Despite the large number of international human rights conventions ratified by Southeast Asian nations, across the region, the violation of human rights and unequal application of and access to the law are common. Citizens and migrants face arbitrary detention, torture, disappearance and death at the hands of state, para-state, and other actors. Yet simultaneously, new strategies of redress have emerged, including the growth of human rights organizations and transitional justice processes in East Timor and Cambodia. The tensions of law, human rights, democratic consolidation, and economic development in the region both offer a rich body of evidence to examine and a demand the development of new analytic categories.  Through a series of case studies, grounded in political theory and Southeast Asian history, this course will examine the recent past and present of human rights across the region.

At the completion of the course, students will have a firm grasp of the current landscape of human rights across the Southeast Asian region. In addition, students will have developed their analytic and writing skills through regular blogging and the completion of two longer writng projects, including one proposal.  The course will be designed to help students think as both scholars and potential human rights practitioners.

Class presentation: 750 words 10%
Class blog entries: 750 words 20%
Mid-term essay:3000  words 30%
Final proposal: 4000 words 40%

• Three contact hours per week
• Approximately 100 pages of reading per week
• Regular participation in class discussion
• Regular entries on the class blog

Entry to masters coursework program, or permission of convenor. Incompatible with ASIA2081.

An interest in human rights, rule of law, and justice in Southeast Asia.

• Emergency Powers in Asia: Exploring the Limits of Legality, edited by Victor Vridar Ramraj and Arun K. Thiruvengadam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
• Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule, by Christina Fink (London: Zed Press, 2001).
• Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State, by Alfred W. McCoy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009).
• Online U.N. documents, such as reports by the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Detentions
• Online reports of nongovernmental organizations working around issues of human rights and law in Southeast Asia, including the Asian Human Rights Commission, Forum Asia, and the Asian Federation for Free Elections
• Online documents of the trials of former Khmer Rouge, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)

Regular access to a computer and the internet.