Malaysia continues to resist the calls of women to remove €"public morality"€ from the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD), as it is being drafted by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR).

During the dialogue with CSOs, Dato' Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, Malaysia’s AICHR representative insisted that public morality has been a part of his country'€™s court decisions. One of these cases involved a politician who became a member of the Malaysian Bar Council, which must be an independent. "For that reason the highest court of the land said a full time politician will be offending public morality," he said.

In their recent position paper on the AHRD, the Southeast Asia  Women'€™s Caucus on ASEAN (Women'€™s Caucus) asserted that "public morality" €œhas not been defined in international human rights standards. As such, its interpretation in daily life has been largely based on the dominant political, cultural and religious regimes. It has been quite subjective and discriminatory, particularly women and girls and other minorities such as LGBTs.

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