AICHR chair Edmund Bon said the commission would now begin working on a regional action plan to implement the Asean Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, and Asean Declaration on Promoting the Right to Development and the Right to Peace.

“We do not go lower than international norms. In these declarations, we have actually exceeded them,” he said at a media and diplomatic briefing on the two declarations at the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia’s office here today.

Bon said the first declaration directly linked environmental rights to human rights, underscoring that pollution and climate impacts ultimately threaten people’s health, safety and the enjoyment of basic rights.

He said it framed environmental harm within the “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

“It also acknowledges the vulnerabilities of many groups who bear the brunt of environmental damage,” he said, naming children, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities, and indigenous and local communities as among those most at risk.

With regard to the Asean Declaration on Promoting the Right to Development and the Right to Peace, Bon said Asean had grounded the document in its own regional realities.

He said the drafting process adapted the UN’s right-to-development principles to fit Southeast Asia’s political, social and economic conditions, rather than reproducing UN wording verbatim.

Bon said Asean viewed the right to development and the right to peace as “equal and mutually reinforcing”, reflecting the region’s experience that stability, development and social progress must advance together.

He said drafting a regional action plan would require cooperation with civil society groups, national human rights institutions and Asean’s dialogue partners.