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How 'people-centered' ASEAN can make its way from mantra to reality
As a rough estimate, I dare say that out of ASEAN’s population of more than 600 million, fewer than 1 percent have some degree of comprehension about ASEAN beyond name recognition.
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Meeting of minds: Participants of the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN Peoples' Forum 2023 exchange ideas during a discussion in Jakarta on May 5, 2023. (Human Rights Working Group)
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n recent years, ASEAN has embarked on a new path based on a mantra about achieving a “people-centered, people-oriented ASEAN Community”. This began with the ASEAN Charter in 2005, the first ASEAN document that began with “We, the peoples...”
The reality on the ground, however, is that ASEAN still has a long way to go to become a truly people-centered community. While Southeast Asian citizens are aware of the existence of ASEAN, and generally do not have a negative attitude toward the organization, many are clueless as to what it is all about.
I once asked a group of international relations students in a top Indonesian university what they knew about the ASEAN Economic Community, and received no show of hands. I have repeated this exercise many times at other universities with similar results.
Indeed, the main problem of ASEAN is that many of its parts do not know one another. There are tens of thousands of civil society groups in ASEAN; most of them do not connect with one another.
Most micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in any ASEAN country do not do business with those in any other regional country. In Indonesia, the largest economy in ASEAN, there are plenty of provinces, regencies and cities that have no trade links with their counterparts in any other ASEAN country.
As a rough estimate, I dare say that out of ASEAN’s population of more than 600 million, fewer than 1 percent have some degree of comprehension about ASEAN beyond name recognition.
The average Southeast Asian still feels that ASEAN is the business of diplomats and leaders at the top and are happy to leave it at that.
