199 25 3MB
English Pages [209] Year 2012
Building a People-oriented Security Community the ASEAN Way
ASEAN has declared its intention to create a security community in Southeast Asia that is people-oriented. This book evaluates ASEAN’s progress, and in doing so examines three matters of concern. The book firstly looks at the importance of constitutive norms to the workings of security communities, by identifying ASEAN’s constitutive norms and the extent to which they act as a help or hindrance in establishing a security community. It then moves on to how ASEAN has interpreted people-oriented as empowering civil society organisations to be community stakeholders. The book discusses the uncertainty between how ASEAN envisages their role, and the role they themselves expect to have. Civil society actors are seeking to influence what sort of community evolves and their ability to interact with the state elite is evaluated to determine what interpretation of people-oriented is likely to emerge. Thirdly, in order to make progress ASEAN has sought to achieve cooperation among its member states in functional areas. The book examines this interest in functional cooperation through case studies on human rights, HIV/AIDS and disaster management. By discussing the notion of ASEAN being people-oriented, and how it engages with ‘the people’, the book provides important insights into what type of community ASEAN is building, as well as furthering our understanding of security communities more broadly. Alan Collins is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University, UK. His has written extensively on Southeast Asian security with a particular emphasis on non-traditional security, securitisation and ASEAN.
Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series
1 Land Tenure, Conservation and Development in Southeast Asia Peter Eaton 2 The Politics of Indonesia-Malaysia Relations One kin, two nations Joseph Chinyong Liow 3 Governance and Civil Society in Myanmar Education, health and environment Helen James 4 Regionalism in Post-Suharto Indonesia Edited by Maribeth Erb, Priyambudi Sulistiyanto and Carole Faucher 5 Living with Transition in Laos Market integration in Southeast Asia Jonathan Rigg 6 Christianity, Islam and Nationalism in Indonesia Charles E. Farhadian
9 The Politics of Tyranny in Singapore and Burma Aristotle and the rhetoric of benevolent despotism Stephen McCarthy 10 Ageing in Singapore Service needs and the state Peggy Teo, Kalyani Mehta, Leng Leng Thang and Angelique Chan 11 Security and Sustainable Development in Myanmar Helen James 12 Expressions of Cambodia The politics of tradition, identity and change Edited by Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier and Tim Winter 13 Financial Fragility and Instability in Indonesia Yasuyuki Matsumoto
7 Violent Conflicts in Indonesia Analysis, representation, resolution Edited by Charles A. Coppel
14 The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics The deployment of adat from colonialism to indigenism Edited by Jamie S. Davidson and David Henley
8 Revolution, Reform and Regionalism in Southeast Asia Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam Ronald Bruce St John
15 Communal Violence and Democratization in Indonesia Small town wars Gerry van Klinken
16 Singapore in the Global System Relationship, structure and change Peter Preston 17 Chinese Big Business in Indonesia The state of the capital Christian Chua 18 Ethno-religious Violence in Indonesia From soil to God Chris Wilson 19 Ethnic Politics in Burma States of conflict Ashley South 20 Democratization in Post-Suharto Indonesia Edited by Marco Bünte and Andreas Ufen 21 Party Politics and Democratization in Indonesia Golkar in the Post-Suharto era Dirk Tomsa 22 Community, Environment and Local Governance in Indonesia Locating the Commonweal Edited by Carol Warren and John F. McCarthy
26 Muslims in Singapore Piety, politics and policies Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir, Alexius A. Pereira and Bryan S. Turner 27 Timor Leste Politics, history and culture Andrea Katalin Molnar 28 Gender and Transitional Justice The women of East Timor Susan Harris Rimmer 29 Environmental Cooperation in Southeast Asia ASEAN’s regime for trans-boundary haze pollution Paruedee Nguitragool 30 The Theatre and the State in Singapore Terence Chong 31 Ending Forced Labour in Myanmar Engaging a pariah regime Richard Horsey 32 Security, Development and NationBuilding in Timor-Leste A cross-sectoral assessment Edited by Vandra Harris and Andrew Goldsmith
23 Rebellion and Reform in Indonesia Jakarta’s security and autonomy polices in Aceh Michelle Ann Miller
33 The Politics of Religion in Indonesia Syncretism, orthodoxy, and religious contention in Java and Bali Edited by Michel Picard and Remy Madinier
24 Hadrami Arabs in Present-day Indonesia An Indonesia-oriented group with an Arab signature Frode F. Jacobsen
34 Singapore’s Ageing Population Managing healthcare and end of life decisions Edited by Wing-Cheong Chan
25 Vietnam’s Political Process How education shapes political decision making Casey Lucius
35 Changing Marriage Patterns in Southeast Asia Economic and socio-cultural dimensions Edited by Gavin W. Jones, Terence H. Hull and Maznah Mohamad
36 The Political Resurgence of the Military in Southeast Asia Conflict and leadership Edited by Marcus Mietzner
43 Population Policy and Reproduction in Singapore Making future citizens Shirley Hsiao-Li Sun
37 Neoliberal Morality in Singapore How family policies make state and society Youyenn Teo
44 Labour Migration and Human Trafficking Critical perspectives from Southeast Asia Michele Ford, Lenore Lyons and Willem van Schendel
38 Local Politics in Indonesia Pathways to power Nankyung Choi 39 Separatist Conflict in Indonesia The long-distance politics of the Acehnese diaspora Antje Missbach 40 Corruption and Law in Indonesia The unravelling of Indonesia’s anti-corruption framework through law and legal process Simon Butt 41 Men and Masculinities in Southeast Asia Edited by Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons 42 Justice and Governance in East Timor Indigenous approaches and the ‘New Subsistence State’ Rod Nixon
45 Singapore Malays Being ethnic minority and Muslim in a global city-State Hussin Mutalib 46 Political Change and Territoriality in Indonesia Provincial proliferation Ehito Kimura 47 Southeast Asia and the Cold War Edited by Albert Lau 48 Legal Pluralism in Indonesia Bridging the unbridgeable Ratno Lukito 49 Building a People-oriented Security Community the ASEAN Way Alan Collins
Building a People-oriented Security Community the ASEAN Way
Alan Collins
First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Alan Collins The right of Alan Collins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Collins, Alan, 1967– Building a people-oriented security community the ASEAN way / Alan Collins. p. cm. – (Routledge contemporary Southeast Asia series ; 49) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Security, International – Social aspects – Southeast Asia. 2. Non-state actors (International relations) – Southeast Asia. 3. ASEAN. 4. Regionalism (International organization) – Southeast Asia. I. Title. JZ6009.S644C65 2012 361.7´70959–dc23 2012004152 ISBN: 978-0-415-60868-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-10484-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by HWA Text and Data Management, London
Contents
Preface List of abbreviations Introduction
ix xii 1
1 Dependable expectations of peaceful change
11
2 ASEAN’s constitutive norms
29
3 Norm entrepreneurs, community plans of action and the ASEAN Charter
49
4 Human rights
79
5 HIV/AIDS
107
6 Disaster management
130
7 Conclusion
152
Notes Bibliography Index
163 167 182
Preface
Although my initial thoughts about the subject matter of this book began to form in 2006 the desire to write about security communities and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has long been in gestation. I was introduced to the value of Deutsch’s writings on security communities when I began my PhD nearly twenty years ago; then the subject matter was security dilemmas and how security communities are mitigators and possibly even transcenders of security dilemmas. I’ve been intrigued about how the literature on security communities has evolved from its Deutschian roots and especially the boost it received after Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett’s much acclaimed edited book reinvigorated the subject matter. It seemed to me though that just as security studies was asking interesting questions about sources of insecurity other than war, and identifying different referent objects to be the study of (in)security, the security community literature was hamstrung by a definition that prioritised war and the inevitable focus that follows from this on the state elite, since they are the custodians of a state’s military power. In part therefore this book is an attempt to recapture the peace-inducing qualities of a security community, which lies in the notion that security arises from shared values and identities; security is a common accomplishment. While this can be understood in terms of war and the use of force, there is nothing in Deutsch’s work, with its emphasis on transnational linkages, which limits it to this source of insecurity. Once security is conceived in a broader, more holistic fashion, then state elite are no longer the only actors of value and non-state elite can be seen to be significant players in the achievement of security. From a conceptual perspective the book therefore engages with the development of the security community literature with the aim of broadening the scope of what it means to be secure within a security community and, in doing so, highlights the importance of non-state elite; this focus away from the state elite captures, I believe, the significance of the ‘people’ in Deutsch et al.’s original conception. The case study is ASEAN, chosen in part because it is often considered an example of a security community, and a non-liberal one at that. It is also chosen though because since Bali-II in 2003 the rhetoric adopted by ASEAN embraces the comprehensive and people-focused approach to security that has distinctly Deutschian undertones. The book is therefore an examination of ASEAN post-
