Tan's critical examination of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and its role in institutionalizing human rights in Southeast Asia aims to move beyond the “Asian values” debate on the implementation of universal human rights norms in Asia, which had dominated discourse during the 1990s. It seeks to evaluate the underlying reasons for the tentative adoption of international human rights standards in Southeast Asia. The AICHR is a relatively young commission, having only been established in 2009. The principal strength of Tan's work is that it offers readers, some of whom may be unfamiliar with the region, insights into the geopolitical landscape of ASEAN states. It provides a detailed historical narrative of the gradual development of a rights-based consciousness in the region, and of the continuing logistical, fiscal, and other challenges that potentially threaten the formalization of a cohesive regional framework of human rights protection.

In Chapter 2, Tan offers a comprehensive overview of the advent of modern international human rights as we know it. Tan explores the Western-centric bias towards civil and political rights, which has invariably shaped international human rights norms, leading to scepticism on the part of Southeast Asian states, which perceive these norms as the imposition of Western ideological imperialism. Curiously, however, these same states engage quite comfortably with the notion of sovereignty, and Tan aims to unpick how these tensions play out in practice in the workings of ASEAN and its softening stance towards human rights.

Chapter 3 examines the experience of five ASEAN states: Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, which have played a prominent role in the establishment of the AICHR. Due to their relatively democratic political structures, active civil society, and media, Tan suggests that these states are better positioned than their ASEAN counterparts (Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam) to promote and protect the advancement of human rights in the region. Each case-study contextualizes the state's engagement with human rights norms at the level of the state, civil society, and citizenry. In addition, the adherence of each state to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is considered, given the special significance of women's and children's rights in ASEAN policy-making. Relying on the annual reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the US State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to evaluate each state's compliance with international human rights norms, Tan also draws upon liberal literature. In part, this is due to a lack of comprehensive human rights reporting nationally and regionally, and Tan recognizes that her analysis of rights adherence may be biased, given the propensity of these organizations to focus on civil liberties.

Though the case-studies offer a useful overview of the experiences of an individual state's adoption and implementation of universal human rights norms, it is regrettable that Tan does not engage directly with the experiences of those ASEAN states that may undermine the successful operation of AICHR. Chapter 3 also exposes the technical challenges of delivering a comprehensive case-study. Across the case-studies, there is some inconsistency in the level of critical analysis. Tan did participate in Track 2 and 3 processes on the development of human rights in the ASEAN region, but this is not clear within the book. The inclusion of empirical insights would strengthen and enrich the case-studies in relation to, for example, the role of civil society in its attitudes towards the establishment of AICHR, particularly given that the Commission is in the primary stages of development, and the absence of any comprehensive rights reporting in the region.

Chapter 4 focuses on the conceptual framework of AICHR, with Tan suggesting that the “ASEAN Way”, premised upon consultation and consensus, and a strong adherence to the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, invariably distinguishes ASEAN from other regional governance systems, such as the European Union, a supranational organization. The role of the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, and its pivotal role in strengthening the impetus for an intergovernmental human rights commission, are also examined in detail. Though not initially framed in the language of rights, Tan traces the roots of rights consciousness within the ASEAN region back to human security and development measures. Tan points to “soft” security issues, including trafficking and violence against women and children, which provided an entry point for human rights protection and increased receptiveness to international human rights norms such as CEDAW.

At the expense of several reservations by Member States of the UN, CEDAW is one of the most widely ratified international treaties. Greater scrutiny of the incorporation of CEDAW into the domestic laws and policies of individual states would give a sense of the extent to which these specific international human rights norms have been internalized. Significantly, Tan suggests that human rights stakeholders in ASEAN should continue to apply pressure to support the development of AICHR “into a system comparable to the three other regional human rights institutions, complete with a human rights convention, commission and court”. The feasibility of this proposal, however, is not considered in detail and seems at odds with the particular institutional character of ASEAN that Tan herself so strongly emphasizes.

The book also considers the role of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand (Chapter 5), and the potential implications of the right to development in the ASEAN region (Chapter 6). Significantly, Tan's critical examination of the development of AICHR highlights the complexity of the internalization of international human rights norms in Southeast Asia, a region which is far from homogenous. Occasionally, the wealth of detail in the book overwhelms the cohesiveness of Tan's discussion, but Tan should be credited for focusing attention on the ASEAN region, which is often overlooked in mainstream human rights discourse, and for her efforts to draw together the quite distinct histories and experiences of individual ASEAN states.