While showing slow and weak progress, Southeast Asia has demonstrated a unique human rights institutionalization process. More Southeast Asian countries have adopted international human rights standards than before and even endorsed the establishment of a regional human rights body within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) mechanism. This certainly creates a new demand for understanding the process. Many scholars have provided various questions, debates, and analytical assessments of human rights in Southeast Asia. This article investigates the political dynamics in the region and reviews the scholarly literature that tries to understand the process. Most of the scholarly work on human rights in ASEAN touch upon two important issues, namely the Asian value debate on human rights and the paradox of human rights institutionalization in the region. The two issues demonstrate the lingering paradox—progressive and conservative elements of Southeast Asian culture and politics—in promoting and providing human rights protection. The paradox can be best understood through a more critical perspective in appreciating the human rights context in the region and sensing much more complex and diverse political actors engaging with the process.