x Preface 2003 and whether the change in rhetoric amounts to a challenge to the norms that underpin its modus operandi, since, as I argue, traditional ASEAN practice has not sown the seeds for a Deutschian security community. I am also particularly interested in whether, by responding to an array of matters that are classified as ‘non-traditional security’, ASEAN has embarked upon a functional approach to cooperation that might (a) overcome its renowned implementation problem; and (b) open space for non-state elite to play a role in the decision-making process. I think it is fair to say, ASEAN’s building of a security community is very much a work in progress. As with all such projects it would have been impossible to accomplish without the assistance of a great many people and funding organisations. I am deeply indebted to the funding provided by the British Academy and the Association of South-East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom (ASEASUK), which enabled me to conduct fieldwork in Southeast Asia and interview staff at the ASEAN Secretariat and the self-motivated and conscientious people that work in a variety of Southeast Asian civil society organisations. I am also grateful to Ralf Emmers for both including me in his MacArthur funded project on ASEAN and East Asian institutional coherence, which was particularly helpful for the work conducted on ASEAN and HIV/AIDS, as well as his assistance in securing a visiting fellowship at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in 2006 and 2010. At RSIS I owe a debt of thanks to Mely Caballero-Anthony, Ralf Emmers, Sofiah Jamil, Irene Kuntjoro, Alistair Cook and Barry Desker for their help and assistance. I also benefited from speaking with Christopher Roberts, Yeo Lay Hwee, Kusuma Snitwongse, Rizal Sukma, Lina Alexandra, Thitinam Pongsudhirak, Carolina Hernandez, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, Noel Morada, Herman Joseph Kraft, Alice Ba and many others. I am extremely grateful to the following ASEAN Secretariat staff who were kind enough to meet with me and answer my questions: Termsak Chalermpalanupap, Rachmat Irwansjah, Marqueza Lepana Reyes and Joel Atienza. I also remain in Imanuela Rivie Ayudhia’s debt for helping to organise these meetings. Finally, I owe a great deal to Amitav Acharya for all his assistance, not least of which was providing me with a unique opportunity to interview Dr Surin Pitsuwan in the back of his car in the middle of Bristol, UK. This book has not though benefited solely from academic input and those in policy-making circles. I am extremely indebted to the assistance provided by the staff of many civil society organisations that have responded to ASEAN’s peopleoriented impulse. In this respect Alexander Chandra has helped enormously and I am deeply grateful for his help. Yuyun Wahyuningrum is an inspiration for all she has done with the ASEAN Civil Society Conference and the Interface, and I only wish we had had more opportunity to discuss the trials and tribulations of how these forums have evolved. I know I echo many people’s thanks for ASEANcats, an indispensible source of information on civil society organisations and ASEAN. I have benefited greatly from discussions with, among others, Sinapan Samydorai at the Think Centre, Singapore; Kavi Chongkittavorn; Apichai Sunchindah and Indy Hardono at the ASEAN Foundation; Anoop Sukumaran and Dorothy Grace Guerrero at the Focus on the Global South (Bangkok) and Jenina Joy Chavez at
Preface xi the Focus on the Global South (Manila); Corinna Lopa at the South East Asian Committee for Advocacy (SEACA); and Rashid Kang and Yap Swee Seng at Forum-Asia (Bangkok) and Atnike Nova Sigiro at Forum-Asia (Jakarta); Hirim Nurliana at the Human Rights Working Group; Ray Paolo Santiago at the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism; and Craig Strathern at the International Committee of the Red Cross. Finally, there are of course those that provide intangible support and I am grateful for the understanding shown by family members that have had to cope when I am away for lengthy periods of time conducting fieldwork and giving papers. Since the birth of our son, Angela and Mike have been a great source of support, especially to my partner Melissa and this is much appreciated. Melissa and Oliver have also been a wonderful release valve for coping with the pressures that come from writing and publishing in this Research Excellence Framework age, and being that necessary reminder that there is more to life than academic study.
Abbreviations
AADMER AADMER WP ABAC ABC ACDM ACMW
ACSC ACW ACWC ADB ADMER ADPC AEC AEGDM AEMM AEPF AFTA AHA AHMM AHRB AHRD AHTF AICHR AICOHR AIDS AIPMC AIPO AMM
ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Responses ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Responses Work Programme ASEAN Business Advisory Council abstain, be faithful, condom if necessary ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management ASEAN Committee on the Implementation of the ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers ASEAN Civil Society Conference ASEAN Committee on Women ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children Asian Development Bank ASEAN Disaster Management and Emergency Relief Fund Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre ASEAN Economic Community ASEAN Expert Group on Disaster Management ASEAN–EU Ministerial Meetings Asia–Europe People’s Forum ASEAN Free Trade Area ASEAN Co-ordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting ASEAN Human Rights Body ASEAN Human Rights Declaration ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights ASEAN ISIS Colloquium on Human Rights acquired immunodeficiency syndrome ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Myanmar Caucus ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organisation ASEAN Ministerial Meeting
List of abbreviations xiii AMMSWD APA APCASO APF APG APLO APN+ APSC ARDEX ARF ARF-VDR ARPDM ART ASA ASC ASC PoA ASCC ASCC PoA ASEAN ASEAN-CCI ASEAN-ISIS ASEM AsiaDHRRA ATFOA AWP CARAM Asia CCM CEDAW CGDK CIDA CMLV CPM CRC CSCE CSIS CSO CSW DaLA DiREx
ASEAN Ministers Meeting on Social Welfare and Development ASEAN People’s Assembly Asia Pacific Council of AIDS Service Organizations ASEAN People’s Forum ASEAN Partnership Group Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS ASEAN Political-Security Community ASEAN Regional Disaster Emergency Response Simulation Exercise ASEAN Regional Forum ASEAN Regional Forum Voluntary Demonstration of Response ASEAN Regional Programme on Disaster Management antiretroviral therapies Association of Southeast Asia ASEAN Security Community ASEAN Security Community’s Plan of Action ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community’s Plan of Action Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies Asia–Europe Meeting Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia ASEAN Task Force on AIDS ASEAN Work Programme Coordination of Action Research on Aids and Mobility in Asia Country Coordinating Mechanism Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea Canadian International Development Agency Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam Communist Party of Malaya Convention on the Rights of the Child Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Center for Strategic and International Studies civil society organisation commercial sex worker Damage and Loss Assessment Disaster Relief Exercise
xiv List of abbreviations DK DRR DRRM EPG ER ERAT ESCAP FAO FBO FIDH FSW GFATM GIPA GMS GO GONGO GPA HAART HFA HIV HLP HLTF HPAI ICC ICJ ICRC IDSS IDU IGO INGO IMF INTERFET ISDS ISEAS ISMDR JUNIMA KAPB MAP MNPED MoU MSM MTCT
Democratic Kampuchea disaster risk reduction Disaster Risk Reduction and Management ASEAN Eminent Persons Group emergency response Emergency Rapid Assessment Team UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization faith-based organisation International Federation for Human Rights female sex worker The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Greater Involvement of People with AIDS Greater Mekong Subregion Guidelines of Operation government-organized non-governmental organization Global Program on AIDS Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy Hyogo Framework for Action human immunodeficiency virus High Level Panel High Level Task Force Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza International Coordinating Committee International Court of Justice International Committee of the Red Cross Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies intravenous drug use intergovernmental organisation international non-governmental organisation International Monetary Fund International Force for East Timor Institute for Strategic and Development Studies Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Inter-Sessional Meetings on Disaster Relief Joint United Nations Initiative on Mobility and HIV/AIDS in Southeast Asia knowledge, changing attitudes, and finally altering practices and behaviour Multi-Country AIDS Programme Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development Memorandum of Understanding men who have sex with men mother-to-child transmission
List of abbreviations xv NATO NDPCC NGO NHRI NLD OCHA
