In addition, in 2004 SAARC adopted the SAARC Social Charter with impact on many economic, social and cultural rights. In particular, there are commitments to eradicate poverty, improve health services, foster educational access, and promote the status of women and children, population stabilization and drug-de-addiction. Members are supposed to set up national coordination committees to exchange information with the SAARC Secretariat, coupled with national plans. While the SAARC treaties are more on cooperative activities than on the setting up of a sub-regional machinery to deliver justice where the national setting is unable or unwilling to do so, the treaties open the door for engaging the sub-region on specific human rights issues and providing space for related discourse and coopera­tion.

In South-east Asia, as far back as 1993, ASEAN foreign ministers made a statement citing the possibility of a human rights mechanism at the sub-regional level. However, that commitment was waylaid and the ASEAN governmental setting did not follow-up the issue. The initiative to explore a possible mechanism came from a non-governmental Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism. To press for a genuine mechanism, it submitted to the ministers a draft Convention to set up an ASEAN Human Rights Commission. The idea was similar to the regional Commissions found in Europe (now abolished), the Americas and Africa. However, the Governments did not respond readily to the proposal.

The Working Group then modified the proposal to become an ASEAN Commission on Womens and Childrens Rights. This was discussed informally with government representatives in various annual informal seminars held in the sub­region. Most promisingly, in 2004 the ASEAN Summit adopted the ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action which listed as part of needed activities the establishment of an ASEAN Commission on Womens and Childrens Rights. However, this Plan does not indicate the mandate of the potential Commission. Will it be a machinery which can fill in gaps to review the human rights situation and provide redress where the national setting is unable or unwilling to act? Yet, because the idea has been voiced recently through the Plan, it would be timely for the OHCHR , in cooperation with other partners, to engage ASEAN to examine the form, content and powers of such Commission.

The Pacific Islands Forum has also become more open to sub-regional and national human rights mechanism(s). In 2004 , impetus was provided by the Emi­nent Persons Group Review of the Pacific Islands Forum, the Auckland Declaration and Leaders Decisions and the Pacific Human Rights Consultation, interlinked with these developments. First, the sub-region is increasingly establishing national human rights commissions - the most recent being the initiative from the Solomon islands. Second, it is open to a sub-regional machinery or mechanism; this may be more cost effective than the establishment of national commissions in all Pacific countries, since many are minute countries covering vast distances with very limited resources. In retrospect, several decades ago, some civil society actors put forward the idea of a Pacific Human Rights Charter, but this never materialized.
It would logical for the OHCHR to find an avenue to discuss with these groupings their initiatives and support them if desired, perhaps through Memoranda of Understanding. This is in view of the fact that such initiatives are the closest that the Asia-Pacific region has come to responding to the original call from the UN to explore "regional arrangements". This is, of course, at the sub-regional level rather than the macroscopic Asia-Pacific level , but it provides a channel to target a machinery to deliver justice where the national setting is unable or unwilling to do so. The sub-regional may thus prove to be more feasible than the regional!

They also complement the sentiments expressed at the recent Bangkok inter­sessional Workshop on human rights action plans as follows:

" 31. Governments should pay closer attention to the original objec­tive of the Asia-Pacific Framework, namely the examination of the possibility of establishing sub-regional /regional human rights arrange­ments for the Asia and Pacific. The Meeting strongly encouraged the Governments of the region to strengthen their efforts to develop sub­regional mechanisms for the promotion and protection of human rights within the existing cooperation structures.
32. In this connection, the Meeting encouraged the Governments of the region to reinvigorate the Tehran Framework, in particular by revisiting its original intent to establish a regional human rights arrangement for Asia and the Pacific, and to strengthen efforts towards
this end."

c) OHCHR presence and UN as a team
One of the key developments in the Asia-Pacific region is the increasing presence of the OHCHR in the region, in addition to other UN bodies taking up human rights as part of their country and regional programming. The OHCHR presence varies from a stand alone country office, as in Cambodia, to units attached to peace-keeping operations as in Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, and human rights advisers attached to the UNCT ( e.g. Nepal and Sri Lanka) - under the UN resident representative (usually from the UNDP)). The OHCHR presence is to help promote and protect human rights, and one of the OHCHl s comparative advantages is that it acts as an umbrella to support human rights activities carried by the Government at times, by national human rights institutions at times, and by civil society at times, in addition to being itself - an agency for monitoring the human rights situation and advocate redress.

In recent years, partly in response to the evaluation of the Asia-Pacific Tehran Framework in 2000, the OHCHR set up a regional office in Bangkok for the Asia-Pacific region and another in Beirut to cover the Arab region (a part of which is in the Asian region), each with an OHCHR regional representative. It is also due to set up a sub-regional office in Fiji for the Pacific islands. These regional/sub­regional offices help to cover countries where there is no OHCHR presence at the national level, backstop national human rights advisers sent by OHCHR to other countries, and/or address regional issues which cannot be dealt with only at the national level. The Bangkok office has also initiated a practitioners forum on the rights-based approach to human development, thus offering a forum for sharing good practices and other lessons between UN agencies and other partners. While the regional presence of the OHCHR is catalytic, the challenge facing these regional/sub-regional offices is that they are understaffed, under-resourced and overstretched geographically and substantively. They may need to become more sub-regional - with more focus and more support in terms of systems-building for sustained actions.

In addition, even without an OHCHR presence in a country, there may he various technical cooperation programmes to help the country improve the human rights situation, e.g. in relation to administration of justice reform in the Peoples Republic of China. Mongolia, Timor and Yemen have also benefited from such programmes in recent years.