ABSTRACT
Singapore acceded to three United Nations (UN) human rights treaties in 1995 on women’s rights, children’s rights and the genocide convention. It recently commenced engaging with the treaty-monitoring bodies through state reports. Drawing upon state practice, this article examines Singapore’s human rights practice and its “pragmatic realist” approach, this being an instructive case study in demonstrating how “rights” play out within a “communitarian” society which valorises collective interests and favours consensus and a “responsibilities” discourse over adversarial rights language. It addresses themes central to understanding Singapore human rights practice in terms of substantive content, dominant rights theory, interpretative and enforcement approaches, including interactions with UN human rights institutions and non-government bodies. It contends that human rights policy is ultimately informed by state objectives prioritising economic growth, development and social order, often justified by reference to culturally relativistic “Asian values”.