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Natural Disaster Preparedness Central Committee non-governmental organisation National Human Rights Institution National League for Democracy United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OFDA Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance OSCE Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe PCB Programme Coordinating Board PEF People’s Empowerment Foundation PEPFAR US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief PLHA people living with HIV/AIDS PMTCT preventing mother-to-child transmission Post-Nargis Joint Assessment PONJA Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan PONREPP Post-Nargis Periodic Review PR Agreement on the ASEAN Preferential Trading Arrangements PTA Responsibility to Protect R2P SAPA Solidarity for Asian Planning on Advocacy severe acute respiratory syndrome SARS SASOP Standard Operating Procedure for Regional Standby Arrangements and Coordination of Joint Disaster Relief and Emergency Response Operations South East Asian Committee for Advocacy SEACA South East Asia National Human Rights Institution Forum SEANF Singapore Institute of International Affairs SIIA SIM Post-Nargis Social Impacts Monitoring report ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting SOM SPDC State, Peace and Development Council TCG Tripartite Core Group TFAHR SAPA Task Force on ASEAN and Human Rights ToR Terms of Reference Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS UNAIDS UNDAC UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination United Nations Development Programme UNDP UNDP-SEAHIV United Nations Development Programme South East Asia HIV and Development Programme United Nations Population Fund UNFPA UNGASS United Nations General Assembly 26th Special Session United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR UNISDR United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNRTF United Nations Regional Task Force on Mobility and HIV Vulnerability Reduction
xvi List of abbreviations USDP VAP VTA WG AHRM WHO WP
Union Solidarity and Development Party Vientiane Action Programme Village Tract Assessment Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism World Health Organization Work Programme
Introduction
Is there really a need for another book on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and security communities? The academic field of Southeast Asian studies has certainly had its fair share of works devoted to Karl Deutsch et al.’s concept for explaining why community formation is peace-inducing. Even the broader debate over which has the greater explanatory power for Southeast Asian international relations – constructivism or realism? – draws upon the argument that ASEAN is, or is not, a security community. The notion that ASEAN forms a security community has even raised question marks about the worth and value of the scholarship undertaken on Southeast Asian studies. This latter issue receives coverage in Chapter 2. Finally, within the non-regional specific literature on security communities, ASEAN is Emanuel Adler’s favourite example of a non‑liberal security community. The motivation behind this study is not so much the intricacies of the academic debates, although Charles Kupchan’s bold and inaccurate claim that ASEAN has not only created a security community in Southeast Asia but that a consensus exists amongst scholars to this affect, certainly reveals that non-regional experts remain poorly informed and so perhaps another book is warranted (Kupchan 2010). The motivation behind this study, however, is developments in the policy arena. ASEAN is trying to build a community, it is using the language of Karl Deutsch and it is prioritising areas of functional cooperation to achieve it. Does this mean it is building a Deutschian security community? Is functional cooperation in nontraditional security areas an intriguing development for security communities away from its obsession with war? Is ASEAN, much lauded and derided in equal measure, capable of fulfilling its security community ambitions? Is the rhetoric of becoming people-oriented significant? These are the overarching questions that inform this study, and because they are central to understanding how communities are peace-inducing, the critical role of norms, specifically constitutive norms, will be used to evaluate ASEAN’s progress. This chapter will provide a brief overview of ASEAN’s interest in building a community and how the subsequent chapters address our questions.
2 Introduction
ASEAN and the language of community At the 9th ASEAN Summit held at Bali in October 2003, the leaders of ASEAN adopted the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II, better known as Bali Concord II. It stipulated the establishment of an ASEAN Community resting on three pillars: an ASEAN Security Community (ASC), subsequently renamed an ASEAN PoliticalSecurity Community (APSC); an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC); and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). The target date to accomplish this was originally set for 2020 but this has been subsequently revised to 2015, although given such an unrealistic timeframe 2015 is likely to be reinterpreted as a significant milestone on the path to building an ASEAN Community rather than the date by which a fully fledged community comes into existence. Some of the terminology used to explain this community-building project and the language found in the subsequent pillars’ plans of action, adopted the following year at Vientiane, and their blueprints, bear a remarkable similarity to the academic discourse surrounding security communities. For example, mature security communities are marked by a shared identity, dependable expectations of peaceful change, and they have multiple and diverse mechanisms and patterns of interaction (Adler and Barnett 1998: 55). The APSC blueprint is a ‘means by which ASEAN Member States can pursue closer interaction and cooperation to forge shared norms and create common mechanisms to achieve ASEAN’s goals and objectives in the political and security fields’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009a: Article 7; emphasis added). What are these goals and objectives? To ‘bring ASEAN’s political and security cooperation to a higher plane’, and thereby ‘ensure that the peoples and Member States of ASEAN live in peace with one another and with the world at large in a just, democratic and harmonious environment’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009a: Article 6). The notion that forging shared norms to lift cooperation to a higher plane certainly reflects the progression that Adler and Barnett sketch for security community formation from nascent to maturity. One of the key arguments of this study is that norms, and the type of norms, are critical in explaining communities’ peace-inducing quality. This is the primary function of Chapter 1. The APSC blueprint explicitly acknowledges that shaping and sharing of norms consolidates and strengthens interstate and ASEAN solidarity, cohesiveness and harmony (ASEAN Secretariat 2009a: Article 12). In Chapter 3 the explanation for such similarities between ASEAN declarations and the academic literature on security communities are explained, but in short they indicate an appreciation of the academic literature by those doing the drafting, at least from Indonesia. Security communities are best known as communities in which war between the members is inconceivable. While another function of this study is to broaden that narrow focus on war, or at least the threat to use military force, it is of course a significant element of a security community. This element of a security community is given clear expression: the APSC ‘promotes renunciation of aggression and of the threat or use of force’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009a: Article 9). However, as is explained in Chapter 1, the peace-inducing quality of a community goes beyond the military sector of security, and indeed has the potential to create a
Introduction 3 sense of security that is more comprehensive in definition because belonging to a community indicates a sense of empathy for the needs of other members. Certainly ASEAN’s conception of a community adopts a holistic approach to insecurity and the measures needed to generate security go far beyond the military field; ‘The APSC subscribes to a comprehensive approach to security, which acknowledges the interwoven relationships of political, economic, social-cultural and environmental dimensions of development’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009a: Article 9). This equating of development and security is significant because it enables a broader understanding of what a security community can accomplish. In particular, we can conceive of a community as a group of actors that have a shared sense of obligation towards each other and come to recognise that their prosperity and security are intertwined, or interwoven. This broadening of what constitutes security reflects the changes that have occurred within the field of international security, as its subject matter has both broadened to include new sectors and deepened to address human security. The appreciation that security communities provide security for the people of the community, as well as the member states, is a reinforcement of Deutsch et al.’s conception of a security community being for the people (Tusicisny 2007). This is noted in Chapter 1. Once we conceive of security in terms of the people then the importance of non-state elite interactions becomes evident. For Deutsch et al. the interaction amongst the people could be discerned by measuring mail flows and travel etc. but once we identify topics, such as human rights or health as security matters, then those civil society organisations that advocate on these matters become key actors in establishing networks that cut across national boundaries and act as conduits for shared understandings among people to evolve that underpins their sense of community. The importance of civil society organisations is acknowledged by ASEAN and the notion that its communitybuilding project is for the people is captured in its people-oriented rhetoric. This recognition of the importance of civil society organisations and the emphasis placed on becoming people-oriented is a discernable change for ASEAN and this is important because its traditional modus operandi was not conducive to building a security community. The argument that ASEAN’s modus operandi has curtailed security community formation is taken up in Chapter 2. Here the norms that have come to constitute what it means to be an ASEAN member state are identified; these constitutive norms are non-interference, consensus decision making and informality. While these have helped to lessen tensions and uncertainties among the ASEAN membership, they have underpinned a regime rather than a community. Thus what is intriguing about the rhetoric of people-oriented is that by challenging the elitist nature of the Association it has the potential to be transformative for ASEAN. At the vanguard of this are civil society organisations.
