- The group photo of the Faculty members and participants attending the Summer Institute in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
Bali – Indonesia
The workshop of the Summer Institute for International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights is an annual workshop held within Asia. This year’s Summer Institute workshop was held from 12-16 August, 2013 in Bali, Indonesia and was organized by the Human Rights Resource Centre (for ASEAN) (HRRC); Udayana University; and the Asian International Justice Initiative (a collaboration between the University of California Berkeley’s War Crimes Studies Center and the East-West Center); in partnership with the University of Zurich’s Competence Center for Human Rights; and the International Institute for Child Rights and Development.
In a departure from previous Summer Institutes, Summer Institute 2013 was structured as an intensive, 4-day workshop for members (or their representatives) of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), the ASEAN Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC), the ASEAN Committee on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers (ACMW), as well as the ASEAN Secretariat itself. A total of 27 participants attended this event, and over half the group comprised CLMV delegates including Myanmar.
This year’s Summer Institute was held at the Sanur Paradise Plaza Hotel in Sanur, Bali. The Summer Institute was opened by the Governor of Bali, I Made Mangku Pastika, following on from welcoming remarks by Mr Marzuki Darusman, Executive Director of the HRRC and Prof. Dr. dr. Ketut Suastika, Rector of Udayana University. A 1-day event, or ‘Studium Generale’, for students, human rights advocates and members of law enforcement agencies in Bali followed the workshop and was held at Udayana University.
The topic of this year’s Summer Institute was ‘Migration & Human Rights’. The overall objective of the workshop was to provide participants with a forum to consider how policymakers and civil society can work together to find innovative solutions to human rights issues pertaining to migration.
The workshop was structured as two and a half days’ discussion in plenary; one half-day in closed session regarding the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration; one half-day of small group discussion regarding ‘next steps’ from the workshop; and a final session to discuss the findings of the workshop as a whole.
The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission was represented by Commissioner U Khin Maung Lay. The structure of the forum and the level of the discussion was very impressive to say the least.