Evolution OF ASEAN

On 8 August 1967, five leaders - the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand sat down together in the main hall of the Department of Foreign Affairs building in Bangkok, Thailand and signed a document. By virtue of that document, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was born. The five Foreign Ministers who signed it - Adam Malik of Indonesia, Narciso R. Ramos of the Philippines, Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia, S. Rajaratnam of Singapore, and Thanat Khoman of Thailand would subsequently be hailed as the Founding Fathers of probably the most successful inter-governmental organization in the developing world today. And the document that they signed would be known as the ASEAN Declaration. It was a short, simply-worded document containing just five articles. It declared the establishment of an Association for Regional Cooperation among the Countries of Southeast Asia to be known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and spelled out the aims and purposes of that Association. These aims and purposes were about cooperation

in the economic, social, cultural, technical, educational and other fields, and in the promotion of regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law and adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter. It stipulated that the Association would be open for participation by all States in the Southeast Asian region subscribing to its aims, principles and purposes. It proclaimed ASEAN as representing "the collective will of the nations of Southeast Asia to bind themselves together in friendship and cooperation and, through joint efforts and sacrifices, secure for their peoples and for posterity the blessings of peace, freedom and prosperity.

MEMBERS

Brunei Darussalam

H.E. Pehin Dato Lim Jock Seng, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Cambodia

H.E. Dr. Aun Porn Moniroth, Advisor to the Prime Minister and Chairman of the Supreme National Economic Council of Cambodia

Indonesia

H.,E. Mr. Ali Alatas former Minister for Foreign Affairs H.E. Mr. Khamphan Simmalavong, former Deputy Minister of Commerce

Lao PDR

Malaysia

H.E. Tan Sri Musa Hitam, former Deputy Prime Minister Chairman of the EPG

Myanmar

H.E. Dr. Than Nyun, Chairman of the Civil Service Selection and Training Board)

Philippines

H.E. Mr. Fidel V. Ramos, former President of the Philippines, former Secretary of National Defense, Chairman of the Boa'o Forum of Asia

Singapore

H.E. Prof. S. Jayakumar, Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Law

Thailand

H.E. M.R. Kasemsamosorn Kasemsri, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs

Vietnam

H.E. Mr. Nguyen Manh Cam, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs

VISION AND MISSION

The Chairmanships vision is directed towards a community conscious of its diverse cultures and bounded by a common regional awareness, where people strive for equitable access to opportunities for total human development regardless of gender, race, religion, language, or social and cultural background.

The end goal of the Chairmanship is to help sustain the momentum towards a caring ASEAN where the standard of living of disadvantaged groups are raised and the women and youth are empowered; where the civil society is engaged; and special attention is given to recommendations on the promotion of health, food security and safety, environment protection, and the promotion of common values and norms. The vision puts the ASEAN people at the center of regional integration with the Governments of Member Countries, Dialogue Partners and other friends of ASEAN providing them the means to fully participate in the process. We also see the need for a strengthened ASEAN Secretariat with an enhanced role to support the realization of our vision. Mission Statement: The Chairmanship mission is to steer ASEAN in the implementation of the Vientiane Action Program towards social protection and promotion of the rights of the vulnerable sectors in the community, in order to contribute to poverty alleviation and empowerment through projects implemented with dialogue partners and other supporters. By the end of the Philippine chairmanship, all outcome documents and decisions by the Leaders and the Ministers

should reflect the overall theme of a caring and sharing community, that should result in the following: a people-centered approach in ASEAN integration and community building; clearer sense by the ordinary folks including the youth and other vulnerable sectors of the society of the community building efforts by the ASEAN Member Governments; better understanding of the importance of an ASEAN Charter and other initiatives for regional peace and security; stronger sense of regional awareness and common heritage of the region as may be discovered not only in ASEAN capitals but also in the rural areas; and closer cooperation and understanding between ASEAN with dialogue partners.

