Seventy years after the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and twenty-five years of the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programmes of Action (VDPA), human rights are found in country’s constitutions and also incorporated in regional instruments. However, there is no issue as heated as the universality character of human rights.
In the Southeast Asian region, the Philippines tops the list as the highest in terms of remittances from their exported labor. In 2015, the country received more than US$30 billion in remittances — which makes it the third highest in the entire world. While many of the emerging economies as well as industrialized nations rely on these remittances and foreign workers, many stories filter out from certain nations of exploitation and abuse inflicted upon these migrant workers.
By Jose Santos P. Ardivilla
The UDHR and Migrant Workers Rights in ASEAN - Jolovan Wham
The UDHR and Democracy in ASEAN - Dr. Naruemon Thambhumpon
As the world celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 2018–2019, the region of Southeast Asia highlights two compelling political phenomena: the emergent ‘authoritarian populism’ of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and the return to the ‘Asian Values’ of Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia.
Seventy years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly, what we have witnessed is that its claim of universality has been consistently challenged. While all human beings are deemed born automatically free with equal rights, the very definition of human itself in practice is not always neutral.
By Hendri Yulius
The UDHR and LGBTI Rights in ASEAN - Dr. Dédé Oetomo
Representative of Indonesia to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Comission on Human Rights (AICHR) 2019 - 2021 and PhD Researcher at ISS The Hague, Erasmus University Rotterdam.
PhD Student in Fine Arts at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, and Assistant Professor at the Department of Visual Communication of the University of the Philippines Diliman
