Dedi Dinarto

Long before the discourse on the future of ASEAN centrality, S. Rajaratnam and Thanat Khoman have put their respective ideas on the ontological part of ASEAN, meaning that where ASEAN should depart on its characteristic, thus shape the way its interact at both internal and external level.

Rajaratnam pointed out that the long shadow of Cold War has shaped this region as the “states of fear” where every countries sought to defend themselves from external threat, and provide baseline to construct ‘common threat’. Given the situation of the escalating tension between Soviet Union and the United States, ASEAN chose to setback its activism not to show off their teeth instead of barricading Southeast Asia from the influx of communism influence.

On the other side, Thanat Khoman contrastively derived his idea on how to place the ideal and peaceful cooperation, given the framework to set aside the rising tension of konfrontasi of Indonesia and Malaysia, and other disputes between neighboring countries. He put that the ASEAN should represent a constitutive regime serving promise towards more cohesive, peaceful, and stable condition.

Between those two prominent views, it remains logical that ASEAN has produced 1967 Bangkok Declaration, Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), and Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) pacts to achieve their objectives. In spite of departing from different views on ASEAN at the first place, these two ideas can be bridged under the framework of winning the security and stability of the region. Neither national interest nor external parties are regarded crucial at that time.

Reflecting from the event of historical sociology between Rajaratnam and Thanat Khoman provides us the outlook of how ASEAN is able to determine its centrality.

However, it should be admitted that the composite interaction between ASEAN member states and its strategic partners nowadays has pushed political scientists and practitioners to look at ASEAN not only as a unproblematic regional body, but as a constructive and flexible pivot amidst tricky surroundings.

This is the matter of how we think about ‘ASEAN Centrality’ as an idea, which implies the source of power of ASEAN as a regional body. The governmentality has proceed to far serving the elites’ interest which surrounded by state-centric approach and calculation.

Not to do away from the dominant discourse, the elites could provide breakthrough creating intensive and fruitful cooperation on more human-centric issues. Negotiating major countries in the region to cooperate in non-traditional security issues that are quite transnational and require high and strict coordination and control mechanisms. Giving the example in how to attract China to aware on the issue of disasters and marine safety, and terrorism in the region would shed light on.

Therefore, this reflective approach underpin the way on how ASEAN member states could define their interests based on human-centric prioritization, and thus put up those issues to the responsibility of strategic partner countries. By doing this way, ASEAN can find its centrality amidst the complexities of international politics in the region. In other words, the centrality must be seen as a phenomenon coherent to change and intersubjective configuration.

Dedi Dinarto is a research assistant at ASEAN Studies Center, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada.

This article was published on 7 September 2016 in Jakarta Post

Dedi Dinarto – Research Assistant at ASEAN Studies Center UGM

Given the rising concerns over transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia, the 28th ASEAN Summit in Vientiane this week will face an uphill challenge. This holds true as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported a rise in production of illicit drugs and an expansion of the synthetic drug market in the region after the implementation of the ASEAN Community last year.

It is inevitable that Laos should hold up the discussion to address the issue of transnational crime for several reasons.

Vientiane’s ASEAN chairmanship this year was viewed with pessimism when it came to the issue of the South China Sea. Some of the reasons originated from Laos’ landlocked geographical conditions, which allows it to disregard the security of the sea as crucial and coherent for economic interests, and the lavish influence of China over Laos through the latest cooperation scheme, namely the Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone.

However, the importance of associating Laos’ leadership with the transnational crime issue is mainly due to the fact that the country is part of the Golden Triangle, which serves as one of the producers of narcotics and a drug transit point for shipments to North America, Europe and other regions in Asia.

Laos directly contributes to the increasing production and expansion of such transnational crime networks. At the same time, the number of arrests related to drugs has tripled in Laos over the last half decade.

On the other hand, Laos has completely ratified the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime with the protocol that cancels out the potential benefits it could gain from the narcotics industries.

Moreover, on a broader level, Kuala Lumpur’s leadership last year intensified the fight against transnational organized crime. This development is not supposed to decline under Laos’ chairmanship.

Consequently, the upcoming ASEAN Summit is to manifest the points that have been set forth and agreed within the ASEAN Regional Forum Statement on Strengthening Cooperation in the Management of Cross-Border Movement of Criminals and the formulation of a fresh ASEAN plan of action agreed at the previous ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC).

