The Asian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) annual report for 2010 concentrates on the state of human rights in eleven Asian nations. These are Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The annual report does not purport to cover all human rights issues in these countries, but focuses on the issues, cases and developments that the organization has encountered during the year through its activities and campaigns concerning human rights in each of these countries. On International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2010, the AHRC issued initial versions of these reports, which have since been updated. In a statement at that time, the AHRC noted that the general picture that emerges from the AHRC’s work in 2010 is one of the failures of States to carry out their obligations for the protection of people and their human rights.
The AHRC works on a wide range of civil, economic, social, cultural and political rights and analyses how violations are perpetrated, as well as the extent to which victims of violations are able to seek justice and redress through the different national legal systems. In identifying obstacles to justice and those that permit impunity for perpetrators of grave human rights abuses, the AHRC gains a picture of the functioning of different countries’ legislative frameworks and institutions of the rule of law — notably the police, prosecution and judiciary — and recommends reforms to these to enable the more effective protection of human rights.
Issues such as endemic torture by State agents, forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, discrimination, corruption, violence against women, hunger and violations of the right to food, land-grabbing and forced evictions, press freedom, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, are all of major concern.
Through its work, and this report, the AHRC hopes to contribute to the understanding of the systems of abuse that prevail in Asia, in the hope of contributing towards the greater protection of rights, improved and more predictable governance, and justice for Asia’s many victims of grave human rights violations.
Published in February 2011 by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), 453 pages, Language: English, ISBN: 978-962-8314-50-8; PID: AHRC-PUB-001-2011
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