The Human Rights Resource Centre for ASEAN (HRRCA) appointed a veteran Indonesian human rights campaigner, Mr. Marzuki Darusman, as its founding Chairman/Director.
Mr. Darusman will oversee the HRRCA’s agenda to provide research, education, and training on human rights issues in the ASEAN region, including rule of law, judicial independence, women and children’s issues, indigenous peoples, migrant labor rights, regulatory environments for human rights, and law enforcement approaches.
Darusman, a former Attorney General and past Chairman of Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission, has deep knowledge of and practical experience in the ASEAN region’s legal and regulatory systems. Over the past 20 years he has earned a reputation as a leading regional human rights advocate through his leadership of the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism that ultimately resulted in the formation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. He was recently appointed as UN Special Rapporteur on North Korea, and is also Chair of the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka.
The HRRCA, headquartered at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, is a network of academic and civil society institutions that seek to complement and support the work of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights and provide a strong regional focus on human rights research, capacity building, training and teaching. Current partner institutions include the University of Indonesia, the University of Malaya (Malaysia), and the Law School of the National University of Singapore. The Islamic University of Indonesia, which has a strong interest in human rights training, is the HRRCA’s first affiliate institution.
Through collaboration with these partner and affiliated university-based institutions across ASEAN, the HRRCA’s research, training, and capacity building projects will contribute to the development of human rights throughout the region.
