Yet more than four years since the military coup, with escalating violence, deepening displacement and widespread human rights violations, one must ask: How effective has this approach truly been?

What has become increasingly clear is the growing disconnect between ASEAN's rhetoric and its actions. Far from being a roadmap to peace, the 5PC has become a diplomatic placeholder, invoked ritually in communiqués yet divorced from realities on the ground. What has emerged in its place is a fragmented and contradictory set of responses has emerged, exposing ASEAN to what is described as the trap of "parallel diplomacy".

This trap reveals both institutional stagnation and growing division among ASEAN member states. Rather than forging a cohesive and principled regional strategy, ASEAN has allowed individual member states to pursue uncoordinated and improvised national initiatives. These fragmented actions, often detached from ASEAN's formal mechanisms, have bred confusion, diluted collective pressure on the junta and eroded public confidence in the bloc's credibility.

Parallel diplomacy, by nature, is not inherently flawed. Informal channels, Track 1.5 dialogues and backchannel negotiations can play crucial roles in complex conflict contexts. However, when these efforts unfold without coordination or a shared strategic vision, they risk undermining peace building efforts. Fragmented diplomacy, in such a case, becomes a symptom of disunity, not a strategy for flexibility.

Thailand’s approach to the Myanmar crisis exemplifies the consequences of this incoherence. Often operating outside ASEAN frameworks, Thailand has spearheaded what has come to be known as the “Bangkok Process”, a series of direct engagements with Myanmar’s military regime. This began with then-foreign minister Don Pramudwinai's visit to Naypyidaw in 2021 and continued with the appointment of a Thai special envoy to Myanmar. Several informal consultations followed, including meetings involving the junta and its closest allies.

In December 2022, Thailand hosted a closed-door meeting that included junta representatives and the foreign ministers of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore boycotted the meeting, citing their commitment to the 5PC and objected to the junta's inclusion.

Similar meetings followed in June 2023 and December 2024, often framed around humanitarian engagement. The latter was attended by ministers from Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore, with the rest sending lower-level delegates. These moves signalled improvisation over unity, diplomacy over strategy.

While, Indonesia, as ASEAN chair in 2023, held consultations with over 145 stakeholders, including resistance groups, by September that year. These engagements evolved into an informal Joint Coordination Body known as the "Jakarta Club", which remains active today.

 

The January 2025 ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Retreat further highlighted the region's growing fragmentation over Myanmar. The Philippines proposed a new political framework, while Vietnam called for the inclusion of ethnic armed organizations in future dialogue. These diverging positions do not signal healthy pluralism, they reflect deepening strategic incoherence within ASEAN.

In April, Malaysia initiated direct engagement with the National Unity Government Myanmar’s civilian-led opposition. However, diplomatic courtesies and technical cooperation with the junta continue in parallel, lending de facto legitimacy to the military regime while reducing pro-democracy actors to symbolic participants.

The emergence of multiple informal mechanisms, such as Indonesia’s Jakarta Club, Thailand’s Bangkok Process and Malaysia’s dual-track diplomacy, reflects both innovation and disarray in ASEAN’s approach. These ad-hoc efforts, in the absence of a unified strategy, illustrate ASEAN’s drift: engaging both the junta and the opposition without a coherent political roadmap risks perpetuating stalemate rather than resolving the crisis.

Part of this incoherence stems from ASEAN’s institutional structure. The rotating nature of the Special Envoy, changing with each ASEAN Chair, undermines continuity and long-term strategy. Compounding this, minister-level envoy is no longer on the table. While some of these adjustments are framed as strategic, they also reflect the bloc’s limited political will and uneven commitment to addressing the crisis.

Another structural flaw lies in ASEAN’s lack of a clear, enforceable mechanism to address unconstitutional changes of government. This institutional gap not only enables impunity but makes the bloc complicit in democratic backsliding. Without the courage to confront member states that violate core democratic norms, the bloc merely adds strain to its already fragile regionalism project.

Another disunity has been revealed in member states’ responses to Myanmar’s planned 2025 elections. Malaysia and Singapore have rightly questioned the vote’s legitimacy, while Thailand remains neutral and Cambodia has even offered to send observers. These divergent positions highlight ASEAN’s chronic inability to speak with one voice on fundamental democratic principles, undermining its credibility and emboldening authoritarian actors within and beyond Myanmar.

ASEAN stands at a critical juncture shaped by crisis, centrality and conscience. The humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar, marked by mass killings, displacement and aid blockades, has spilled across borders, fueling instability and transnational crime. Some advocate for using all diplomatic tools, including parallel tracks, but innovation without principled leadership and a unified strategy risks becoming a smokescreen for inaction rather than a path to peace.

The true test of ASEAN's centrality is no longer its ability to speak in uniformity, but to harmonize many voices without losing the plot. Centrality must mean more than procedural prominence, it must signal strategic coherence and moral leadership. The Myanmar crisis has revealed troubling signs of institutional drift, and unless corrected, ASEAN's foundational claims to unity and purpose will ring increasingly empty.

Above all, ASEAN must summon moral clarity. Leading with conscience means naming the perpetrators, supporting the victims and rejecting impunity masquerading as diplomacy.

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The writer is executive director of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR).