Regional Human Rights Mechanisms as Enforcement Gap-Filling Institutions

This paper offers an account of how we should understand the nature and role of regional human rights mechanisms in Asia. The core thought is that such mechanisms need to be conceived of and operate as enforcement gap-filling institutions, i.e., help fill enforcement gaps in human rights law within the region. At the level of institutional design, this purpose supports a robust commitment to complementarity. This paper argues that, understood this way, there is a strong case for indeed setting up a regional human rights mechanism in Asia. In particular, the commitment to complementarity