequently 2565 (2021) is an important opportunity to further integrate health emergencies and UNSC’s Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. The language is deliberate: it offers global health a set of mechanisms on how to integrate gender into complex crises and, in turn, offers WPS a chance to engage with health and pandemics as a security challenge for women and girls. However, as previous health emergencies and the WPS agenda show us, Resolutions are not a panacea: they are political compromises often riddled with contradictions and are dependent on states and the international community to implement them.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"22 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44634026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2017842
S. Rushton
ABSTRACT In passing resolutions on HIV/AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19, the Security Council has shown at least a passing interest in health, and calls have been made to give it a more central role in global disease response. In this contribution, reflecting on two decades of the UNSC’s engagement with health emergencies, I suggest we should be cautious about making the Security Council too central to pandemic response. I focus on three problems with the Council: that it is highly politicised and deeply divided in ways that mean it cannot be relied on to act when needed most; that when it does act it tends to do so too late, once an emerging problem has already become a global crisis; and that it does not in any case necessarily have the tools at its disposal to make a meaningful contribution. Instead, I argue, it is precisely its role as a ‘health outsider’ that enables the UNSC to occasionally make a contribution. It would be risky indeed to hand such a body real responsibility for crisis response. That is a task much more likely to be performed assiduously (if often imperfectly) by a body such as the WHO.
{"title":"Can we rely on the Security Council during health emergencies?","authors":"S. Rushton","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2017842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2017842","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In passing resolutions on HIV/AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19, the Security Council has shown at least a passing interest in health, and calls have been made to give it a more central role in global disease response. In this contribution, reflecting on two decades of the UNSC’s engagement with health emergencies, I suggest we should be cautious about making the Security Council too central to pandemic response. I focus on three problems with the Council: that it is highly politicised and deeply divided in ways that mean it cannot be relied on to act when needed most; that when it does act it tends to do so too late, once an emerging problem has already become a global crisis; and that it does not in any case necessarily have the tools at its disposal to make a meaningful contribution. Instead, I argue, it is precisely its role as a ‘health outsider’ that enables the UNSC to occasionally make a contribution. It would be risky indeed to hand such a body real responsibility for crisis response. That is a task much more likely to be performed assiduously (if often imperfectly) by a body such as the WHO.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"35 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48474478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2017845
Maike Voss, Isabell Kump, Paul Bochtler
ABSTRACT Traditionally falling under the remit of the World Health Organization (WHO), health issues such as health emergencies or access to healthcare have been addressed more frequently in debates and resolutions of the UN Security Council (UNSC) since 2000. As the UNSC is the UN's principal body dealing with threats and endangerments to international peace and security, this points to a certain degree of the securitisation of health. By means of a statistical analysis of UNSC speeches between 1995 and 2019 as well as by examining health-related UNSC resolutions, this research explores by whom and how health is treated as a security issue in UNSC debates. This article argues that health is increasingly paid attention to during health emergencies, displaying a narrow framing of health that follows a health security paradigm. However, health is also addressed with a focus on health systems, the wider determinants of health as well as with respect to the access to healthcare and hospitals and the protection of healthcare personnel. This points to the UNSC considering a broader understanding of public health issues to be relevant for its security agenda.
{"title":"Unpacking the framing of health in the United Nations Security Council","authors":"Maike Voss, Isabell Kump, Paul Bochtler","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2017845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2017845","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Traditionally falling under the remit of the World Health Organization (WHO), health issues such as health emergencies or access to healthcare have been addressed more frequently in debates and resolutions of the UN Security Council (UNSC) since 2000. As the UNSC is the UN's principal body dealing with threats and endangerments to international peace and security, this points to a certain degree of the securitisation of health. By means of a statistical analysis of UNSC speeches between 1995 and 2019 as well as by examining health-related UNSC resolutions, this research explores by whom and how health is treated as a security issue in UNSC debates. This article argues that health is increasingly paid attention to during health emergencies, displaying a narrow framing of health that follows a health security paradigm. However, health is also addressed with a focus on health systems, the wider determinants of health as well as with respect to the access to healthcare and hospitals and the protection of healthcare personnel. This points to the UNSC considering a broader understanding of public health issues to be relevant for its security agenda.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"4 - 10"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46046441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2017844
S. Rushton, Maike Voss
ABSTRACT Since 2000, health issues have increasingly been discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) without consensus being built on how and when the Council address health topics, or on its role in global health governance. As the contributions in this issue show, high-profile infectious disease outbreaks as well as the disruption of healthcare delivery and assistance in conflict settings have driven the health agenda at UNSC debates, but that agenda has remained ad hoc. Health topics seem most likely to be put on the agenda when the P5 perceive a particular health issue as a threat to international peace and security, or when the social and economic consequences of a health crisis potentially destabilise countries or regions. That raises another political question, however: under what circumstances are they likely to perceive health issues in those terms, and whose interests are being prioritised in such a determination?