Why civil society organisation? The label civil society organisation (CSO) is actually misleading since it is nonstate actors in general that are important; but CSO is adopted for both conceptual
4 Introduction and empirical reasons. Conceptually, because while they are not the only sources of new norms it is often from non-state actors, such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), that alternative approaches are championed. However, as will become evident when examining HIV/AIDS and natural disasters, other nonstate actors, including UN agencies, are important sources of new norms. I do not therefore treat United Nations (UN) bodies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as state actors, unlike Sonja Bartsch and Lars Kohlmorgen who write that, at ‘the global level, crucial state actors in public health are, of course, the WHO and UNAIDS’ (2007: 103). Although UN bodies receive funding from states they are, of course, not states and better described as intergovernmental organisations (IGOs). The extent to which an IGO is merely a representation of the powerful state(s) agenda or has an independent capacity to guide state practice, goes to the heart of the neorealist/neo-liberal institutionalist debate. In this instance, because the IGOs are UN agencies, they have specific subject expertise that they can bring to bear and frame the agency’s agenda. This expertise is multinational in origin and therefore does not represent one state’s objectives. CSO is an umbrella term that incorporates a number of different associations (NGOs, academic think tanks, social movements, foundations, faith-based organisations etc.) but what they have in common is that they are non-state, non-profit and mostly voluntary organisations. Civil society is used to reflect their operation between the state and the market thus enabling them to express peoples’ collective wills independently of established political and economic power. It is this independent status that enables CSOs to challenge preconceived norms and be an arena where new concepts of society emerge. As will become evident in the chapters on HIV/AIDS and natural disasters, UN agencies, often in conjunction with CSOs, have been able to articulate new regulative norms to guide state practice. Thus CSO is used to capture the transformative nature that these organisations embody, and while other non-state actors are not CSOs, they too can be significant sources of transformative norms. This transformative potential is captured by Adler and Barnett who refer to the officials that work in IGOs as ‘new missionaries’ (1998: 420). CSOs’ empirical significance concerns their involvement in ASEAN’s community building project as a measure of its people-oriented aspirations. The label CSO is adopted simply because it is the label used in ASEAN documentation to cover the variety of different non-state actors that have been identified as stakeholders in accomplishing its people-oriented goal. In Chapter 3 the case is made for the need to involve non-state actors, and especially CSOs, in creating security communities. There are a number of ways in which their influence or ‘power’ can be assessed in this regard. It is possible to appreciate that CSOs have power in Southeast Asia when we conceive of power in differential terms (resource-based, legal, discursive and decisionmaking power) with non-state actors enjoying discursive power and, in the HIV case, resources too. They do therefore enjoy ‘power’, the question is whether they have been able to convert that power into adjusting ASEAN’s constitutive
Introduction 5 norms, and if not, why not? One means of addressing this question would be to look at how CSOs have engaged state elite and investigate how they were able to influence decision making. While the opportunities for engagement are noted, and also what CSOs have sought is also detailed, the campaigns they embarked upon and an evaluation of these advocacy strategies is not. You will not therefore find an examination of how successful the Solidarity for Asian Planning on Advocacy’s (SAPA) ASEAN Human Rights Body (AHRB) poster was in both raising awareness among the masses of ASEAN’s creation of a human rights body, and the elite in terms of what they expected the AHRB to be able to do. The poster utilises ASEAN’s emblem of ten padi stalks to represent teeth; the implication being that the AHRB should have some bite. Another means of assessing influence would be to examine how NGOs and track-II actors and institutions have coordinated their advocacy efforts and thus reveal the nature and efficacy of Southeast Asian CSO networks. This would entail placing the analysis within the context of network politics with an appreciation of different nodes and their bargaining power. Although this is not done here such a project would indeed be valuable with SAPA and information resources such as ASEANcats, an electronic emailing list, worthy of analysis. In this project their engagement is evaluated by (a) whether they actually had the opportunity to engage the state elite, and if so has this become institutionalised; (b) examining whether ASEAN documentation represented their ideas, either fully or partially; and (c) whether their ideas have adjusted, or have the potential to adjust, ASEAN’s constitutive norms. It becomes apparent in the discussions leading to the community blueprints and the ASEAN Charter that while (a) and (b) can be discerned there remains some scepticism that they achieved (c). Nevertheless, the engagement of track-III CSOs represents an adjustment for ASEAN and even some of the ideas from track-II, which has a longer history of engagement, were more radical than their usual conservative nature. CSOs were ultimately to express their disappointment with the ASEAN Charter but their involvement in its formulation revealed a political space had opened for their engagement. The not infrequent references to civil society in the ASEAN blueprints also indicated their value as stakeholders, and perhaps indicated that as agents in delivering ASEAN’s holistic security community they could be partners in functional areas of cooperation.
Functional cooperation Functional cooperation is currently in vogue in Southeast Asia and it reflects the prevailing belief that, while many ASEAN members accept the need for greater coordination of their activities, they remain cautious about abandoning cherished principles that safeguard their sovereign independence; an independence that for many was hard fought and is relatively newly acquired. Functional cooperation essentially entails two aspects. First, that the cooperation is taking place over an issue of low politics. Second, cooperation has a spill-over effect in which successful cooperation in one issue area encourages cooperation
6 Introduction in another. The first aspect, the importance of low politics, concerns fears of defection. Traditional national security concerns are not topics for functional cooperation because defection would have an immediate, and detrimental, impact on a state’s national security. Alternatively a topic of low politics, such as health or disaster management, lessens fears of defection because if defection occurs, while the cost will be felt in that particular area of cooperation, which in itself could be important, it will not impact on national security. Functional cooperation occurs therefore over non-sensitive matters because the cost of defection is manageable. For ASEAN, functional cooperation covers the areas of science and technology; environment, culture and information; social development; drugs and narcotics control; and civil service. The second aspect concerns spillover. Initially this is still in non-sensitive areas but it is possible, over time, that should a dense network of cooperation emerge the actors (states) will begin to cooperate on matters that pertain to national security. In essence, norms emerge that guide their behaviour and this institutionalism helps to further minimise fears of defection. Of course it need not occur, but this increasing level of coordination and harmonisation of policies mirrors the growing interaction between member states and societies in Adler and Barnett’s security community. ASEAN’s holistic security community project entails cooperation over a wide range of matters that can be classified as low politics, such as enhancing education opportunities, promoting the availability of information and communication technology, strengthening food security, ensuring fair and comprehensive migration policies etc. The sheer breadth of ASEAN’s project can be appreciated by examining its Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint (ASEAN Secretariat 2009b). It is beyond the scope of one book to examine these in sufficient detail to determine not just whether cooperation is emerging, but whether such cooperation indicates the emergence of regulative norms from non-state actors that could challenge ASEAN’s constitutive norms. Instead, three case studies are examined that are people-oriented and offer the prospect of witnessing functional cooperation. They are: human rights, HIV/AIDS and natural disasters. The promotion of human rights, given how sensitive member states are about this topic, is not an obvious choice for functional cooperation. Nevertheless, since emerging on the ASEAN agenda in 1993 there has been a steady, incremental, engagement of human rights by the member states. This initially entailed making use of academic think tanks in the track-II process and by 2007 the establishment of a human rights body was enshrined in the ASEAN Charter. The human rights body – the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights – was inaugurated in October 2009. This would certainly appear to be evidence of ASEAN cooperation evolving on a sensitive subject that eventually became part of official ASEAN discourse and by 2009 was manifest with an institutional base. In Chapter 4 the extent to which this challenged and adjusted ASEAN’s constitutive norms is examined. The second case study is ASEAN’s response to HIV/AIDS, which falls within the remit of ASEAN’s social development. The response to HIV/AIDS is a good
Introduction 7 example of functional cooperation because it has to be multifaceted in order to be effective. This entails appreciating that HIV represents more than just a public health issue and directly links to a range of matters from societal norms over sexuality and drug use, to care for those, such as orphans, whose lives are directly affected by AIDS. Its multifaceted nature therefore encourages the type of spillover into a variety of areas that a functional approach can achieve. This is not to suggest that obstacles do not exist, and the extent to which these complicate ASEAN’s response and reveal the presence of its constitutive norms is the focus for Chapter 5. The third and final case study is ASEAN’s interest in disaster management. Responding to natural disasters has become a matter of enhanced ASEAN activity over the last decade and specifically since 2009 with the ratification of the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response and its subsequent work programme. According to Mely Caballero-Anthony, natural disasters and their devastating impact seem the natural area where sub-regional and even inter-regional functional cooperation can flourish. It is also an area where despite obstacles to inter-state cooperation, the compelling need to respond to humanitarian disasters can overcome concerns about national sovereignty. The 2008 Nargis cyclone in Myanmar is a case in point. (2009: 42–43) It certainly appears to be a topic worthy of investigation. It appears to be not only an area for functional cooperation, and one that can overcome the constitutive norm of non-interference, but also has an example attached with one of ASEAN’s most recalcitrant members. In Chapter 6 ASEAN’s foray into disaster management and disaster risk reduction is examined to ascertain the extent of non-state actor involvement and whether challenges to ASEAN’s constitutive norms can be discerned.
