MC No. 06, s. 2016 ASEAN

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10 Things You Didn’t Know About ASEAN

1. ASEAN will be 50 years old in two years’ time. It started with five founding member countries in 1967 – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Brunei joined it in 1984. ASEAN’s membership further expanded with Viet Nam joining in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999.

2. ASEAN did not have a secretariat until 1976, nine years after its creation. It is based in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and is headed by a Secretary-General. There are about 300 employees in the secretariat.

3. The ASEAN charter entered into force in 2008. The charter gave ASEAN, after more than 40 years of existence, a legal personality and profiled it as a rules-based organisation.

4. Each ASEAN Member State has appointed a Permanent Representative to ASEAN with the rank of Ambassador based in Jakarta. All of them collectively constitute the Committee of Permanent Representatives (CPR). The CPR is chaired by the ASEAN Member State holding the ASEAN Chairmanship. The CPR supports the work of the ASEAN Community Councils and ASEAN Sectoral Ministerial Bodies, coordinates with the ASEAN National Secretariats, liaises with the Secretary-General of ASEAN and the ASEAN Secretariat on all subjects relevant to its work and facilitates ASEAN cooperation with external partners.

5. Eighty-three non-ASEAN countries have appointed ambassadors to ASEAN.

6. ASEAN has 10 Dialogue Partners. These are Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States. ASEAN has also established a Comprehensive Partnership with the United Nations.More countries are keen to be Dialogue Partners, including from as far as Latin America and Europe.

7. If ASEAN were a single country, it would be the third largest economy in Asia and the seventh largest in the world by GDP. At current trends, it is projected to be the world’s fourth largest economy by 2050.

8. The ASEAN chair – and host of annual ASEAN summits and meetings – rotates yearly among member states, going by alphabetical order. But at times, the order can differ from this pattern. For instance, this year’s Chair is Malaysia, to be followed by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic in 2016. This is because Lao PDR switched chairmanship slots with Myanmar, which had requested 2014. The Philippines will chair ASEAN in 2017, during its 50^th Founding Anniversary.

9. The 8^th of August is observed as ASEAN Day, marking the day of its creation through the ASEAN Declaration in 1967. Various activities are held to mark it at the national and regional levels.

10. ASEAN is keeping the momentum of regional integration and community-building through the next 10 years, after the launch of the ASEAN Community in December 2015. ASEAN’s Vision 2025 is a bold, visionary, progressive and forward-looking document to reflect the aspirations of the next generation of ASEAN nationals. It will realise a politically integrated, socially responsible, and a truly people-oriented, people-centred and rules-based ASEAN.

…And On to ASEAN 2025

ASEAN has just launched the ASEAN Community, but has already put in place the path to ensure that the momentum of the integration process continues over the next 10 years.

ASEAN Leaders declared the formal establishment of the ASEAN Community on 31 December 2015 at their 27^thSummit in Kuala Lumpur in November. But they also put in place the next phase of itsconsolidation, further integration and stronger cohesiveness.

Through the ASEAN Leaders’ Kuala Lumpur Declaration on ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together, ASEAN Member States resolved to implement their vision of ASEAN 2025 in a timely and effective manner to push forward their desire and collective will to live in a region of lasting peace, security and stability, sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and social progress, as well as promote ASEAN interests, ideals and aspirations.

The outcome of a year of planning and intense discussions, ‘ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together’is a forward-looking roadmap that articulates their vision of ASEAN 10 years from now – one that is“politically cohesive, economically integrated, and socially responsible” and a consolidated community across its three pillars -political-security, economic and socio-cultural.

In sum, ASEAN 2025reaffirms the commitment towards the continuation and consolidation of ASEAN Community-building.

ASEAN Leaders have adopted the specific Blueprints for ASEAN Community Vision 2025 in the three pillars. These have action lines/strategic measuresthat seek to complete,within a specific and limited timeframe, key measures. Community-building over the next decade will build on the experiences and expertise acquired in the preceding 10 years to tackle new challenges, harness new technologies and ensure opportunities for all.

Through the ASEAN Community building process,ASEAN demonstratesto its partners and the world that it is determined to maintain ASEAN’s role in dealing with challenges that affect peace, security and stabilityin the region.