{"title":"The United Nations Security Council and health emergencies: introduction","authors":"S. Rushton, Maike Voss","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2017844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2017844","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since 2000, health issues have increasingly been discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) without consensus being built on how and when the Council address health topics, or on its role in global health governance. As the contributions in this issue show, high-profile infectious disease outbreaks as well as the disruption of healthcare delivery and assistance in conflict settings have driven the health agenda at UNSC debates, but that agenda has remained ad hoc. Health topics seem most likely to be put on the agenda when the P5 perceive a particular health issue as a threat to international peace and security, or when the social and economic consequences of a health crisis potentially destabilise countries or regions. That raises another political question, however: under what circumstances are they likely to perceive health issues in those terms, and whose interests are being prioritised in such a determination?","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"1 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43870759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2017841
Oliver Johnson, Sinéad Walsh, ’. Olonisakin
ABSTRACT The UN Security Council has increasingly involved itself in health emergencies over the last two decades, but the advantages and potential risk of its role have not been well explored. The experience Security Council intervention in the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone can be instructive, in particular because it contributed to the establishment of a first-ever UN emergency health mission. While this mission was not considered effective, Security Council involvement may have helped to mobilise resources, highlight the need for a cross-sectoral response, and maintain international flights. More broadly, however, questions remain about whether the securitisation of health risks diverting funding and policy focus towards the priorities of wealthy countries and away from basic health needs.
{"title":"The role of the UN Security Council in health emergencies: lessons from the Ebola response in Sierra Leone","authors":"Oliver Johnson, Sinéad Walsh, ’. Olonisakin","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2017841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2017841","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The UN Security Council has increasingly involved itself in health emergencies over the last two decades, but the advantages and potential risk of its role have not been well explored. The experience Security Council intervention in the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone can be instructive, in particular because it contributed to the establishment of a first-ever UN emergency health mission. While this mission was not considered effective, Security Council involvement may have helped to mobilise resources, highlight the need for a cross-sectoral response, and maintain international flights. More broadly, however, questions remain about whether the securitisation of health risks diverting funding and policy focus towards the priorities of wealthy countries and away from basic health needs.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"11 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45489157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2016608
H. Yoo
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the varying intensity of political clash that South Korea has got involved in with Japan regarding the territorial dispute, Dokdo/Takeshima. Existing works are limited to acknowledging the role of nationalism as a key obstacle to the negotiation or settlement of the territorial dispute. However, democratically elected Korean leaders at times remained low key in the territorial problem and even sought collaboration with Japan despite the existence of nationalism. Specifically, South Korea employed both calm and hardline diplomatic choices in the territorial dispute. Why did South Korea choose disparate territorial policies despite the population’s anti-Japanese sentiments? Under what circumstances did leaders in Korea employ dovish diplomacy that might cause a strong backlash from the public? Introducing the vulnerability-restraint theory, I argue that top decision makers’ political vulnerability in domestic politics and the restraining pressure from the United States have impact on the final choice of foreign policy.
{"title":"Political vulnerability and alliance restraint in foreign policy: South Korea’s territorial issue","authors":"H. Yoo","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2016608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2016608","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article focuses on the varying intensity of political clash that South Korea has got involved in with Japan regarding the territorial dispute, Dokdo/Takeshima. Existing works are limited to acknowledging the role of nationalism as a key obstacle to the negotiation or settlement of the territorial dispute. However, democratically elected Korean leaders at times remained low key in the territorial problem and even sought collaboration with Japan despite the existence of nationalism. Specifically, South Korea employed both calm and hardline diplomatic choices in the territorial dispute. Why did South Korea choose disparate territorial policies despite the population’s anti-Japanese sentiments? Under what circumstances did leaders in Korea employ dovish diplomacy that might cause a strong backlash from the public? Introducing the vulnerability-restraint theory, I argue that top decision makers’ political vulnerability in domestic politics and the restraining pressure from the United States have impact on the final choice of foreign policy.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"452 - 472"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43272522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-22DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2021.2016610
A. Collins, Edmund Bon Tai Soon
ABSTRACT The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) is often regarded unfavourably, depicted at best as irrelevant in the battle to promote and protect human rights in Southeast Asia, and at worst, complicit in the abuse of human rights by its silence in the face of the region's human rights' tragedies. While AICHR has many limitations, we regard it as a work-in-progress, evolving as it was always meant to. To understand this evolution, we conceive of AICHR as a participatory space in which contestation of what AICHR can, and cannot, do is being undertaken by its Representatives. This contestation includes exposing its secretive face of power by revealing: the space human rights can be discussed in; who can participate and who is excluded in this discussion; and how malleable the norms that operate within this space are to change. The latter aspect of contestation engages with the thorny ‘problem’ of consensus. We argue that the presence of Representatives from outside of government has introduced a desire in AICHR for change; a dynamism that makes it a participatory space witnessing contestation that has the potential to enable AICHR to evolve. A space, therefore, that for all its shortcomings is worth watching.
{"title":"The AICHR as a participatory space: contesting the secretive face of power","authors":"A. Collins, Edmund Bon Tai Soon","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2021.2016610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2016610","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) is often regarded unfavourably, depicted at best as irrelevant in the battle to promote and protect human rights in Southeast Asia, and at worst, complicit in the abuse of human rights by its silence in the face of the region's human rights' tragedies. While AICHR has many limitations, we regard it as a work-in-progress, evolving as it was always meant to. To understand this evolution, we conceive of AICHR as a participatory space in which contestation of what AICHR can, and cannot, do is being undertaken by its Representatives. This contestation includes exposing its secretive face of power by revealing: the space human rights can be discussed in; who can participate and who is excluded in this discussion; and how malleable the norms that operate within this space are to change. The latter aspect of contestation engages with the thorny ‘problem’ of consensus. We argue that the presence of Representatives from outside of government has introduced a desire in AICHR for change; a dynamism that makes it a participatory space witnessing contestation that has the potential to enable AICHR to evolve. A space, therefore, that for all its shortcomings is worth watching.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"359 - 378"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42797074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：