As an ancien régime, East Asia has been considered a region that bucks the trend of the so-called ‘humanization of international law’, where the primacy of the interests of individual has become the norm. As such, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the only institutionalized transnational body in the region, not only embodies a political statement against the Western backed liberal order, but also harkens back to the decolonization era, summoning Bandung’s post-colonial ideals where the state is the only and, thus, ultimate expression in international affairs through the espousal of equality and non-interference paramountcy. This article argues that this post-colonial arrangement has failed to serve its supposed ultimate beneficiary, that is, subaltern groups such as the persecuted Rohingya. The Rohingya have been denied their human rights even by their post-colonial fellows. To bring sobriety into the fold, the article uses the ingenuity of the Malaysian Human Rights Commission Suruhanjaya Hak Asasi Manusia Malaysia (SUHAKAM), as a node to cross-cultural legitimation, as a call for an ‘indigenized pragmatism’ embracing universal human rights that transcend the boundaries of nationalism-based political discourse rather than refugee rights due to their evocation of foreignness.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.