Thank you, Your Excellency.
Foreign Ministers of the ASEAN Member States.
Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dato Lim Jock Hoi.
1. I thank His Excellency Ambassador Barry Desker, Chairperson of the AICHR, for delivering his statement on our behalf and to Singapore for the warm welcome and hospitality we have been accustomed to.
2. The AICHR is 9 years old. It has been reported to us today that one of the AICHR’s Action Lines in the ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint 2025 that has not been addressed is the review of the AICHR’s Terms of Reference to further enhance the promotion and protection of human rights.
3. Given the progressive contributions and positive strides that the AICHR has made to institutionalise and operationalise human rights principles and practices in the region, the AICHR is — I personally feel — ready to move up to a new level and to more proactively respond to the pressing human rights issues facing the region as a fully fledged Commission.
Thank you.
This intervention was delivered at the interface between the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM) and the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) in Singapore on 1 August 2018.
The original Facebook post can be accessed here, archived here. The statement by the Foreign Minister of Malaysia is accessible here, archived here.
The statement by the Foreign Minister of Malaysia at the interface in Manila on 4 August 2017 can be accessed here, archived here, and the statement at the interface in Vientiane on 23 July 2016 is accessible here, archived here.
