1st Edition

Routledge Handbook of Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Edited By Amalinda Savirani, Ken M.P. Setiawan Copyright 2025
384 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

384 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The Routledge Handbook of Human Rights in Southeast Asia analyses some of the region’s most pressing human rights issues, while also giving attention to those actors and institutions that work towards improvement. Chapters by international experts in the field provide readers with a background on some of Southeast Asia’s most pressing human rights concerns. The book builds on, and contributes... Read more

1. Introduction: Practices and Futures of Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Ken M.P. Setiawan and Amalinda Savirani

Part 1: Advancing Human Rights through ASEAN

2. Civil Society Organisations and Human Rights in ASEAN: Advancing Women’s Rights through Women, Peace and Security

Randy W. Nandyatama and Anna Grzywacz

3. Gender Mainstreaming in ASEAN: Progress and Challenges

Irine Hiraswari Gayatri

Part 2: Refugees: Protecting Rights and Strengthening Agency

4. Refugee Rights, International Pledges, and Local Action in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand

Max Walden

5. Extended Marginalisation, Emerging Agency, and Human Rights Protection of the Rohingya

Ratu Ayu Asih Kusuma Putri

Part 3: Transitional Justice in Southeast Asia: Confronting the Past

6. Accountability for Mass Atrocities Crimes in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Regional Consensus

Christoph Sperfeldt

7. Human Rights, Illiberal Transitional Justice, and Tactical Concessions in Cambodia and Indonesia

Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem and Delpedro Marhaen

Part 4: Balancing Moral Perspectives: Ideologies and Human Rights

8. Human Rights and Moral Ideologies: Mobilisations in the Philippines against Death Penalty Reinstatement

David Lozada

9. Far-Right Islamism and its Corrosive Influence on Human Rights Discourse in Malaysia

Azmil Tayeb

10.. LGBTQIA+ Rights in Crisis: Moral Belonging and Political (Im)Possibilities in Indonesia

Sylvia Tidey

11. Moral Panics and the Struggle for Gender Equality: Evangelical Christianity in the Philippines

Jayeel Cornelio and Allan Benedict C. Solacito

Part 5: Intersections between Workers’ Rights, Corporations and the State

12. The State, Business and Human Rights in the Philippines

Andrew Rosser

13. The Right to Social Protection at Work in Vietnam

Tu Phuong Nguyen

14. Gig Rights and Wrongs: Struggles of Precarious Online Transport Workers in Indonesia

Diatyka Widya Permata Yasih

Part 6: Accessing and Maintaining Rights to Water, Food and Health

15. Realising the Right to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Southeast Asia’s Youngest Sovereign State: Timor-Leste

Naomi Francis and Therese T.P.T. Nguyen

16. Instant Noodles and Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Elna Tulus

17. The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Limits of Human Rights: Southeast Asian Perspectives

Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun and Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir

Part 7: On the Frontline: Human Rights Defenders

18. The Affective Violence of Anti-Rights Discourses: Human Rights Defenders in the Philippines

Syme De Leon

19. Civil Society and Environmental Activism in the Mekong Subregion: A Shrinking Space

Andrea Haefner

20. Normalising Abuse in Papua: How Systemic Oppression Has Silenced Freedom of Expression

Herlambang P. Wiratraman

Part 8: Promoting Human Rights in Southeast Asia: New Directions and Strategies

21. Challenges and Opportunities for Rights-Based Climate Litigation in Southeast Asia

Dirk Tomsa

22. Art and Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Wulan Dirgantoro

23. Alternative Media, Human Rights, and Democracy in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand

Hellena Souisa

24. Youth Movements and Evolving Discourses of Human Rights in Thailand

Bencharat Sae Chua

Biography

Amalinda Savirani is Professor in Politics at the Department of Politics and Government, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. Her research concerns Indonesian politics and particularly focuses on social movements of marginal groups in accessing their basic rights. She is co-editor, with Edward Aspinall, of Governing Urban Indonesia (2024).

Ken M.P. Setiawan is Senior Lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne, Australia. She has widely published on the politics of human rights in Indonesia. She is co-author, with Dirk Tomsa, of Politics in Contemporary Indonesia: Institutional Change, Policy Challenges and Democratic Decline (Routledge, 2022).