Structure Security communities are defined as arenas in which the members enjoy dependable expectations of peaceful change. In Chapter 1 the explanation of how security communities create such dependable expectations of peaceful change is explained in comparison to security regimes, which arguably also create such dependable expectation. Why arguably? Because in regimes states remain egoistical actors and thus ultimately cannot be trusted to comply with the norms in operation; hence Robert Jervis’ notion that regimes contain the seeds of their own destruction (1982: 358). This would certainly suggest that the only thing dependable about regimes is their eventual collapse. However, since security communities can also disintegrate their existence is also not guaranteed (Adler and Barnett 1998: 58). In this chapter the ‘glue’ that binds members together is shown to be quite different, and while this glue is subject to change in security communities, hence their disintegration, it is more durable than the glue in a
8 Introduction regime. This glue is constitutive norms and it is in this chapter that the literature on the different logics explaining state behaviour is examined. The second chapter takes up the argument that ASEAN has not been travelling down the path to security community formation. The identification of ASEAN’s constitutive norms reveals three that are most prominent: non-interference, consensus decision making and informality. While these support the notion of national resilience breeding regional resilience, they have hindered the development of interaction leading to social learning that underpins the emergence of a collective identity. Indeed, the ASEAN Way is essentially about prioritising national efforts to achieve security, not encouraging regional solutions to security problems. While constitutive norms are not fixed their embedded nature make them resistant to change, and in this chapter it is explained that while Burma’s human rights record has led to an adjustment of non-interference this does not equate to abandonment. Finally, the chapter highlights that by not encouraging interaction amongst the members’ societies ASEAN has stifled the multiple interactions that Deutsch et al., and Adler and Barnett forecast will be evident in a mature security community. However, the recent ASEAN declarations of creating a people-oriented community may signal a change in approach, and amount to the sort of challenge to ASEAN’s constitutive norms that opens the path towards a mature security community. This prospect is examined in Chapter 3. In Chapter 3 CSOs are identified as norm entrepreneurs and the chapter explains how these have used organisational platforms to champion changes to ASEAN’s constitutive norms and subsequently become important actors in building a community. It begins by utilising Finnemore and Sikkink’s notion of norm life cycles (1998) to capture the progression for norms from being regulative in nature to constitutive of the actors; this entails explaining such notions as tipping points and cascades. A key feature of this chapter is to explain why CSOs are important community builders and this entails appreciating their function as conduits for Adler and Barnett’s social learning and here Putnam’s social capital and Weiss’ coalitional capital receive coverage. The various strategies they can adopt to achieve a cascade are noted but while these actors are important, at least in Southeast Asia, they are reliant on the support of state elite to get their message heard. The changing political context is thus also examined to explain why space is emerging for their engagement. This then explains why it is the more liberal states in Southeast Asia that housed the convening of CSO conferences on ASEAN; which have been a manifestation of CSO activity with regard to ASEAN. This upsurge of CSO interest in ASEAN is captured in this chapter, and the distinction between track-II and track-III is also explained. The role of Indonesia in the formation of the ASC is detailed and the inputs that CSOs had in the formation of the ASEAN Charter is examined. While there were many encouraging signs of transformative norms being promulgated, the ASEAN Charter ultimately reveals the persistence of ASEAN’s constitutive norms. The final three chapters thus turn to specific case studies to determine whether in functional areas of cooperation normative change can be witnessed.
Introduction 9 The first case study is human rights. In Chapter 4 Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink’s (1999) spiral model is used to reveal three explanations for why states adopt human rights norms (instrumental adaptation, argumentative discourse and institutionalization) and the significance of world time. There is an evolutionary path connecting these that mirror the process of socialisation in Adler and Barnett’s community building so that the institutionalisation of the norm equates to it becoming a constitutive norm. The chapter identifies the norm entrepreneurs and their organisational platforms to reveal their engagement with ASEAN officials in three time periods. These are the workings of the High Level Task Force established to draft the ASEAN Charter, since it is within these discussions that the commitment to create a human rights body is achieved; the deliberations by the High Level Panel over the human rights’ body’s Terms of Reference; and, finally, its initial period of operation. A human rights body with a promote and protect mandate would represent tangible evidence of ASEAN’s transformation into a people-oriented community, but as detailed in this chapter there are strong grounds for interpreting ASEAN’s human rights body as confirming ASEAN’s constitutive norms and thus placing the adoption of human rights norms at Risse and Sikkink’s instrumental adaptation phase. Chapter 5 turns our attention to ASEAN’s fight against HIV. Responding to communicable diseases is a tangible means by which ASEAN can be seen to be people-oriented. With diseases able to transcend international borders national responses are unlikely to be successful unless they are coordinated with those taking place in neighbouring states. The identification since 1992 of HIV as a threat by ASEAN members has enabled the Association to assume a function in how the member states have responded to the virus. In formulating its response ASEAN has initiated four work programmes, the latest adopted in 2011, and these have reflected the international norms developed to guide state practice. What these norms are, and the extent to which they challenge ASEAN’s constitutive norms, is examined in this chapter. The final chapter examines ASEAN’s response to the increasing incidence of natural disasters and includes a specific examination of ASEAN’s involvement in the international response to Cyclone Nargis that struck Burma in 2008. While it is the devastation wrought by natural disasters and the emergency response that captures the headlines, disaster management is also, if not more so, concerned with making communities more resilient to natural disasters so that they are able to better withstand them when they occur. This entails a wide range of activities spanning early warning mechanisms, preparedness and mitigation that are at the domestic level. The emphasis on disaster risk reduction in disaster management captures both the long-term nature – it is not just the emergency response – as well as the breadth/depth of engagement in domestic policies. The adoption of international norms does therefore entail domestic policy following international guidance. This chapter therefore enables an examination of whether ASEAN initiatives have resulted in the harmonization of member states’ domestic policies. If so, this could be the type of functional area of cooperation that contains the seeds from which cooperation can evolve
10 Introduction in other areas and, thus, be the fertile soil from which a community could grow. In addition, it is the routine nature of disruption caused by natural disasters to the people of Southeast Asia that enables ASEAN, by being seen to be active in this field, to make meaningful its people-oriented rhetoric. We begin, though, with why it is that security communities are able to create such dependable expectations of peaceful change.
1 Dependable expectations of peaceful change
The phrase ‘dependable expectations of peaceful change’ (Deutsch et al. 1957: 5) is the mantra in the security community literature and it has its origins in the first of the literature’s two pre-eminent texts: Political Community and the North Atlantic Area written by Karl Deutsch and his associates and published in 1957. The other authoritative work is Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett’s edited volume Security Communities, which breathed life back into the concept (1998). Since then there has been a steady raft of material published examining the logic (consequentiality, appropriateness, arguing, practice, habit) underpinning state behaviour (March and Olsen 1998; Checkel 1999; Risse 2000; Müller 2004; Pouliot 2008; Hopf 2009), the relationship between security communities and neighbours (Bellamy 2004) and different security governance mechanisms (Adler and Greve 2009), the significance of liberalism (Williams 2001) and domestic stability (Nathan 2006), and the power of discourse to hold a security community together (Bially Mattern 2005). The defining feature of the concept – dependable expectations of peaceful change – has though remained unchanged; for member states’ living in a security community there exists a dependable expectation that whatever changes occur in their relations these changes will not be due to the outbreak of violence. This has in turn been interpreted to mean that not only is war between members unthinkable but that member states also do not prepare for war against one another (Adler and Barnett 1998: 34–35). In this chapter I seek two specific goals. First, to distinguish the security community from another security governance mechanism that could claim to create expectations of peaceful change that are similarly dependable. This will entail restoring the importance of community to our understanding of how security communities create peaceful relations. The second is to extend the remit of the security community for it to encompass a conception of security that is more than the absence of war. This not only means that security communities are about security, rather than the absence of war, but it also opens space for non-state elite to become key actors in establishing and maintaining a security community.
Security communities The discipline of international relations was tasked at the outset with a normative goal of examining the causes of war in order to prevent a repeat of the Great War.