The broad goals of ASEAN 2025 include putting more emphasis on the peoples of ASEAN and their well-being; the increased awareness of ASEAN; more engagement with the peoples of ASEAN Member States; commitment to fundamental freedoms, human rights and better lives; strengthened capacity to deal with challenges while maintaining ASEAN centrality; remaining an outward-looking and global player; implementing the ASEAN agenda while pursuing national aspirations that contribute to ASEAN Community-building; and strengthening ASEAN organs and the ASEAN Secretariat.

ASEAN 2025 lays out a vision of an interlinked, thriving community not only for ASEAN peoples, but for ASEAN’s partners.

For ASEAN peoples, ASEAN 2025 means that they will continue to live in a more united,secure,peaceful andcohesiveregion; enjoy the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, be better prepared against pandemics and natural disasters, enjoy greater prosperity, and benefit from greater job opportunities and connectivity.

For ASEAN’s partners, ASEAN 2025 means engaging with a Community that is committed to and has the capacity tocontribute to a peaceful, secure and stable region; can respond effectively to existing and emerging challenges, and is committed to working with external partners to address issuesrangingfromdrug-related crimes to trafficking in persons and people smuggling. Engaging with the ASEAN Community offersmore economic, trade and investmentopportunitiesand linkages withanASEAN that has a greater role and voice in global economic fora and contributes to global economic governance.

ASEAN Enters 2016 As A Community

ASEAN ushers in 2016 as a Community, bringing to fruition an integration process that creates new opportunities for its 622 million people to make use of the ASEAN Community’s outward-looking character, economic robustness and shared regional identity for Southeast Asia’s overall development.

The ASEAN Community was formally launched on 31 December 2015, marking ASEAN’s further consolidation since its creation in 1967. “It is a day we have all been waiting for. It is a day that we – ASEAN – can be proud of,” Prime Minister Najib Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia, ASEAN Chair for 2015, said at the opening of the 27^th ASEAN Summit and Related Summits on 21 November 2015.

“The realisation of the ASEAN Community has set a milestone in the integration process and will ensure lasting peace, security and resilience in an outward-looking region, with economies that are vibrant, competitive and highly integrated, and an inclusive community that is embedded with a strong sense of togetherness and common identity,” ASEAN Leaders said in their Declaration on the Establishment of the ASEAN Community issued at their 27^th Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 22 November 2015.

At the same time, it is important that the process of community-building continues in the coming years. Thus, ASEAN Leaders have committed to continued regional integration over the next decade, by adopting the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on ‘ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together’ that sets targets to meet by 2025.

The Community’s launch is the culmination of various initiatives of regional integration which have taken place over nearly five decades. It marks the completion by ASEAN Member States of the blueprints for the three Community pillars, after ASEAN Leaders in 2007 decided to move the goal of establishing the ASEAN Community to 2015 from the original target of 2020.

The ASEAN Community consists of three pillars – the Political-Security Community, Economic Community and Socio-cultural Community.

As an ASEAN political-security community, ASEAN forms a group of 10 sovereign Member States that have a common, shared stake in being internally resilient and promoting a rules-based, outward-looking region that enjoys lasting peace, security and stability. It follows the principles of the ASEAN Charter, uses consultation and consensus-building and adheres to the use of peaceful means in resolving disputes.

Despite the wide diversity of ASEAN Member States, Prime Minister Najib said they have managed to transcend these differences. “We have become a unique example of how 10 different nations can form a shared vision. Of how we are many, but we are one as ASEAN,” he added.

The ASEAN Economic Community is taking shape with the free movement of goods, services, capital and skilled labour, with a view to improving the lives of ASEAN citizens. It will be a single market and production base, a highly competitive economic region and equitable economic development and one fully integrated into the global economy.

These will boost both ASEAN’s intra-regional economy as well as its attractiveness to external economic partners as an investment destination and a consumer base of 622 million people. ASEAN has been a region of continued economic growth and its engines continue to hum even when growth slows in other parts of the world.

ASEAN countries have a combined GDP of US$2.6 trillion as of 2014, and a GDP growth rate of 4.6 percent.

Within ASEAN, the Member States’ implementation of measures to deepen economic integration – by simplifying rules, harmonising regulatory structures, easing the movement of goods across borders, reducing or eliminating non-tariff barriers – will further deepen intra-regional economic links.

