Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik of human and societal values. Unfortunately, they all are being dismissed as out of bound of legitimate human rights in the Western world where the property rights are being cherished above everything else. What Prof. Vitit terms “value-added” makes a lot of sense here, not just for some specific focus points as suggested, but also in broader perspective for the whole task of human rights protection and promotion for the Southeast Asian peoples who have been undergoing enormous changes forced upon them. Now that they have gone through the historical struggles for freedom and self-determination, a new dimension of human rights is naturally bound to arise. All of which brings us to the substantive part of our mission while in the process of the current dialogues and consultations on institutional framework. All this is of course well in line with what Prof. Vitit suggests in the very last paragraph of his paper, i.e., “Support other activities ...e.g. formation and networking .... More human rights education and capacity building, and the fostering of good practices in implementing human rights standards regionally, nationally and locally, with strong civil society participation and people-to-people cooperation”. The point is that all these things can very well proceed right away, pending the realization of the planned regional mechanism. As a matter of fact, currently quite a few of action and participatory researches have been going on and geared to that effect. Academics and NGOs are increasingly aware of the need to collaborate with one another for the common purpose: people’s empowerment. All this is a promising trend. Only that it still very much remains isolated and lacking of coordinated resources to cope with the problems. So something badly needs to be done about it. That would help lay a sort of infra-structural groundwork for the forthcoming institution. In the process, human rights culture and capability would gradually be developed. The point is that no institution can ever exist in a vacuum, or worse still, just do for its own sake. It certainly is not the case with human rights and dignity at stake that we have been talking about OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 5