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ASEAN is failing Southeast Asians. The rot is most evident now with the lack of action over what to do with the Rohingya on either side of Myanmar’s borders. The cascade of failures, one after another, is due to the fact that the Association was founded to serve the interests of its member states, not the peoples over whom they rule. Even in this limited role, ASEAN is also neglecting its task to advocate for the interest of Southeast Asia as a region, whether in the South China Sea or in the issues surrounding the controversial dam-building projects along the Mekong River.
This chronic failing is even more striking when we consider that ASEAN claims it has shed its state-centric orientation to become a regional organization focused on its people. Launched in 2015, the ASEAN Community stands on three pillars of cooperation: political-security, economic, and socio-cultural. For most citizens of ASEAN member states, however, none of this ASEAN-speak matters and the Association has no bearing on their daily lives. How exactly is ASEAN people-centered when those purported to be at the center of the Association’s work feel no consequence of its existence?
One feature that underpins a citizen’s dignified life is the free exercise of political rights and civil liberties: this is the crux of the fight for human rights. Unfortunately, ASEAN is merely giving lip service when it comes to this issue, as the first article by Danilo T. Ibayan in the current Spotlight edition illustrates. Citing Freedom House’s 2018 report, Ibayan notes that Southeast Asia as a whole continues its decades-long decline in human rights. No ASEAN country is ‘free’, and only five are deemed ‘partly free’. Freedom House considers ASEAN as hostile to the promotion of human rights, whatever the ASEAN Charter may say to the contrary.
However, for an institution meant to serve the governments of Southeast Asia, is ASEAN serving its member countries well? Here, the case is weaker than one might expect. Our second Spotlight article features Jossa Lukman’s review of former Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa’s recently published book Does ASEAN Matter: A View from Within. Minister Natalegawa envelops his criticism of ASEAN in a nuanced analysis, but a conclusion one can derive from the book is that Indonesia is having second thoughts about the Association.
The question then becomes: Who does ASEAN serve if it serves neither Southeast Asians, Southeast Asia as a whole, nor, increasingly, its member states? Without a clear purpose, the Association will continue to drift and Southeast Asia will slowly miss a forum where its governments can effectively and efficiently talk and negotiate with each other. That can only end badly for Southeast Asians and their region.