Externally, ASEAN as a single market and production base is expected to draw more foreign direct investment, and thus help spur economic growth and create more job opportunities to help address poverty and economic inequalities.

ASEAN continues to attract robust levels of foreign direct investment, a major factor in its economic growth. Foreign direct investment inflows reached US$136.18 billion in 2014, up from US$95.84 billion in 2011.

The further reduction of barriers to intra-ASEAN trade over the next decade, in particular non-tariff barriers, will be a key contribution to deepening economic integration. Trade has traditionally been a major driver of economic growth in Southeast Asia, so maintaining healthy growth in trade, including through the reduction of trade barriers, is vital to the region’s economic health.

Intra-ASEAN trade makes at 24.1 percent of its total trade, while extra-ASEAN trade stands at 75.9 percent.

At their November summit, ASEAN Leaders stressed that community-building must make a difference in the lives of citizens who are the beneficiaries of a people-oriented, people-centred ASEAN. This part of community-building will be the focus of ongoing initiatives such as programs to narrow the development gap within and among Member States, and to widen and deepen connectivity linkages in the region.

As the ASEAN Leaders said in their Declaration on the Establishment of ASEAN Community, ASEAN aspires to establish a Community “where our peoples continue to participate in and benefit fully from the ongoing process of ASEAN integration and community building.”

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Sources: ASEAN.org statistics, speeches and documents at the 27^th ASEAN Summit, speech V Hirubalan, ASEAN briefers given by the Secretariat.

ASEAN Goes Far Beyond Summits

Its summits and ministerial meetings get a lot of media coverage, but ASEAN’s engagement with its stakeholders, partners and constituencies goes far beyond official venues.

For example, the ASEAN Foundation was created during ASEAN’s 30^thanniversary in 1997 with the twin objectives of promoting greater awareness about ASEAN, greater interaction among the peoples of ASEAN and their participation in ASEAN activities; as well as contribute to the evolution of a development cooperation strategy that promotes mutual assistance, equitable economic development, and poverty alleviation.

Called ‘the people’s arm of ASEAN’ and mandated by the ASEAN Charter to support the ASEAN Secretary-General in the community-building process, the ASEAN Foundation’s range of activities includes organising and promoting education, training in science and technology, health and culture by providing fellowships to and supporting exchanges of ASEAN youth and students, and promoting collaborative work among academics, professionals and scientists.

Among the Foundation’s programs is the ‘Model ASEAN Meeting’, an interactive process where students and young people role-play as ASEAN senior officials in an ASEAN meeting as part of an interesting and enjoyable learning experience. The first Model ASEAN Meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur in tandem with the 27^thSummit in November 2015.

Also enshrined in the ASEAN Charter is the creation of an ASEAN human rights body, which was established as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights in 2009. It is the first sub-regional human rights institution in the Asia-Pacific. The Commission played a key role in the drafting of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration and the Phnom Penh Statement on the Adoption of the AHRD, which ASEAN Leaders approved in 2012 as a framework for human rights cooperation and a mechanism to mainstream human rights in all three pillars of the ASEAN Community.

Apart from the ASEAN Foundation and the AICHR, which are provided for in the ASEAN Charter, there also exists a diverse group of organisations that are accredited as “entities associated with ASEAN” that are to support the purposes and principles of the Charter. These entities may be involved in ASEAN-related dialogues, consultations, seminars, workshops and fora.

There are 78 associated entities at present, consisting of parliamentarians, business organisations, think tanks and academic institutions, accredited civil society organisations and other stakeholders in ASEAN. For instance, the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly consists of parliamentarians or members of legislative assemblies in ASEAN Member States.

There are currently 19 business organisations classified as entities associated with ASEAN, coming from sectors such as airlines, banking, textile, tourism and shipping. Examples include the ASEAN Business Advisory Council, ASEAN Bankers’ Association, and ASEAN International Airports Association.

Two think tanks or academic institutions are among the ASEAN associated entities that provide analyses and venues of discussion on various strategic issues. These are the ASEAN-Institute of Strategic and International Studies Network in the region, and the ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.

There are 52 civil society organisations accredited to ASEAN as of November 2015. They include the AirAsia Foundation, ASEAN Confederation of Employers, ASEAN Fisheries Association, ASEAN Football Federation, ASEAN Law Association, ASEAN Music Industry Association, and Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program Foundation.