12 Dependable expectations of peaceable change Identifying the type of security relationship in place at any given time, whether regionally or globally, has thus been central to the field of study. Barry Buzan has for example posited a spectrum in which one can plot a security relationship between states as one of enmity at one end to amity at the other in what he called a security complex (1991: 189–190). The type of governance structure that operates can be loosely organised with no overarching organisational mechanism or one that does exhibit institutionalised patterns of behaviour; indeed there is no reason to believe that such structures cannot overlap (Adler and Greve 2009). The former would include classic balance of power models where states balance with and bandwagon against one another in order to fulfil their objectives, whether that is to avert war or embark on conquest. It is the latter though, where institutionalised patterns of behaviour are exhibited, that is of interest to security communities and the first objective is to distinguish security communities from another governance structure that shares many of its characteristics: a security regime. The value, and similarity, of security regimes and communities can be appreciated when they are seen as mitigators and even transcenders of the security dilemma.1 The security dilemma is such a central concept in international relations because it arises from the anarchical nature of the international system; Wheeler and Booth go so far as to call it the ‘quintessential dilemma’ (1992: 29). With no guarantor providing security for states, states are forced to act as egoists acquiring the capabilities to protect themselves from neighbouring powers. This self-help approach to seeking security is though ultimately flawed. The capabilities states’ acquire to defend themselves also provide them with the means to attack others (Herz 1966; Jervis 1978). The unintentional affect therefore of arms acquisition is the fear they create in neighbouring states, which will cause those neighbouring states to take countermeasures. Robert Jervis captures this perfectly; he writes, when ‘states seek the ability to defend themselves, they get too much and too little – too much because they gain the ability to carry out aggression; too little because others, being menaced, will increase their own arms and so reduce the first state’s security’ (1976: 64). The unilateral pursuit of security is therefore paradoxical; all are worse off as a result of their arms accumulation. The security dilemma is thus based on misperception; it is the fear that others intend harm that causes the arms build-up (Collins 1997, 2000; Snyder 2002: 155). However, if statesmen were assured that the other was only arming for defensive purposes this action–reaction to one another’s arms build-up need not occur. It is therefore uncertainty about states’ intentions that lies at the heart of the security dilemma (Wheeler and Booth 1992). It is precisely the mitigation or even removal of such uncertainty that explains why security regimes and communities lessen and even escape the security dilemma. In order to accomplish this they both rely upon a set of norms. From regime to community If a dependable expectation of peaceful change is a mantra that security community advocates agree upon, the definition of regime is one that has entailed considerable
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 13 debate. The initial definition, also known as the consensus definition (Hasenclever et al. 1997: 8), arose from academic meetings held in the early 1980s and the papers written were published in the journal International Organization and an edited volume titled International Regimes (Krasner 1983). According to Stephen Krasner a regime ‘can be defined as implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations’ (1983: 2). Subsequently differences emerged over the complexity of distinguishing between principles, norms and rules and by including ‘convergence’ the definition opened a space of differences to emerge over why state interests converge (see Young 1989; Hasenclever et al. 1997: 8–22). For example Robert Keohane collapsed principles, norms and rules into just rules (Keohane 1989). The convergence issue is important because it reveals different types of norms in operation and thus goes to the heart of the difference between security regimes and communities, which will be elaborated below. A security regime is defined by Robert Jervis as ‘those principles, rules, and norms that permit nations to be restrained in their behaviour in the belief that others will reciprocate’ (1983: 173). The regime thus constrains members so that they rarely practice self-help, and if they do so they must weigh carefully the opportunity cost of defecting and thus disrupting the relationship. This convergence of interest and consequent norms that constrain members’ behaviour is what is important to lessening the security dilemma because it minimises uncertainty. Critically it is this certainty that other members are unlikely to defect that enables regime members to pursue more than their short-term self-interest. This is a key feature of a regime; the regulating affect of the norms enables states to accept short-term sacrifices, which they hope will yield long-term gains, safe in the knowledge that other regime members will not exploit their short-term disadvantage for their own gain. Hence Haas describes regimes as ‘characterized by the condition of complex interdependence: neither hierarchy nor anarchy prevails and states rarely practice self-help’ (1983: 27). However, while regimes are able to lessen the uncertainty that drives the security dilemma the possibility of other states defecting from the regime’s norms remains a possibility. It is this possibility that for Jervis means regimes contain the seeds of their own destruction. He writes, ‘the fear that the other is violating or will violate the common understanding is a potent incentive for each state to strike out on its own even if it would prefer the regime to prosper’ (1982: 358). In order to appreciate why such a contingency exists we need to appreciate the regulative nature of the norms operating in the regime. The states in a security regime remain very much self-interested or egoistical actors. The decision to comply with the regime’s rules and be guided by its norms is determined by a rational cost–benefit calculation. The states are weighing up whether it is defection or continued cooperation that is more advantageous for their security. This rational calculation underpins what James March and Johan Olsen refer to as a logic of consequence; states’ calculation is based on the presumed outcome or consequence of their decision (1989, 1998). The norms that guide actors operating according to this logic can be called regulative norms since abidance by the norms order/
14 Dependable expectations of peaceable change constrain/regulate the states’ behaviour. The fear of defection noted above by Jervis, while never escaped, can be lessened the longer the states operate according to the norms because norm compliance clarifies what is acceptable and establishes precedents. This is called institutionalising the regime, which is not synonymous with establishing an organisation although one might be established, but rather the clarifying and strengthening of the norms through a repeated practice of compliance. An institutionalised regime lessens defection because states are unwilling to be seen as distrustful by suddenly defecting on a practice that has become well established, and they may deepen their level of cooperation as their knowledge of each other and expectation about the other’s trustfulness increases. They may also add provisions to the regime that punish transgressions and they might establish an international organisation to monitor and evaluate state compliance. The monitoring function of the International Atomic Energy Agency in support of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime is an example of such an organisation. However, the logic of consequence remains unchanged and states continue to determine whether their security is enhanced or undermined by continual norm abidance. An institutionalised security regime supported by an international organisation with intrusive monitoring and evaluation capacities will make defection more costly but it does not prevent it from occurring, as North Korea’s withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the United States’ withdraw from the anti-ballistic missile treaty attest. This notion that cooperation can develop a momentum and become greater both in terms of quality (stronger sense of trust) and quantity (the range of cooperative enterprises) is captured in the security community literature where Adler and Barnett have introduced a typology of security community formation; cooperation between states move from a nascent stage through ascendant before finishing as a mature security community (Adler and Barnett 1998: 49–57). Interestingly they also note that security communities can disintegrate and cease to exist thus consequently the notion of ‘dependable’ expectations is not an absolute value; it is itself dependent upon a set of circumstances. In a security regime the degree of dependability is ultimately conditional upon the benefits of compliance outweighing the costs of defection, and the greater this becomes institutionalised the more trusting and assured regime members become that their relationship will be peaceful. In a security community the glue that holds it together is also subject to change and thus how dependable the expectations of peaceful change are can vary depending upon the adhesiveness of the glue, which, as will be noted below, is identity. Adler and Barnett write, ‘Because compatibility of core values and a collective identity are necessary for the development of security communities – and values and identities are not static but are susceptible to change – the same forces that “build up” security communities can “tear them down”’ (1998: 58). While introducing a three-stage process of security community formation is valuable it is important not to give labels such as nascent or ascendant, or indeed alternatives such as incipient (Adler 2008: 206), security community agency. That is, the processes occurring in these stages are not the same as in a mature security community and thus while they may create a mature security community this is not preordained. Therefore references to nascent or ascendant security communities
