Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik globally imposed economic development, as we all know. One can of course keep arguing without end as to the merits and demerits of development and globalization. The real and ultimate question, nevertheless, is how the real peoples fare in their varying social and cultural contexts. That is to say, in terms of human life and blood, not GDP as an end in itself. And that gives rise to an entirely new dimension of human rights problems. At this point of human history, then, it is indeed high time to seriously raise the question of the impact of development and globalization. Indeed, as Helle Degn succinctly remarks in this very forum, it is not just the question of economic crime and corruption that is being involved. Of even more significantly, the whole thing brings in its wake adverse repercussions on the natural resources and environment and thus the integrity of human rights.9 The whole world now comes to keep talking about it more often - somewhat on high moral grounds, however. Few, including even among “human rights defenders” themselves, actually realize how intimately the life and blood of common people is involved in the issues of natural resources and environment. This is most obviously the case with those rural peoples and communities in tropical resourcebased regions. Southeast Asia is one such prime example. Unfortunately, it is something overlooked within the ranks of ASEAN leaders. Or if ever appreciated, it is merely in terms of immediate trade and commercial gains, in the fashion of top-down globalization, and as always at great human and social costs. Such a state of affairs is obviously and directly concerned with the question of the right to livelihood and self-reliant development. One wonders if and to what extent that could be worked out to serve as the common basis for cooperation and coordination under whatever regional mechanism we have been talking about. 9 Helle Degn, Commissioner of the Council of the Baltic Sea States on Democratic Development, in presentation on National Human Rights Institutions: Europe, Strasbourg Conference 8 October, 2002. 76 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND