Human Rights in the APEC Region

While human rights violations continued throughout the APEC region, the major story during the year and described in this report was not so much the nature of the abuses, but the debate over how to address them. Two factors had a major impact on this debate: the increased visibility of Asian nongovernmental organizations and the growing economic power of East Asia. Asian NGOs were able to articulate a vision of human rights that differed radically from that of their own governments and thus called into question the ability of the latter to define what is "Asian." They also helped to redefine the priorities for the human rights movement in a way that rendered obsolete the old division of labor among human rights, development, women's rights and environmental organizations.

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