By Windi Arini and Cornelius Damar Hanung 

At the 47th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in October 2025, leaders adopted the ASEAN Declaration on the Rights of Safe, Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment (AER), a landmark step championed by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). The Declaration was unveiled alongside Timor-Leste’s accession as ASEAN’s 11th member State and a new declaration on the Rights to Development and Peace.

The AER is historic. But its promise will be measured not by words on paper, but by whether AICHR can transform it into tangible protection for environmental rights and climate justice.

Bridging two worlds

As the second ASEAN declaration on human rights since the 2012 ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD), the AER represents a political convergence between human rights and environmental governance – two tracks that have long run separately in ASEAN. By reaffirming Article 28(f) of the AHRD, it sets a common understanding among ASEAN’s 11 member States that a healthy environment is integral to life, dignity, and development.

Yet, the Declaration’s language remains deliberately cautious, reflecting ASEAN’s deep respect for sovereignty and political diversity. Its most consequential feature may be procedural rather than rhetorical: it authorizes AICHR for the first time to develop a Regional Plan of Action (RPA) on environmental rights. Whether that becomes a turning point, or another soft commitment, depends on how AICHR interprets and operationalizes this mandate.

A defining test

AICHR stands at a critical juncture. AICHR is set to implement its new Five-Year Work Plan ( 2026-2030) and Priority Programs for 2026 just as environmental degradation, climate impacts, and attacks against environmental defenders intensify across the region.

The recent Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) offers a compelling reminder: the full enjoyment of human rights cannot be ensured without protecting the climate system and the environment. This is not mere rhetoric, but a legal interpretation that States must take necessary measures to protect the climate, including mitigation, adaptation, and regulation of the private sector.

For ASEAN, this Advisory Opinion is more than a UN document. It’s a wake-up call affirming that climate action is a legal duty and that human rights and environmental protection are inseparable. Though non-binding, it reflects obligations ASEAN member States have already endorsed. To comply, they must review and strengthen national climate laws, as continued inaction could be legally indefensible.

For AICHR, the ICJ Advisory Opinion and the AER are powerful tools to expand its practical mandate. They affirm that climate action and environmental protection are integral to human rights, creating space for AICHR to develop rights-based guidance for climate governance, work closely with ASEAN environmental bodies, and engage proactively with national human rights institutions, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and youth.

The need to integrate human rights

ASEAN Vision 2045, adopted through the Kuala Lumpur Declaration in May 2025, lays out a long-term roadmap for a ‘Resilient, Innovative, Dynamic, and People-Centred ASEAN.’ It signals the region’s aspirations to be more adaptive, agile, globally relevant, and grounded in inclusive and sustainable development. The Vision notably includes language on democracy, good governance, and human rights, while also reflecting the bloc’s intent to assert itself as a global actor amid growing geopolitical uncertainty.

However, ASEAN’s consensus-driven model has produced a human rights system with weak monitoring, an inadequate complaints mechanism, and limited enforcement. AICHR’s mandate and resources remain constrained, and human rights integration across ASEAN’s sectoral bodies is mostly rhetorical. This institutional siloing means limited rights considerations embedded in policies, including on trade, investment, and environmental governance. Economic agendas still prioritize liberalization and extractive growth, with minimal safeguards, weak corporate accountability, and continued risks for environmental human rights defenders.

Signs of change, however, are emerging. During the sixth ASEAN-EU Policy Dialogue on Human Rights in October 2025, AICHR Chair Edmund Bon of Malaysia called on ASEAN to “embed robust human rights safeguards into all future cooperation and trade frameworks.” This marks an important signal of AICHR’s evolving outlook. It was a “quiet” but important signal that, as Chair, Bon is re-imagining AICHR’s role, not as a watchdog but as a bridge builder promoting adaptive protection through transparency, monitoring, and consultation.

A window for progress

The AER and the AICHR’s mandate to develop the RPA may begin to close ASEAN’s long-standing human rights and environmental governance gaps. The Declaration explicitly recognizes core procedural rights: access to information, public participation, and access to justice. It also acknowledges the important role of those protecting and promoting human rights and the environment – the first recognition from ASEAN of the role of human rights defenders. These are the same principles that many civil society organizations (CSOs) and academics, including the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) and Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI), have consistently advocated for in their inputs to the earlier drafts. Their inclusion represents a meaningful step toward embedding human rights norms within ASEAN’s environmental cooperation framework.

The real test lies in turning the RPA’s principles into action, with clear mandates, measurable implementation, and shared obligations across ASEAN’s sectoral bodies. AICHR’s new work plans, which include business and human rights, women’s rights and gender, and environmental rights offer entry points. But progress will require political will, strong coordination, adequate resources, and meaningful engagement with civil society, especially Indigenous Peoples, youth, local communities, and environmental defenders.

Although ASEAN has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to human rights, operationalizing this remains a gradual process. AICHR, often seen as operating at the margins of ASEAN’s policy machinery, must continuously assert its role. The RPA offers a valuable entry point for AICHR to deepen its engagement within ASEAN’s institutional framework.

In this convergence of the AER, its forthcoming RPA, ASEAN Vision 2045, and AICHR’s new programming cycle, ASEAN has a rare opportunity to anchor human rights more firmly in its institutional fabric.

From paper to practice

While these developments offer momentum, AICHR continues to face underlying institutional challenges. A key consideration is how AICHR can more effectively operationalize human rights commitments within ASEAN’s decision-making architecture. The crisis in Myanmar, for example, has shown how the human rights agenda – and AICHR itself – can be sidelined in moments of political sensitivity. This raises a broader question: how can AICHR strengthen its internal standing within the ASEAN system to ensure that human rights considerations are systematically integrated and operationalized across different contexts?

This evolution does not require abandoning ASEAN’s long-held principles of consensus and non-interference. Reinterpreted in a forward-looking manner, these principles can provide a basis for timelier, coordinated responses to human rights and environmental issues.

Building on the newly adopted ASEAN commitments, there is now a real opportunity for AICHR to position itself as a key driver of ASEAN’s environmental rights agenda by coordinating support for the forthcoming RPA and strengthening collaboration with different ASEAN bodies, including the ASEAN Senior Officials on Environment, ASEAN Commission on the Protection of the Right of Women and Children, national human rights institutions, and civil society. Through the 2026 Five-Year Work Plan and Priority Programs, AICHR can advance environmental and climate justice, engage vulnerable groups, Indigenous Peoples, and environmental defenders, and enhance regional capacity on climate displacement, land, and biodiversity rights.

Equally important is to advance rights-based governance and promote regional coherence, aligning AICHR’s human rights agenda with ASEAN’s broader economic, environmental, and digital integration efforts.

The Philippines’ Chairmanship of ASEAN in 2026 will serve as a test of whether AICHR is content to sit on the sidelines or ready to lead ASEAN toward a future where human rights and environmental sustainability are truly indivisible.

The AER has opened the door. The question now is whether ASEAN – and AICHR – will walk through it.

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Windi Arini serves as the Country Director for Indonesia at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, based in Jakarta.

Cornelius Damar Hanung works as East Asia and ASEAN Programme Manager at the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), based in Jakarta.

This article reflects the authors’ personal views and does not necessarily represent those of the organizations.