However, in that agenda, the ASEAN member states are supposed to overlook the inter-governmental decision-making process, which is inadequate to combat transnational crime. The failure, according to professor of international affairs Ralf Emmers, was not only caused by domestic circumstances but also by its inbuilt resistance to action and institutional reforms and its inability to criminalize transnational crime.

Besides, they only focused on non-binding and unspecific measures without addressing the question of funding, setting target dates, or establishing monitoring mechanisms to assess progress.

For example, the 10th AMMTC noted the importance of growing of transnational crime as a threat against regional security.

Thus, the response was to broaden their working coverage area by adding the illicit trafficking in wildlife, timber and people smuggling to the provision involving drug trafficking, economic crimes, human trafficking, piracy, money laundering, terrorism, weapon smuggling and cybercrime. Unfortunately, this initiative demonstrated the statist yet similar approach that has been taken by ASEAN member states since 1997.

The effort to securitize transnational organized crime has been successful, but leaves behind the regional practice to combat such an issue.

Rather than having an intensive approach toward the regional threat, ASEAN member states prefer to adopt a regional agreement if it will work significantly at the national level. Therefore, there is a need for shifting the paradigm toward “shared sovereignty”.

If regional security was primarily measured based on the absence of a threat to each nation’s security, then it is now time to see ASEAN as a whole community. The term of “community” adopted at the end of 2015 duly signifies that ASEAN should move from its state-centric security into a human-centric security.

Is it possible to hear a similar voice to that which came out of Thailand’s then foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan in June 1998, who proposed to amend the basic principle of non-intervention?

What may happen in the days following the ASEAN Summit and its “dianoetic” slogan of “Turning vision into reality for a dynamic ASEAN Community” will provide the answers.

Dio Tobing – Intern at ASEAN Studies Center, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada

If the European Union is still dealing with mass influx of forced migration from the Middle East, Southeast Asian refugee crisis has also been going on for more than years. These refugees are mainly coming from places, which experience worst cases of human tragedy including political instability at their place of origins, conflict-zones, and human rights violations. At this very moment, ASEAN member countries have not yet reached any agreement on how to respond towards this issue, which is why the responsibility then goes back to its members individually.

Due to this lack of agreement within the forum, many people tend to blame the inability and incompetence of ASEAN members in responding this issue due to their majority position as non-parties the 1951 Refugee Convention. Many have also argued that the international community should pressure and urge ASEAN member states to start becoming the parties of the Refugee Convention 1951, as there are only two ASEAN members who have ratified the convention, which are Cambodia and the Philippines.

However, does ratifying such international law reflect states compliance towards its provision? Is international law a manipulable façade for power politics? (Koskenniemi, 2011) Even in the reality of ASEAN region, countries who are highly associated with the issue of refugee have constructively showed progress responding with refugee crisis. In mid-2015, the Ministerial Meeting on Irregular Movement of People in Southeast Asia have successfully adopted a joint statement stressing states responsibilities and obligations to provide humanitarian assistance towards irregular migrants initiated by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The governments of these three countries have committed to deliver humanitarian assistance and temporary shelters to those in need and those who stranded at the sea.

Moreover, these three countries also have their domestic mechanism in dealing with this problem similar to the provision of the 1951 Refugee Convention. For instance, Indonesia government refers to the Letter of the Directorate General of Immigration No. F-IL.01.10-1297. Government of Indonesia emphasizes that those who are seeking asylum in Indonesia would not be deported. The government also stresses that they are working in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) when handling the case of refugee. The provision of this letter is also in accordance with the principle of Non-Refoulement (Justinar, 2011).

Not only Indonesia, Thailand also stands as state not party to the Refugee Convention, however, the country has worked hard in providing temporary shelters along the Thai-Burma border, currently accommodating more than 105.000 refugees (EU, 2016). For Malaysia, there are currently more than 150.000 refugees registered by the UNHCR residing in the country (Lokman, 2016).

These three major ASEAN member countries do not become party to the Refugee Convention yet to some extent, their actions and policies reflected their compliance the fundamental principle codified into the convention, the Customary Principle of Non-Refoulement. Recognizing that the prohibition of refoulement stands on the same level of prohibition of torture as peremptory norm of international law, or jus cogens (UNHCR, 2006). These major countries affected by mass influx in Southeast Asian region have acted accordingly, as bound by the Customary International Law on prohibition of refoulement, although not becoming state parties to 1951 Refugee Convention. Even if there are no regional cooperation or agreement on responding towards the issue and although majority ASEAN members do not ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention, some states are in cooperation among each other as well as act unilaterally to overcome this issue in accordance to national policy.