Why ASEAN Fails to Play Role in the Rohingya Situation from the Perspective of ASEAN Charter

Abstract

This article is written in a sense of law to answer the question of why ASEAN fails to play role in the Rohingya situation from the perspective of ASEAN Charter. Article 1(7) of the ASEAN Charter allocates ASEAN to promote and protect human rights as their core commitment. But in the view of the world, ASEAN seems to fail to commit their protection on human rights in the Rohingya situation. This article examines the ASEAN Charter and found that ASEAN is designed to protect the principle of non-interference more than the human rights protection and the decision-making mode of ASEAN under Article 20(1) of the ASEAN Charter cannot apply into the Rohingya situation in practice because there is a lock of law making ASEAN to respect and rely on principle of non-interference which plays the key role to keep ASEAN together and stays for this last long. Hence the author proposes ASEAN to revise the ASEAN Charter by concerning more on the protection of human rights.

Keywords: ASEAN, Rohingya, ASEAN Charter, ASEAN Summit, Non-interference