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An ASEAN-led inconvenient approach to Myanmar crisis
In the ASEAN region and beyond, humanitarian assistance is often used as a convenient tool or an entry point or a way of expressing solidarity without addressing root causes.
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No end to learning: Children from Pu Phar village, displaced after fighting between the military and members of the People's Defense Force, attend a school lesson under a makeshift structure as they take refuge in the jungle near Demoso, Kayah state, Myanmar, on July 3, as the country remains in turmoil after February’s military coup. (AFP/Stringer)
W
hile the ASEAN Charter provides for ASEAN leaders at the summit to take extraordinary measures in emergencies, there is no regional mechanism that guides how ASEAN should deal with a conflict-induced crisis when the de facto authority is a party to the armed conflict and the source of violence.
The ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER), which guides how ASEAN member states help one another and how the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA Centre) facilitates a collective response, was designed with the Indian Ocean tsunami in mind.
The AADMER was developed with the principle that the government of the disaster-affected country is part of the decision-making process. Assistance is based on the request made by the government or their consent to offers of assistance. The government also exercises the direction and control of assistance.
In these situations, the AADMER and the AHA Centre can be manipulated as decisions about provision of assistance by the source of violence are often aligned with the desire to gain advantage.
The AHA Centre has been built based on ASEAN’s lessons and successes in responding to disasters, including Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. It is a well-functioning regional center that has facilitated ASEAN’s collective response to major disasters. However, its design expressly focused on response to natural hazard-induced disasters as reflected in its name.
The AHA Centre was never designed to respond to crises resulting from conflicts. After 10 years of growth, the issue is not with the entity’s capability to provide humanitarian assistance in conflict settings but the absence of a crisis mechanism that enables it to do so.
Humanitarian assistance aims to save lives, alleviate suffering and protect the dignity of the affected population, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. To achieve this, assistance must focus on the needs of affected people. This requires humanitarian actors to directly consult those affected by the crisis. Humanitarian actors also need unrestricted access to reach the people.
