Early in its history Vietnam was under the control of the Chinese Han Dynasty, which began in 111 A.D. There were a few attempts at revolution under the Han Dynasty, but these were not successful. Autonomy, if not independence, was achieved by the 10th century. In the mid 900s, the Chinese were finally pushed from the country.

The next several centuries saw an independent country led by a variety of Vietnamese dynasties. While these were not always peaceful times, and there were several civil wars during this period, the area was relatively independent. The independence lasted until the middle of the 1800s, when European colonization was in full force.

France colonized Vietnam and brought western culture and education to the country, greatly changing its culture. Plantations growing indigo, tea, tobacco, and coffee were organized. Again, many organizations arose seeking independence for the country, but the French government maintained control until the Second World War.

Japan invaded the area in 1941, and a government controlled by Nazi Germany was established. The Japanese government used the resources of the country to fund their other battlefronts in the region. When Japan was defeated in the war, the Viet Minh moved into control.

The Viet Minh was a communist movement that was seeking independence from Japanese control. It was led by Ho Chi Minh. After the Japanese left, the Viet Minh claimed control and declared independence. The French and Americans questioned this claim, and eventually the Geneva Conference caused the country to be divided. North Vietnam was controlled by Ho Chi Minh and his communist leaders, and South Vietnam was controlled by Ngo Dihn Diem with the support of the United States.

This division was not well received. Soon the United States started sending more and more troops to Vietnam to attempt to maintain the division. This eventually led to the Vietnam War, which was a war between the communist North Vietnamese and the democratic South Vietnamese. This war lasted until Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell in 1975. At this point, North Vietnam united the country under communist rule. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established on July 2, 1976, and the country remains under communist control to this day. Today, communism is still the political power, but free ownership is allowed and even encouraged in an attempt to help the country’s economy, which suffered greatly after the war and under socialist control.

“Reaching consensus over the establishment of a human rights mechanism to cover a region stretching from West Asia to the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean remains challenging,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said Tuesday.

She was addressing participants of the 14th annual workshop for the Framework on Regional Cooperation for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region, being held in Nusa Dua from July 10-12.

“In this context, we may wish to reorient our strategy and seek to work more at the sub-regional level in pursuit of our overall goal of a regional framework. I therefore would like to suggest that we reconfigure our approach from an annual, regional workshop, to a number of smaller and sub-regional gatherings.”

Arbour said Southeast Asian countries would serve as an inspiration for other countries in the Asia Pacific, given their commitment to the immediate establishment of the ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism.

The Cebu Declaration on the Blueprint of the ASEAN Charter, which was unanimously endorsed by the leaders of the 10 countries in the regional grouping earlier this year, showed an emerging consensus on the establishment of rights mechanisms.

She is optimistic as other regions have shown improvement in dealing with human rights issues, with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) adopting its own charter, the Arab League revising and strengthening its former charter and the South Pacific Forum developing its own action plan to address common rights challenges.

The Asia Pacific has lagged behind other regions in addressing human rights with no agreed upon human rights mechanisms, while many countries in the region do not have effective rights bodies.

Europe has the European Court of Human Rights, Africa the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and America has the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Court of Human Rights.

Indonesia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Makarim Wibisono, welcomed Arbour’s suggestion, saying the diversity of Asia-Pacific countries has hindered talks on the creation of a single human rights mechanism.

“We hope the meeting will generate ideas on the establishment of sub-regional human rights mechanisms,” he said.

Besides issues regarding the enhancement of rights institutions in the region, Makarim said the workshop would highlight the need to shift the human rights paradigm from the protection of civil-political rights to poverty reduction.

“It’s been decades since the last world war and we are still witnessing third of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day. Civil-political and socio-economic approaches to human rights issues should be carried out together.

“The government and NGOs will have to pay more attention to problems arising from poverty,” he said.

Arbour said human rights courts could play a critical role in enforcing economic, social and cultural rights, providing relief to individuals, and ensuring that governments implement constitutionally guaranteed economic, social and cultural rights, as has happened in India and Sri Lanka.

“Human rights and poverty reduction are both a cause and a consequence of poverty,” she said.

The Indonesian Foreign Ministry’s director general for multilateral affairs, Rezlan Ishar Jenie, said the workshop would not discuss rights abuses happening in the region, including the latest report by Human Rights Watch on Papua or the murder of human rights activist Munir.

Makarim, however, said “the forum provides the possibility for the discussion of those cases”.

Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence coordinator Usman Hamid, who is attending the seminar, said he would meet with Arbour to discuss the Munir case and other cases of rights abuses in Indonesia.

He hoped the UN official would press the Indonesian government to resolve the cases.