SUCCESS STORIES

A landmark agreement among ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Jakarta on 22nd February to send a small team of up to forty Indonesian civilian and military observers to a disputed area along the Thai Cambodian border has not only helped prevent continued fighting between Thai and Cambodian forces, but also potentially given a boost to ASEANs long term capacity to manage internal conflict. Limited as the observer missions terms of reference will be, few observers imagined such an outcome possible just a few weeks earlier when military forces clashed over a 4 square kilometer piece of land surrounding a Hindu temple that straddles the border. Cambodia called for UN intervention and took the issue to the United Nations Security Council, whilst Thailand insisted that the dispute could be settled bilaterally and rejected ASEANs overtures of help. Indonesia as ASEAN Chair took the lead in pressing the case for ASEAN assistance to help resolve the dispute. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa mobilized swiftly, travelling to Phnom Penh and Bangkok as fighting continued along the

border in early February. He also accompanied the foreign ministers of both countries at a UN Security Council Meeting convened on the dispute in mid-February. The UNSC in effect referred the dispute back to ASEAN, which paved the way for a meeting of ASEAN Foreign ministers in Jakarta on the 22nd. The level of international concern and attention turned the spotlight on ASEAN, which despite provisions for internal dispute settlement embedded in bedrock treaties, has never successfully established a formal mechanism for resolving internal conflict between member states. Fortunately for ASEAN, the foreign ministers were able to agree on a tangible outcome. Indonesia was asked to send a team of civilian and military observers to the area. In addition, the ministers offered to assist bilateral negotiations between the two countries. Significantly, the move was widely applauded by ASEANs dialogue partners, including China. Critics might say that this amounts to another ad hoc arrangement, and will watch closely to see if ASEAN builds on these developments to move towards more formal structures

and mechanisms. Indonesia for example has long advocated a formal peacekeeping force on standby to deal with just such a crisis. The argument is that without formal structures and mechanisms in place, it takes too long to mobilize and act, allowing the conflict to escalate. Realistically, however, ASEAN member states wont support the kinds of elaborate formal structures for conflict management that, for example, the African Union has in place. Nor is there an appetite for strengthening the security functions of the secretariat. ASEAN must therefore move cautiously. On the other hand, the Thai Cambodian crisis has underscored the threat of internal conflict, and Indonesias chairmanship of ASEAN this year offers a real opportunity to begin thinking about how ASEAN can grapple with its security issues within acceptable parameters. In this respect, precedent does provide some momentum. The idea of sending observers from one ASEAN country to another grew out of Indonesias earlier experience with ASEAN military monitors in Aceh, under the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement brokered by the HD Centre between the Indonesian

Government an the Free Aceh Movement in 2003. Thai military personnel also joined an earlier monitoring mission to East Timor before independence. These light peace-monitoring rather than peace-keeping missions have helped generate confidence that military officials from neighbouring countries can help on the ground without violating sovereignty.

Nor was it possible for Thailand to realistically resist ASEANs offer to help, when Thailand has long been an advocate of ASEAN assistance to help Myanmar deal with its own internal conflict. Now Thailand joins Indonesia as a sizable member state that has called on its neighbours to help, which will reinforce and support future ASEAN collective action.

There is a long way to go before ASEAN can boast a robust and effective response to internal conflict within the ten-nation association. But given how close two neighbouring ASEAN states came to a war along their common border, there is now no longer any doubt about the need for a more effective mechanism to defuse and settle conflict. And its not as if

ASEAN will be doing anything that requires major negotiation or agreement between member states. The ASEAN PoliticalSecurity Community Blueprint, formally adopted at the 14th ASEAN Summit in 2009, calls for the strengthening of existing mechanisms for the settlement of disputes. It also urges the development of ASEAN modalities for good offices, conciliation and mediation.

CURRENT NEWS
India and Asean countries will sign the historic comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) covering goods, services and investment around August 2013. Each of the 10 Asean member countries' parliaments will have to ratify the Asean-India FTAs. Thailand's Parliament is expected to do so in April. "The signing of these agreements will facilitate further economic integration between Asean and India, and also contribute to the overall East Asian economic integration.

India is currently Asia's third largest economy after China and Japan in terms of purchasing parity. The annual trade volume between India and Asean was expected to rise from this year's US$80 billion (2.4 trillion baht) to US$100 billion in 2015 and to US$200 billion in 2020 as India looks towards Asean for closer economic cooperation. Within the Asean-India FTA framework, there is a combined market of almost 1.8 billion people, with India's population totalling 1.2 billion and Asean's population around 600 million, as well as a combined GDP of US$3.8 trillion.