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 15 are not references to a security community nor are the processes occurring within them synonymous with those in a security community. This is clearly manifest in the description of a nascent (or incipient) security community. Indeed the nascent stage tells us little about how a security community is formed. In this stage the objective of state cooperation is to deepen and extend their interactions so that the member states will ‘recognise or discover that they have joint interests that require collective action, and can mutually benefit from some form of modest coordination of security policies’ (Adler and Barnett 1998: 50). This is not then dissimilar to a security regime where security interests converge. Crucially Adler and Barnett note that at this nascent stage, ‘a security organisation is virtually indistinguishable from a strategic alliance, and there is no expectation that people of these states will have a shared identity or knowledge of the other’ (1998: 50). They even note that at this stage the formation of a security community is not a desired goal of the states. A reference to ASEAN therefore being a nascent or incipient security community, while self-evidently is evidence of it not being a security community, equally does not give much insight into such an outcome occurring. It is though an indication that a security regime could be in existence. It is in the ascendant stage that the degree of cooperation envisaged begins to rely upon a different type of norm to explain state behaviour. While the emphasis in this stage resembles the institutionalism of a security regime, which is encapsulated in the notion of diffuse reciprocity,2 beyond an increasing level of trust being developed about each other’s intentions and purposes (thus reducing the fear of defection) there is also an increasingly shared knowledge of what is appropriate behaviour in their relations based upon shared interpretations of society, politics, economics and culture. The dense network of interactions in their relationship is collectively portrayed as friendly and the foundations are laid for what will occur in a mature security community: the development of a regional collective identity (Adler and Barnett 1998: 53–55). The collective identity is the security community’s glue. A dependable expectation of peaceful change occurs because as the states interact a process of social learning occurs. This social learning reveals not only the states’ normative expectations but, over time, it leads them to adjust and adapt them so that they mirror one another. It represents the prospect that the actors, by acquiring a shared identity, transform their interpretation of the material and social world they inhabit. This sense of shared understanding of how to act in the world, based upon a shared identity, creates a sense of belonging together that Adler and Barnett call the ‘we-feeling’. Increasingly they come to view their security and future prosperity as inextricably tied; in constructivist language they become ‘other-regarding’ and this is captured in the notion of a ‘common destiny’ and sense of ‘loyalty’ toward each other (Acharya 2009: 25–27). This represents a departure from the security regime, in which the members remain egoists, and indicates that the norms underpinning this glue are not regulative in nature but constitutive. Before turning our attention to constitutive norms and distinguishing them from regulative it is necessary to address another difference between regimes and communities. Security regimes can exist over specific issues, such as weapon
16 Dependable expectations of peaceable change deployments, they can be between adversaries that are seeking to manage their relationship and they can be between allies seeking to enhance their collective security. Hence the regimes that existed over the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction between the USA and USSR during the Cold War (Nye 1987) and the current Proliferation Security Initiative amongst Western allies (Valencia 2005). Regimes can though be much wider in scope, both in terms of members and issues, such as the Concert of Europe (Jervis 1982) and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which in time became the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In these cases the norms that guide behaviour reflect the nascent and ascendant stage of security community formation. While regimes and communities are thus similar, once at the mature stage, a security community indicates a significant change has occurred in the relationship and this is the ‘we-feeling’ underpinned by constitutive norms. Constitutive norms The evolution of the states’ security relationship through the three stages requires the emergence of peace-inducing constitutive norms for a mature security community to form. Unlike a regulative norm a constitutive norm guides state behaviour not through a rational cost–benefit calculation but by establishing parameters around what actions the state will consider possible to pursue. The classic illustration concerns a game of chess (Ruggie 1998: 871). It is the rules’ governing what moves the pieces can make that enables the game to be called chess. These rules constitute the game; they prescribe what actions are possible. The actions a state considers possible or appropriate to pursue is constituted by what it is, that is, its identity. Thus a liberal state behaves in a particular fashion precisely because it is a liberal state. When the norms are regulative in nature states operate according to logic of consequence, but when it is constitutive norms that underpin their behaviour they are acting in accordance with March and Olsen’s logic of appropriateness. In the latter it is the identity that the state has of itself that guides its behaviour hence March and Olsen write: ‘Within a logic of appropriateness, a sane person is one who is “in touch with identity” in the sense of maintaining consistency between behaviour and a conception of self in a social role’ (1989: 161). Thus while acting according to logic of consequentiality leads the state to question what alternative options exist and which has the best outcome, the logic of appropriateness requires the state to question what kind of situation is this and what is the most appropriate behaviour to undertake in this situation. There is a distinct change in what motivates the state’s actions, away from anticipatory, consequential decision making to one of duty and obligation (March and Olsen 1989: 23). In a security community the ‘we-feeling’ reflects a shared identity and this in turn reveals that the member states’ interactions regarding the use of force are based upon the logic of appropriateness; it is inconceivable precisely because they conceive of each other as an ‘us’ and not a ‘them’. This does not mean that security communities are havens of harmonious relations; member states can still conflict but when it comes to the use of force as a means to resolve their disputes
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 17 this is negated because of their sense of duty and obligation toward each other that is framed by their shared identity. It is worth clarifying at this point the relationship between the logics of consequence and appropriateness. March and Olsen note that ‘the two logics are not mutually exclusive’ and that any ‘particular action probably involves elements of each’ (1998: 952). However, they also claim, and are right to do so, that the logics ‘are sufficiently distinct to be viewed as separate explanatory devices’ (1998: 953). They note four major interpretations of the relationship, one of which reflects the Adler and Barnett typology that although states enter into a cooperative relationship for instrumental reasons they develop shared identities that shifts the motivation for their continued interaction from a logic of consequence to a logic of appropriateness; the latter ‘supplants’ the former (March and Olsen 1998: 953). This mirrors the socialization to be found in both Alexander Wendt’s move from first to third degree (1999: 310–311) and Jeffrey Checkel’s ‘Type II socialization’ (2005).3 The other three models see one logic operating within the other; for example, it is the high cost of defection once the logic of appropriateness is at play that helps to explain specific instances of cooperation. Ward Thomas captures this when he writes, when a norm is widely held, there is a considerable convergence between the logic of appropriateness and the logic of consequentiality. Indeed, the logic of appropriateness structures the logic of consequentiality, because failure to act appropriately creates consequences in its own right and therefore affects the utilitarian calculations facing rational actors. (2001: 37; emphasis in original) The argument here is that while this captures the ascendant stage of security community building, ultimately once a mature security community is in place then, at least over the norms regarding use of force, consequentiality no longer explains the actors’ actions. It is solely explained by the logic of appropriateness. For example, it is the shared identity within the North Atlantic security community that enables European states to not feel that war with the United States has become more likely since 9/11 despite the latter embarking upon the greatest peacetime military build-up in its history. They simply do not believe these weapons will be directed against them because they are part of the same community (Pouliot 2008: 280). This notion of evolution mirrors work on norm life cycles. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink posit the idea of norms evolving through a three-stage process: emergence, cascade and internalization (1998). Reflecting this evolution they note that ‘different social processes and logics of action may be involved in different stages in a norm’s “life-cycle”’, and thus, ‘debates about the degree to which norm-based behavior is driven by choice or habit, specification issues about the costs of norm-violation or benefits from norm adherence … often turn out to hinge on the stage of the norm’s evolution’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 895). The movement from emergence to cascade and identifying the ‘tipping point’ will
18 Dependable expectations of peaceable change be examined in Chapter 3. For now, once the norm has become internalised it takes on a taken-for-granted quality where actors stop consciously thinking about why they are guided by the norm. They simply consider the act normal, or appropriate, and thus at this stage the logic of appropriateness is the critical explanatory device for why states behave the way they do. When applied to a security community the norms that underpin the dependable expectation of peaceful change are dependable precisely because, by becoming internalised, they have become part of the state’s identity and thus conform to a constitutive norm. Ole Jacob Sending refers to this as a ‘motivationally internalist’; since the norm constitutes who and what the actor is, it is ‘beyond the reach of criticism, reflection and potential violation’ (2002: 453). The notion of actors behaving according to internalised beliefs has produced two further logics: habit (Hopf 2009, 2010) and practice (Pouliot 2008). Both of these logics seek to distance themselves from the logic of appropriateness by arguing that in the logic of appropriateness actors consciously decide whether to abide by the norm or not. This follows the argument that actors continue to consider what appropriate behaviour is and act accordingly. Hence the apparent deliberative thinking noted above where the actor ponders, what situation is this? Sending calls this reading of the logic of appropriateness ‘motivationally externalist’. He writes, In a motivational externalist position … an action, or rule-following in general, would be explained by reference to a combination of the norm that says that duties and obligations shall be met, and a reasoning process entailing a weighing of institutional demands, perception of self, objectives defined as outcomes, and perceived legitimacy of the relevant rules and norms. (2002: 454; emphasis in original) Both Hopf and Pouliot argue that operating according to logic of either habit or practice does not entail a conscious decision on the part of the actor at all; hence Pouliot argues practice is ‘unreflexive’, ‘thoughtless and inarticulate’ (2008: 265, 270) while Hopf writes that, ‘Habits are unintentional, unconscious, involuntary, and effortless’ (2010: 3). Consequently both see action according to their logics as automatic because rather than having a normative bias – in circumstance X, you should do Y – a habitual response is that in circumstance X, action Y follows. However, Sending’s ‘motivationally internalist’ reading of the logic of appropriateness produces the same result. March and Olsen write that while ‘behavior is intentional it is not willful’, that is, it is not deliberated over, and so ‘Action stems from a conception of necessity, rather than preference’ (1989: 160– 161). To further emphasize the automaticity of this logic they conclude actor’s actions are a response to the ‘dictates of their identities’ (quoted in Sending 2002: 457) and a failure ‘to fulfil the identity-defining duties and obligations is equated to approach the insane’ (Sending 2002: 454). Thus while Pouliot and Hopf may wish to distance themselves from the logic of appropriateness, when conceived as internalised and constitutive of the actor, March and Olsen’s duty and obligation
