Review of Realising Rights: How Regional Organisations Socialise Human Rights

This clearly composed and well written study challenges those interested in the impact of regional organisations in the realisation of human rights to look beyond the case and influence of the European Union. The EU is much discussed for its perceived successes in the cause of human rights realisation and yet, as Davies points out, the EU and its experience are ‘highly atypical. Established and new regional organisations are increasingly important globally and many of them directly institutionalise human rights norms. ASEAN is a case in point, not least because of its transition from human rights scepticism to human rights engagement (if not realisation). ASEAN now has an intergovernmental Human Rights Commission (2009) and its own Bill of Rights (2012); ‘Asian Values’, it seems, have come to some accommodation with the language and institutional form of the global rights regime. Those wondering how this accommodation will play out won’t find the scholarly literature on rights socialisation much help, suggests Davies, because of its EU-centricity.