Asean and India are also supporting sub-regional developments, including the Mekong-Ganga Coopera-tion and Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Coopera-tion frameworks. Other frameworks supported include the Brunei-IndonesiaMalaysia-Philippines-East Asean Growth Area, Cambodia-LaosVietnam Development Triangle Area, Indonesia-MalaysiaThailand Growth Triangle, Greater Mekong Sub-Region and Asean Mekong Basin Development Cooperation.

Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid said in an interview that the latest summit represented a crucial "take-off" point for connectivity between India and Asean countries. He cited the three-nation highway project linking India's northeast with Myanmar and Thailand as an example of landtransport connectivity. Additional sections of the 1,300-kilometre highway near India's border with Myanmar and the Myanmar border with northern Thailand are under construction and will be joined with the existing route in Myanmar, where road conditions will be improved. The cross-border highway is scheduled for opening in 2016. The Indian foreign minister also cited the potential linkages of India's Chennai seaport with other ports in Asean countries, especially the planned Dawei port in Myanmar and Thailand's Laem Chabang deep-sea port as another example of connectivity between India and Asean countries. From Thailand, the highways and seaports could be further linked with those in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, whose ports are in the South China Sea.

Yingluck said the Thai government would also support extending the trilateral highway to reach Laos and Cambodia. At present, India and Thailand have a limited FTA in goods covering 84 items. Bilateral trade is worth about US$9 billion per year. The two countries are negotiating a much more comprehensive economic cooperation agreement covering trade in goods and services as well as investments to further upgrade economic ties.

MERITS
Free Trade Area

The foundation of the AEC is the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), a common external preferential tariff scheme to promote the free flow of goods within ASEAN.[44] The ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) is an agreement by the member nations of ASEAN concerning local manufacturing in all ASEAN countries. The AFTA agreement was signed on 28 January 1992

in Singapore. When the AFTA agreement was originally signed, ASEAN had six members, namely, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Vietnam joined in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999. The latecomers have not fully met the AFTA's obligations, but they are officially considered part of the AFTA as they were required to sign the agreement upon entry into ASEAN, and were given longer time frames in which to meet AFTA's tariff reduction obligations.

Comprehensive Investment Area

The ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Area (ACIA) will encourage the free flow of investment within ASEAN. The main principles of the ACIA are as follows

* All industries are to be opened up for investment, with exclusions to be phased out according to schedules * National treatment is granted immediately to ASEAN investors with few exclusions

* Elimination of investment impediments * Streamlining of investment process and procedures * Enhancing transparency * Undertaking investment facilitation measures

Full realization of the ACIA with the removal of temporary exclusion lists in manufacturing agriculture, fisheries, forestry and mining is scheduled by 2010 for most ASEAN members and by 2015 for the CLMV (Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam) countries.

Trade in Services

An ASEAN Framework Agreement on Trade in Services was adopted at the ASEAN Summit in Bangkok in December 1995.Under the agreement, ASEAN members are negotiating intra-regional services liberalization in several sectors, including air transport, business services, construction, financial services, maritime transport, telecommunications and tourism. Although some sectors have liberalized faster, such as air transport, other

sectors remain subject to continued negotiation. Efforts to expand the scope of the Framework Agreement also remain subject to continued negotiations.

DEMERITS
Western countries have criticized ASEAN for being too "soft" in its approach to promoting human rights and democracy in the junta-led Myanmar. Despite global outrage at the military crack-down on peaceful protesters in Yangon, ASEAN has refused to suspend Myanmar as a member and also rejects proposals for economic sanctions. This has caused concern as the European Union, a potential trade partner, has refused to conduct free trade negotiations at a regional level for these political reasons. International observers view it as a "talk shop", which implies that the organization is "big on words but small on action".

During the 12th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, several activist groups staged anti-globalization and anti-Arroyo rallies.[68] According to the activists, the agenda of economic integration would negatively affect industries in the Philippines and would cause thousands of Filipinos to lose their jobs. They also viewed the organization as "imperialistic" that threatens the country's sovereignty. A human rights lawyer from New Zealand was also present to protest about the human rights situation in the region in general.

ASEAN has agreed to an ASEAN human rights body which will come into force in 2009. The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand want this body to have an enforcement capacity, however Singapore, Viet Nam, Burma, Laos and Cambodia do not.