The Prospects for a Regional Human Rights Mechanism in East Asia

Regional inter-governmental human rights organizations have been in operation for sometime in Europe, the Americas and Africa. These regional human rights mechanisms have proven to be useful and effective in comparison to the global human rights mechanisms available at the United Nations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of establishing a regional inter-governmental human rights mechanism in East Asia, with a focus on the contributions of nongovernmental organizations' (NGOs) to such a development.