Mega Trade Partnership

Posted by AsiaViews | Nov 20, 2017 | 0 |

The Jakarta Post

Nov 14, 2017

After more than 18 rounds of negotiations since 2012, 16 Asian and Pacific countries that account for almost 50 percent of the world’s population, more than one-third of global trade and 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), have moved closer to a multi-stage, regional mega trade partnership.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement between the 10 ASEAN members and the six countries with which the trading bloc already has free trade agreements — Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — will surely be a big leap in global trade deals, in view of the wave of populist anti-globalization sentiment even in several developed countries.

It is also a great diplomatic achievement for Indonesia, which proposed the RCEP idea in 2011 when it served as ASEAN chair and Mari Pangestu was the minister of trade. But negotiations that started in 2012 under the chairmanship of Indonesia’s senior trade official, Iman Pambagyo, were overshadowed by the United States-initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations.

The RCEP will create one of the world’s largest trading blocs with ASEAN at its core and will plug the regional alliance of 10 nations into the global economy. The new agreement will also consolidate ASEAN’s overlapping trade partnerships into a single trade agreement.

Two main factors have made the 16 countries persevere in their negotiations for such a large trade pact. The most important of these is the fact that trade-linked industrialization has always been the main driver of economic growth in East Asia. Trade-oriented industrialization has driven regional economic integration through trade and investment. The other factor is US President Donald Trump’s decision early this year to withdraw his support for the TPP, which put this plan in limbo.

The RCEP will deepen economic ties, create a massive free-trade area for participating countries, progressively eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers, build a competitive investment environment and further integrate ASEAN into the global economy.

Certainly, the upcoming negotiations on the technical details of the final RCEP agreement will still be challenging. The widely different economic development levels of member countries could get in the way of settling implementation schedules. Moreover, the RCEP agreement governs not only trade, but also investment protection, labor rights and several other important economic issues.

But we are confident that the participating countries’ full awareness of the great benefits of free trade flow and continued nurturing of trust among them will strengthen their resoluteness toward completing the final deal soon.

As ASEAN has become more enthusiastic about free trade and the more powerful Chinese President Xi Jinping has been taking the lead on globalization, the political momentum for completing the RCEP has been building up to raise expectations for a final agreement sometime next year.

(source:http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2017/11/14/editorial-mega-trade-partnership.html)

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EXTRICATING NDONESIAN CHILDREN FROM ISIS INFLUENCE ABROAD

Indonesia urgently needs to revisit the possibility of repatriating the neediest of its young citizens stranded abroad, whose families had earlier joined ISIS. Most of these children are in camps in northern Syria but there are also small numbers in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Iraq. “Extricating Indonesian Children from ISIS Influence Abroad”, the latest report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) argues that the government could begin by bringing back small groups of unaccompanied children under ten years of age, who pose minimal security risk and are most vulnerable to deteriorating conditions in the camps.“The problem is that health and security conditions are worsening by the day in the Syrian camps, and the children are growing older,” says Dyah Kartika, IPAC analyst. “They need access to schools, a nurturing environment, and medical attention. If the government waits too long, the children will be further exposed to ISIS ideology.” The new report examines a 2019 list of Indonesians in camps and prisons run by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Indonesian government has been trying to verify their citizenship, but with pseudonyms, misspellings and bad transliterations, it is a daunting task. At the time the data was collected, between March and June 2019, there were 555 Indonesians in SDF camps and prisons, including 367 children. Among the children, approximately 277 were under the age of ten and 34 were unaccompanied. In June 2021, there are fewer than ten children who are both unaccompanied and under the age of ten that could be prioritized for return. Bringing back children of ISIS families is no easy task. The report analyses the main challenges faced by the Indonesian government. These include definitional issues, bureaucratic competition, the difficulty of verifying nationality, evaluating the toll of exposure to conflict, assessing security risk, and finding relatives or others willing to provide care once the children are returned. In addition, COVID has meant stringent restrictions on travel, placing further obstacles in the way of repatriation. There are several models for rehabilitation of children exposed to violent extremism in Indonesia that could be modified to accommodate the needs of children repatriated from abroad. The report examines these models and argues that the government does not need to have every detail of rehabilitation programs in place before it starts extricating children from ISIS influence. It can start by bringing back the most vulnerable children and then modify programs as needed.

“It’s important that the government see these children as victims” says Dyah. “They deserve a chance to be children again.”

Mega Trade Partnership