The Development of the Pacific Charter of Human Rights

This document provides a history on the formation of the draft Pacific Charter of Human Rights.  Some of the problems related to human rights in the Pacific relate to the rights of indigenous peoples, the rights of cultural minorities – often immigrants from elsewhere in the region, the status of women, the rights of children and  youths, particularly with  regard  to education and jobs, the rights of the elderly, the right to participate in decisions affecting one’s vital interests, corruption and limitations on freedom of expression (p. 3-4). A Drafting Committee composed of academic lawyers  such as Tony Deklin, Visekota Kamu, Lani Tupu, Jon Van Dyke, Nick O'Neil drafted the language of this charter, by drawing from the African Charter of Human and People's Rights, and the Charter of Basic Civil and Political Rights.  

One of the reasons Jon Van Dyke was involved in the drafting of the Pacific Human Rights Charter was because of his experience studying the Constitutions of Micronesia. This document explains the tensions between the Articles of Human Rights with Micronesian islander's traditional customs.  That is, sometimes human rights principles are inconsistent with traditional governance and leadership practices.  The paper provides a history on the creation of the Constitution of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), which includes the islands of Pohnpei, Truk, Yap and Kosrae.  In addition, the article discusses some of the traditional leadership methods in FSM, and the need to protect the islander's right to self-determine their traditional governance methods.  The paper goes into the creation of a FSM Constitutional Convention, which tried to preserve the roles and traditional leaders of the FSM, while also ensuring that holders of traditional titles would not be "above the law" should there be a criminal prosecution. The goal of the FSM Constitution was to balance the traditional customs of FSM islanders, while also increasing the nation's role as a player in the international community, such as through adoption of human rights through the Pacific Charter of Human Rights.

This document includes a paper written by Jon Van Dyke as a participant of the South Pacific Judicial Conference.  This paper discusses the prospects of developing intergovernmental human rights bodies in Asia and the Pacific. Van Dyke was skeptical about the possibility for the vast region of Asia, which includes the Middle East/West Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia to come together to discuss the creation of new organizations to address human rights violations.  There are different cultural influences in each nation that lead them to focus on internal affairs of the nation; joining international bodies invites scrutiny that can be uncomfortable for these nations' own interests. However, there is some hope given to the different regional bodies in the Pacific that they could evolve into a regional human rights body, to serve as a model for how advocacies could be implemented in the Pacific and Asia.