This paper analyses and compares the protection capacity of National Human Rights Institutions (nhris) in the Philippines and Thailand, as well as the impact of governmental action on their performances. Here, protection capacity means the extent to which the law authorizes the nhris to carry out protective functions in dealing with human rights violations. This comparison evidences that the Philippines’ nhri has greater protection capacity and much more stable mandates than the Thai nhri. Moreover, although the two nhris share the same core mandates to receive complaints of human rights violations, to investigate them, recommendation of remedial measures to the concerned parties, and referral to legal channels, the ways in which these mandates are carried out in the two countries differ. Also the legal and political means by which the governments of both countries have impacted the nhris’ performances, differ considerably.

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The deliberation on a Southeast Asian human rights regime dates back to the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. From then, the emergence of an idea on regional institutional human rights development arose to address the absence of human rights mechanisms in the region. This chapter offers a critical analysis on the human rights institutional development in ASEAN. The initial focus of the chapter is on illustrating the step by step progress toward the establishment of an ASEAN human rights institution. This progress will lead to the understanding of how the demand for a human rights institution has been made by ASEAN. The arguments here are supported by the analysis of the Joint Communiqués of the ASEAN Ministerial Meetings (AMM) from 1993 to 2010 and the Workshop statements of the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism (Working Group) which documents ASEAN elite's official speeches and opinions. The analysis on this point demonstrates ASEAN's attempt to build regional agents in terms of human rights. The principal-agent theory is applied to offer understanding on the logical relationship between member states (principal) and regional human rights institutions (agent). Institutional theory is applied with respect to the second point of this analysis, which is to scrutinize the creation of a human rights institution known as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). The functions of the AICHR are illustrated through an investigation of its mandates, work plans and statements of meetings since the year of establishment to clarify why regional human rights institutions have been vital and particularly how the S. Netipatalachoochote (*) Faculty of Law and the

Abstract Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have played an increasingly vocal role in their struggle to advance both human rights protection and promotion in Southeast Asian countries. Most notably, CSOs have become a more important actor in dealing with human rights issues in particular by virtue of their role in drawing attention to human rights violations. In the case of massive human rights violations happening in Southeast Asia, CSOs pursue various strategies to address and try to end such abuses. Spreading information of human rights violations occurring in each member state to regional peers, and then finding new allies such as international organizations to put pressure back to human rights-violating states, in what is characterized as a dynamic of the boomerang model, one of the prominent strategies CSOs use to relieve human rights violations. Another strategy recently observed involves CSOs reaching out to powerful judicial institutions whose decisions can be legally binding on a violating state. Spreding This paper applies the boomerang model theory to the efforts of CSOs, specifically with respect to their work in helping to end the extrajudicial killing of drug dealers in the Philippines during President Duterte’s tenure, to display how the dynamics of the boomerang model works and what this strategy has achieved in terms of ending the extrajudicial killings. Beyond the boomerang model, this paper further demonstrates the strategy of CSOs in reaching out directly to powerful judicial institutions, in this case the International Criminal Court (ICC). The paper discusses why CSOs pursued this strategy of reaching out to the ICC, bypassing the region’s human rights institution—the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). Keywords: Civil Society Organizations (CSOs); Extrajudicial Killing in the Philippines; The International Criminal Court (ICC). (A previous version of this paper was presented at the 14th Asian Law Institute (ASLI) Conference hosted by the University of Philippines, College of Law (UP) in 19 May 2017. We would like to thank the commentators and the audience for their questions and comments on the paper.)