Finally, there are four groups classified as ’other stakeholders in ASEAN’, which include the ASEAN Supreme Audit Institutions, Federation of Institutes of Food Science and Technology in ASEAN, Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Centre and the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism.

Regardless of which sector they focus on, these organisations and entities associated with ASEAN share a common objective in complementing ASEAN’s Community-building efforts, and contributing to a deepened sense of a shared ASEAN identity. ASEAN invites other organisations and entities in the region to explore opportunities to associate with ASEAN, and contribute to the strengthening of the ASEAN Community beyond 2015.

C is for Connectivity

In 2015, a power interconnection project linked Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province and Malaysia’s Sarawak state. By 2020, the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link (SKRL) will run through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar.

Connections like the above are the arteries of building an ASEAN Community both in the form of hard infrastructure and ‘softer’ linkages through people-to-people, cultural or trade ties. They play a crucial part in strengthening and fostering ASEAN as a vibrant region for doing business, connecting its 10 Member States and their peoples.

Many of these intra-ASEAN links have been put in place under the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity, which ASEAN Leaders adopted as a plan of action from 2011 to 2015 for a closer and more integrated ASEAN. The Master Plan identifies three types of connectivity - through the enhanced development of physical infrastructure (physical connectivity), effective institutions, mechanisms and processes (institutional connectivity), and empowered people for expanded opportunities (people-to-people connectivity). Synergistic efforts under sub-regional arrangements such as Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA), Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) and Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) could also play critical roles in catalyzing the building of ASEAN Community.

The physical connectivity projects cover a mix of initiatives to ease the flow of goods, services, and people in the region. These include the ASEAN Highway Network, 47 designated maritime ports, an ASEAN Broadband Corridor and ASEAN Power Grid, flagship infrastructure projects that seek to bring connectivity across borders and bring benefits such as improved competitiveness of regional production networks, better trade, services, investment flows and reductions in development gaps.

Three transport facilitation agreements also contribute to physical connectivity – the ASEAN framework agreements on the facilitation of goods in transit, facilitation on inter-state transport, and on multimodal transport – aim to reduce costs and boost the movement of vehicles, goods, services across borders. For example, Lao PDR and Vietnam had officially launched a single-stop inspection system at the Lao Bao-Dansavanh border checkpoint in 2015 to facilitate trade between the two countries and along the East-West Economic Corridor.

ASEAN Member States are making it easier to move goods at, within and across national borders, including through each Member State’s National Single Window. By early 2016, the ASEAN Single Window will be implemented among exchange-ready Member States. ASEAN is also pursuing an ASEAN Single Aviation Market and an ASEAN Single Shipping Market as part of realising its goals of becoming a single market and production base, and to further open up progressively to investments from within and beyond the region.

Institutional connectivity measures include those that facilitate trade, such as the ASEAN Trade Repository and National Trade Repositories. ASEAN also continues to address non-tariff barriers to boost intra-ASEAN trade and investment and to harmonise standards and conformity assessment procedures across Member States.

Improving connections that make ASEAN a people-oriented and people-centered community includes initiatives and opportunities that bring its people together on a cultural and individual level, allowing them to get to know one another better. These range from initiatives that promote greater mobility through the progressive relaxation of visa requirements, the multilateral agreement on the liberalisation of air services, as well as mutual recognition arrangements, to educational initiatives like student exchanges, the ASEAN International Mobility of Students Program, and ASEAN studies courses that focus on forging an ASEAN regional identity. For instance, ASEAN Member States are promoting the use of the Curriculum Sourcebook for primary and secondary schools to complement their existing supplementary materials on ASEAN.

ASEAN has now embarked on the journey to formulate the Post-2015 Agenda for ASEAN Connectivity. It will analyse and address, among others, resource mobilisation, including new financing vehicles; and the strengthening of institutional mechanisms, including the alignment and coordination of stakeholders as well as engaging businesses, non-government organisations and civil society.

Overall, physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity will promote economic growth, narrow the development gap, enhance regional competitiveness and promote deeper ties among ASEAN peoples and between ASEAN and the rest of the world. Strong and vibrant connectivity is essential to ASEAN’s drive towards becoming a more competitive and resilient region that is firmly integrated in the global economy.