Asean's charter has to negotiate uncharted waters

http://www.bangkokpost.com/151208_News/15Dec2008_news19.php

THANIDA TANSUBHAPOL


After more than 40 years the Association of Southeast Asian Nations today effects the Asean charter, which makes this regional grouping a legally cognizant organisation. Foreign ministers of the 10 member countries will celebrate this milestone at the Asean Secretariat in Jakarta.

Drawing up the charter has been a perplexing topic in the Asean community for more than five years. That it is reaching fruition belies the fact that Asean has been in existence for almost two generations without any actual fully legal status.

For sure, Asean as a group has made many binding agreements, but this is in the absence of any mechanism to enforce its members to comply. That has given Asean poor credibility in the international negotiation arena.

The Asean charter is intended to make the 10 members in Southeast Asia a cohesive community with three strategic pillars - politics and security, economic, and socio-cultural - by 2015.


The formation of the Asean "community" has the aim of making the members part of the same family and giving them the capacity to facilitate trade together as well as having more bargaining power and more capability to compete in the international stage in all fields.

The formalising of the charter will create a lot of changes to how Asean works. For example, Asean's human rights body can now be set up to protect and promote human rights issues among member countries. Plus, more active participation by civil societies will see more active engagement with Asean's policies and its work.

In addition, the charter has increased the Asean chairman's role in order to respond quickly to emergencies.The Asean leaders will meet twice a year as opposed to once a year. Urgent issues or crises that affect Asean can be discussed and tackled immediately.

A dispute settlement has also been established under the charter allowing Asean member states to resolve their disputes through dialogue, consultation and negotiation. If any dispute remains unresolved, it will be referred to the Asean summit for a decision.

It also means the Asean Secretariat will have more power to monitor and report on the members' compliance to the leaders' forum. If any nation does not comply with agreements, the secretariat will report to the leaders.

As for the secretariat itself, it will have four deputy secretaries-general compared to the current two. Each will take responsibility for one of the four community pillars as well as administrative work, civil society issues and human rights.

To be more active, each Asean country will have a permanent representative to Jakarta to coordinate and facilitate the more than 700 meetings around the world annually. The permanent representative with the rank of an ambassador can call for an urgent meeting and implement any agreement. This will facilitate Asean's work.

Thailand, as the host of the 14th Asean summit, which has been postponed for a few months, has set a theme for the meeting entitled "Asean Charter for the Asean People". This is intended to encourage Asean to reach out to the citizens of the 10 member states and try to promote more harmony within the body.

But this will be no easy task as the 10 member countries encompass a wide development gap and the people of each country tend to be competitive towards one another rather than share a common interest in harmony.

Vitavas Sivihok, Thailand's Asean director-general, concedes Asean still has a long way to go. Asean as yet cannot be called a "community", although some productive progress can be expected in the next seven years.

"The charter will give Asean legal authority. It's like a man has reached the legal age of maturity, so he can do things on a legal level," Mr Vitavas said.

It is hoped that problems affecting Asean countries, such as those related to the environment, labour, food, health, human resource development and education, which were not addressed much in the past, will be tackled step by step through the Asean coordinating council chaired by the foreign ministers. The council will take care of three Asean community councils in each pillar before forwarding particular cases to the leaders.

Mr Vitavas said cooperation under the economic pillar has the clearest objectives as the group has free trade agreements (FTA) among members and other countries. The Asean charter, therefore, will give other countries that much more confidence to make further agreements with Asean.

"In terms of signing FTAs with other countries, if Asean is in total agreement then it will show that each member country will have considered the pros and cons at a level in which Asean will not be at a disadvantage with other partners," he said.

As for the political and security pillars, Mr Vitavas believed the policy of non-interference will become more relaxed. If two member states are in dispute over an issue, Asean will not interfere in internal matters, but the leaders now will have more licence to raise questions for discussion than before.

Dealing with the non-compliant members, he said, will still be a challenge, even though the charter will give the secretariat more enforcement authority.

"If an issue is brought up at a leaders' meeting, we will be able to seek measures to deal with the situation."

Asean's panel on human rights is now working hard to complete the task of establishing the terms of reference for the Asean office which is expected to be up and working on issues by next year.

He acknowledged the socio-culture pillar is Asean's weakest point. "We know little about our neighbours and Asean members. We have no mechanisms to link our peoples together and we have no shared language. A strong community must have a people working in harmony. There must be more kinds of activities that involve the participation of all peoples," Mr Vitavas said.

Bringing the concept of Asean to the people is the big challenge. Thailand will try to reposition Asean so it is seen less as a state-administered body by promoting the role of civil society and academia.

"We have to build a people's forum in parallel with the state forum. We should not be afraid that civil society will pose a challenge to the organisation. We ultimately just have to bring a convergence to what are parallel tracks."

Prapat Thepchatree, the director of Asean studies at Thammasat University, backs the Asean charter as it will create a more complete entity. But he questions why it has taken so long.

In contrast, he said, the United Nations established its charter in 1945, while Asean has lain neglected as an authoritative body for more than 40 years.

Mr Prapat has carefully studied the Asean charter and believes it will not do much to help improve Asean. Charter or not, he says, Asean will be little different as there are still many weak points.

"The charter is not a guideline for Asean in the long run, just until 2015. It still adheres to the non-interference policy as it remains unclear as to how this will actually change. Although the charter signifies the setting up of a human rights body, ultimately there might be complete paralysis as those officials who are drafting the [terms of reference] come from member countries such as Burma who might not want to see their countries being affected by it," Mr Prapat said.

Another weak point is that there is no clear mechanism for civil society to take part in Asean. "Asean was set up long after the UN was founded, yet it is more outdated than the UN in many aspects. Asean therefore should look to the UN or European Union models which let non-government organisations register as consultative counsel."

That is no surprise as many Asean members such as Burma, Laos and Vietnam are under dictatorial rule. They do not want the people's participation.

The objective of Asean as a community, he said, still lacks sincerity. "If we want Asean to be compared with the EU, then there is little hope.