PHNOM PENH: Southeast Asian leaders endorsed a controversial human rights pact on Sunday during an annual summit, in which they also focused on bruising territorial rows and deadly unrest in Myanmar.

Heads of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) hailed their declaration on human rights as a landmark agreement that would help protect the region’s 600 million people.

“It’s a legacy for our children,” Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told reporters after the signing ceremony.

President Benigno Aquino 3rd welcomed the adoption of the Asean Human Rights Declaration.

In his speech at the plenary session, the President said that its effective implementation will be helpful for migrant workers and their families.

“Human rights bind together not only our community, but the entire human race; we thus look forward to the implementation of instruments for the protection and promotion of the rights of migrant workers and their families, and for combating trafficking in persons,” the President said.

“The right to live free from fear and uncertainty; to live free from hunger and poverty; to live dignified lives of opportunity: these can only be fully realized if the growth we are experiencing now is felt equitably by the majority of our peoples,” he added

But critics said that the pact allowed too many loopholes for Asean, which groups together a diverse range of political systems, from authoritarian regimes in Laos and Vietnam to freewheeling democracies such as in the Philippines.

“Our worst fears in this process have now come to pass,” said Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson.

On the day the pact was signed, leaders discussed the ethnic violence in Asean member Myanmar, where clashes in Rakhine state between Muslim and Buddhists have left 180 people dead since June.

Asean secretary general Surin Pitsuwan said that the violence was disturbing and risked destabilizing the region.

He said that Asean leaders would discuss the bloodshed and potentially include a statement referring to it in their end-of-summit communiqué.

The Asean event will be expanded into a two-day East Asia Summit starting on Monday that includes the leaders of the United States, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Russia.

US President Barack Obama is due to arrive in Phnom Penh on Monday after making an historic visit to Myanmar.

Obama decided to make the trip to Myanmar, the first by a sitting US president, to reward and further encourage political developments by the new reformist government there.

However the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which on Saturday described the Muslim Rohingya minority as victims of “genocide,” has urged Obama to pressure Myanmar’s government to stop the bloodshed.

Another point of contention during the three days of top-level diplomacy in Phnom Penh was likely to be the territorial rows over the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).

China insists that it has sovereign rights to nearly all of the sea, including waters near the coasts of its Asian neighbors. Asean members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan, also have sometimes overlapping claims to the sea.

The rival claims have for decades made the waterways, home to some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and believed to sit atop vast natural resources, a potential military flashpoint.

On Saturday, Surin floated an Asean proposal for a hotline with China aimed at easing maritime tensions. .

WITH A REPORT FROM CATHERINE S. VALENTE