INTERNATIONAL human rights law represents humanity’s most ambitious endeavour to subject power to the discipline of principle. Its foundational insight is that human dignity cannot remain contingent upon governmental discretion. Rights acquire meaning not merely through treaties, but through institutions capable of interpreting, enforcing and vindicating them when domestic systems fail. Regional human rights courts embody one of the most consequential achievements of this evolution. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR) have transformed human rights from moral aspirations into adjudicable obligations. They have created judicial spaces where individuals can challenge state conduct beyond domestic politics, affirming a defining principle of modern international law: sovereignty is a source of responsibility, not a refuge from scrutiny.
These institutions are imperfect, facing political resistance, uneven compliance and disputes over judicial authority. Yet they ensure that human rights violations do not disappear behind sovereign power by providing remedies, developing jurisprudence and transforming rights into enforceable legal obligations. Asia remains the great anomaly. Despite comprising nearly 60 percent of humanity, it lacks a comprehensive regional human rights court. Explanations based on political diversity, sovereignty and institutional complexity fail to address the consequences of this legal vacuum. The absence of regional adjudication produces three structural deficits: remedial exclusion, doctrinal fragmentation and dispersed accountability. The first is remedial exclusion. In established regional systems, exhaustion of domestic remedies does not mark the end of justice; it provides the gateway to supranational review. Europe, the Americas and Africa recognize that when domestic institutions fail, justice cannot remain confined within the state responsible for the alleged violation. Asia offers no comparable judicial avenue.
This deficit is particularly acute for Indigenous communities and marginalized groups. The Inter-American system has recognized Indigenous land, cultural identity and participation rights as enforceable legal entitlements through cases such as Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua and Sarayaku v. Ecuador. Across Asia, communities confronting displacement, extractive industries and criminalization of environmental advocacy lack a comparable forum. Indigenous conflicts in Indonesia, pressures on environmental defenders in the Philippines, the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and prolonged disputes such as Jammu and Kashmir illustrate the gap between international concern and binding judicial remedy. The second consequence is doctrinal fragmentation. Human rights courts do not merely resolve disputes; they create the jurisprudence through which rights acquire meaning. The ECHR has shaped global understandings of privacy, expression, torture and fair trial guarantees, while the IACtHR and ACtHPR have advanced doctrines on state responsibility, Indigenous rights and political freedoms.
Asia lacks this interpretive architecture. International norms, including those contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, are filtered through divergent domestic approaches to national security, public order and political stability. Without regional judicial guidance, principles such as necessity and proportionality risk becoming vulnerable to governmental discretion, allowing dissent to be recast as disorder and criticism as a threat to security. The third consequence is the dispersal of accountability. Victims must rely upon UN treaty bodies, special rapporteurs, commissions of inquiry, diplomatic mechanisms and, in exceptional circumstances, international criminal justice. While indispensable, these mechanisms cannot replicate the remedial, interpretive and supervisory authority of a regional court. Their effectiveness remains constrained by state consent, limited enforcement capacity and narrow jurisdictional mandates.
The result is an accountability framework shaped not only by law, but also by political will and institutional limitation. Violations may be documented and condemned, yet remain without authoritative judicial resolution capable of transforming recognition into remedy. A regional human rights court for Asia may remain a distant prospect. The continent’s diversity of political systems, legal traditions and historical experiences presents formidable obstacles. Institutions such as ASEAN reflect a model grounded in consensus, non-interference and diplomatic engagement rather than supranational adjudication. While this preserves dialogue, it also limits binding accountability. Yet Asia’s missing court should not be understood merely as an institutional omission. It represents a deeper juridical condition affecting those whose protection depends upon domestic systems and who may discover that the final avenue of justice ends precisely where justice fails.
Regional courts elsewhere have not eliminated human rights violations. They have, however, affirmed a principle central to modern international law: sovereignty cannot become a sanctuary from accountability. Rights require more than recognition; they require remedies. Asia’s missing court is therefore more than the absence of a legal institution. It represents the absence of a regional judicial conscience—one capable of ensuring that when domestic justice fails, victims still possess a forum where law can prevail over power.
—The writer is a commentator on International and Comparative Law.
