ASEAN and a load of old crap

The summit

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held its 13th summit in Singapore on Monday and Tuesday amid global concerns over the continuous crackdown on human rights activists in one of its member countries: Myanmar.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also attended the event and held meeting with leaders of the nine other member countries.

The summit, obviously was not the first. It fact, in the last several years it had become something routine. It just takes place regularly even though there is no special agenda that needs the common and urgent attention of all the leaders of the 10 countries in the 40 year old grouping.

With probably the signing of the ASEAN Charter as the only exception, actually other issues discussed by the leaders have been, are still being, or will be, discussed in various other international forums.
Such issues include Myanmar which has been deliberated at the United Nations although to this date there seems to be no agreement among the world’s major powers on the best way to deal with the repressive administration in the country.

ASEAN leaders, in the mean time, apparently will stick to their “own way”—meaning punitive sanctions against the country’s military junta are out of the questions.

Another “top agenda” was the climate change. It is yet to be seen whether the Association will come up with a joint stance on the issue prior to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC) meeting in December in Bali. Chances are slim that they will because—as many analysts have said—ASEAN actually is still very far from an “integrated” region.

Its membership, for example, ranges from the very poor to the moderately rich, from democracies to monarchies, and from military rules to communist regimes.

Even the so-called “historic” ASEAN Charter looks like it can barely function as a tool to enhance the cohesiveness of one of the world’s oldest regional associations.

The long-overdue Charter is actually aimed at formally turning the organization—which has frequently been derided as a powerless talk shop—into a rule-based legal entity by setting up a human rights agency.

But, the fact that the 10 leaders have finally agreed to take out references to punishing violators again tells us that ASEAN still concentrates its activities on “moral influence”—if nothing else.