East and Southeast Asia link for regional collaboration on human rights education

By the AUN-HRE SecretariatJanuary 2021The ASEAN University Network-Human Rights Education (AUN-HRE) and the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRP), Mahidol University in cooperation with the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (NCHR), University of Oslo organized East and SEA cross-regional collaboration on human rights education.The regional network meeting on human rights education has been organized three times in Bangkok since 2016 with the objective of facilitating the sharing of knowledge and experience on human rights education between human rights academics from East and Southeast Asia.The 4^th Regional Network Meeting was held virtually, in a series of discussions, from 2^nd November to 7^th December with a particular focus on access to remedies in the context of business, human rights and environment. The meeting was attended by 20 academics from different universities in China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Thailand. PhD students from Law school at Wuhan University and Fudan University also attended the event as observers.The program started with participants sharing about developments in human rights and peace education in their institutions. The sharing was followed by a series of talks by academics and practitioners on principles underpinning the right to remedy, the mechanisms for accessing remedy and challenges in enforcing the rights. The different substantive sessions were John Ruggie’s Principle / UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; Human Rights and Environment: linkage between business, human rights and environment; access to remedy in the context of business/environment and human rights from both legal perspective and NGOs working on the ground (which some regional cased were discussed). Teaching business/environment and human rights; the last session focused on sharing experiences in teaching business and human rights including methodologies and resources among participants.The network meeting ended with a discussion on future plans and the thematic focus of the next regional network meeting on human rights and peace education.