At the 2009 ASEAN Summit in Thailand, the member states met to discuss a draft of the terms of reference for a Human Rights Body to be established under the mandate of the new ASEAN Charter. Given ASEAN’s past reluctance to make progress on the issue of human rights, many questions have been raised over such a body’s likely power and relevance. This paper examines ASEAN’s ‘consensus’ on human rights, its previous experience with regional declarations, and the events that have motivated ASEAN’s new direction on human rights. It argues that ASEAN has succumbed to internal and external pressures in forging this new direction – regional democratization and the growth of civil society, and the international pressure that has been placed on ASEAN over Burma. The paper will suggest that the strong tensions that continue to exist between, and among, the pressures for change cannot be resolved so long as members are divided over their respect for democracy and human rights. ASEAN’s reluctance to promote a unified human rights policy may be traced to its foundation principles of consensus and non-interference in the domestic politics of member states. Some consensus over human rights was reached in the 1990s, though this was more a reactionary stand taken to the Western human rights policy during the 1980s and 1990s which manifested itself in the popular Asian values rhetoric of the time. The ASEAN governments’ position was consolidated as a result of a series of regional human rights conferences, some of them sponsored by the United Nations, and resulted in their adoption of the Bangkok Declaration of Asian States – the Human Rights Body set up under the ASEAN Charter may be viewed as a direct descendant of the Bangkok Declaration. Yet almost one quarter of the Bangkok Declaration was a direct attack by the Asian states upon the human rights policy of the West. Indeed, at the time the evidence pointed to an inescapable conclusion that a regional mechanism for the protection of human rights in ASEAN was neither feasible nor desirable. It would be a far better use of time and resources to encourage the ratification by member states of international human rights covenants – without reservations – and to encourage campaigns on the part of local NGOs for such ratification by their own governments.