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 19 do demand the actor behaves in a particular way. The key point for a security community is that when the norm has become so ingrained that it has a taken-forgranted quality, consciously appreciated or not, it makes behaviour predictable.4 The significance of practice and habit is not though solely about what makes security community norms dependable but also what they reveal in terms of their peace-inducing quality. Dependable expectation of peaceful change Identifying the norms as constitutive reveals why the expectations of peaceful change are dependable but they do not explain why change should be peaceful. A habitual practice reinforces prevailing beliefs, whether that creates and maintains a spiral of amity or enmity. Hopf’s argument is that once a habit of friendly interaction is established then its automaticity generates benign behaviour; he writes, ‘Security communities are … marked by self-fulfilling prophesies, in this case, producing cascades of benign behavior, helping to perpetuate the automatic amity characteristic of such communities’ (Hopf 2010: 28). Thus he does not consider trust a necessary condition for a security community because the members are no longer uncertain of each others intentions.5 While such an interpretation of the security community’s reinforcing practices makes it very stable it does not reveal why these habits developed. Pouliot’s explanation for why practice can produce a security community focuses exclusively on diplomatic practice: ‘Diplomacy is the constitutive practice of security community insofar, and only insofar, as it is the only “normal” or “natural” practice, to the exclusion of violent ones’ (2008: 279–280). Peace is thus assured because resolving disputes through diplomacy is taken for granted. For Pouliot this practice reflects the learning process, albeit tacit, that occurs from interaction or ‘social exposure’. The practices that are copied are those from agents that make ‘the implicit but powerful claim that “this is how things are”’, which in turn is based on their political authority, material resources, scientific eminence and/or cultural prestige (2008: 282). What though makes diplomacy, rather than violence, ‘natural’? To begin to answer why change should be peaceful we need to start with the definition of a community. It matters that a security community is called a community. Adler and Barnett identify three characteristics that make a community (1998: 31). Firstly, the members have shared identities, values and a common understanding of what is appropriate behaviour, what Charles Taylor calls common meanings. Secondly, the members of the community have many, direct interactions. For Deutsch et al. this was a significant means of identifying the existence of a community as one could measure international trade, mail flows, student exchanges and travel. Nowadays this would also include the various electronic discussion forums, blogs and social networking sites that enable interaction across the Internet. Thirdly, the reciprocity exhibited expresses a long-term interest and even altruism, with the latter described as being a sense of obligation and responsibility that captures the logic of appropriateness’s constitutive form. A community is thus about individuals sharing common
20 Dependable expectations of peaceable change conceptions of what is appropriate behaviour, they interact frequently and feel obliged to help one another. This would imply that what creates peace in a security community is a sense of belonging: that the members conceive of their security and prosperity as inextricable tied to one another. Security is indivisible; it simply makes no sense to conceive of security at the expense of another. This tying of member’s well-being to the well-being of other members ensures both a sense of common destiny and loyalty. The actions of the members towards one another may well appear altruistic. The reason they have this sense of belonging together – the ‘we-feeling’ – is based on their common identity. However, does any common identity create peace? Organised criminal gangs, such as the Mafia, have a common identity and the gang’s fortunes (their security and prosperity) are dependent upon the durability of their cooperation. Of course a community such as the Mafia is a violent one whereas a security community is the antithesis of this, but if the violence is only directed towards those outside the community then they may have more in common than first thought. After all, the peacefulness of a security community is only felt by its members; states in a security community are not pacifist they prepare for, and wage, war against non-community members. The answer to the question, does any sense of belonging create peace, lies in whether gang members turn their guns on each other. The willingness to resort to violence as a means of achieving goals means that violence becomes the constitutive norm of the gang. It is a criminal gang not simply because it is engaged in criminal activity (drug trafficking, money laundering etc.) but its modus operandi (threatening violence) is a criminal act. Since violence is the nature of the gang’s collective identity then it is not the nature of their identity that keeps peace between them; it is contingent on another variable. This variable is self-aggrandizement. So long as the individual members gain wealth then operating within the community makes sense. However, if their aggrandizement is less, either in relative or absolute terms compared to others, then changes within the community may be needed. Such change could be manifest in a leadership challenge. Since violence is the gang’s modus operandi it would be natural for such a challenge to be violent in nature, although given the gang’s sense of ‘we-feeling’ it is likely to be explained in terms of treachery.6 In other words, the inherent violent nature of the community is likely to manifest itself in terms of intra-community relations at specific moments in time. The three characteristics of a community do not therefore explicitly explain why communities should be peaceful but they do clarify that a community is an intrusive governance mechanism. Communities are not a reflection of disinterest in others but a shared appreciation of common prosperity and security: ‘within communities we help others, apparently selflessly, because we perceive their needs and goals as those of our social category and hence as our very own’ (Adler 1997: 264). Reflecting their Euro-centric origins the initial explanation for the peacefulness of security communities can be found in their distinctively liberal overtones. Although Adler has subsequently rejected the need for liberalism to underpin
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 21 security community formation his earlier writings were explicit about its centrality. In 1992 he wrote, Members of pluralistic security communities hold dependable expectations of peaceful change not merely because they share just any kind of values, but because they share liberal democratic values and allow their societies to become interdependent and linked by transnational economic and cultural relations. Democratic values, in turn, facilitate the creation of strong civil societies … which also promote community bonds and common identity and trust through the process of the free interpenetration of societies. (quoted from Acharya 2009: 33; emphasis in original) The importance of civil society organisations is examined in Chapter 3, for now though this early articulation of where the security communities’ peacefulness originates builds directly on Deutsch’s transactionalist approach (increased economic and cultural relations will establish material and ideational attachments that makes war prohibitively costly and nonsensical) by adding liberal democratic values. When Security Communities is published in 1998 Adler and Barnett retreat from the necessity of liberal values. Here they are keen to stress that liberalism is not essential for security community formation but they do note a strong connection (Adler and Barnett 1998: 40–41). Earlier it was noted how a process of social learning is necessary because it leads states to acquire shared understandings. Liberalism is well-suited to the type of intrusive interaction that the process of social learning envisages because, firstly, it is based on a civic culture that emphasizes tolerance, rule of law, duty of citizens, role of government etc. Although liberalism is a broad church with different strands, at the heart of the ideology is the notion of freedom and equality. This reveals that underpinning liberalism is a respect for others (that they can enjoy freedom and equality), which in turn is based upon a respect for oneself (that one’s own behaviour is morally worthy). A shared notion of liberal values should therefore act as a constraint on violent behaviour and underpin the notion that one ought to settle differences peacefully. This in turn encourages interaction and ultimately encourages the type of intrusion and interpenetration of other societies necessary for a shared transnational identity and even transnational civic culture to emerge. This is manifest in the increased interaction between the states through multiple networks between and among societies by intergovernmental organisations, nongovernmental organisations, epistemic communities and social movements, which deepen mutual trust and lead to an acceptance of a certain ‘way of life’ (Adler and Barnett 1998: 53). The intellectual tradition that underpins this process is Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace, which has generated a considerable literature over the virtues of liberal democracies and peace (Doyle 1986, 1997; Russett 1993; Owen 1994; Oren 1995). It is this literature that Adler makes reference to when, at least at this time in his writings, his preference for liberalism as an explanatory factor is captured; he writes, ‘I believe that a socially constructed civic culture may help to explain, more than anything else, the findings … which
22 Dependable expectations of peaceable change have more or less conclusively shown that democracies do not fight each other and create among themselves a “separate peace”’ (1997: 260). There are therefore two aspects to the peace-inducing quality of liberal constitutive norms that can be identified. The first is the intrinsic peace-inducing quality of liberal values of tolerance and respect. This plays out in the discourse surrounding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after the Cold War. Some members of NATO had been wartime enemies but embracing liberalism transformed their relations and created a pacific future, a future that NATO could offer former enemies in Central and Eastern Europe (Williams 2001: 540–541). The second aspect concerns the infectious nature of liberal ideas and values, which by cutting across national boundaries makes them ideal for community building. Although Adler and Barnett suggest alternative ideologies could have a similar effect, and specifically note a developmentalist ideology in Southeast Asia as a possible example, as will be shown in Chapter 2 this has not happened (Adler and Barnett 1998: 41). Before explaining why, it is important to engage with a recent addition to the security community literature, not least because it is where Adler’s thoughts currently reside: the significance of the practice of self-restraint.7 The notion that it is the practice of self-restraint that lies at the heart of a security community is expounded by Corneliu Bjola and Markus Kornprobst (2007) as well as Adler (2008). It is self-restraint that makes violence unnecessary, and for Adler it ‘is not to be found exclusively in cost-benefit analyses, socialisation and persuasion-based normative diffusion, or in the moral directives of a particular ideological doctrine, such as Kantian liberalism, but also in particular in securitycommunity practices’ (2008: 204–205; emphasis in original). It is worth noting that self-restraint is not, therefore, envisaged by Adler as solely the preserve of practice but can also be found in the other processes identified, including liberalism. While the use of practice might invoke the unconscious process that Pouliot refers to, Adler’s conception, as with Bjola and Kornprobst, uses Norbert Elias’s theory of civilizing processes to explain the origins of self-restraint. Elias’s civilizing process contends that as the state gained greater control over the use of violence and aggression this was accompanied by a changing sensibility to their use; an aversion develops as the acts became viewed as morally repugnant (Bjola and Kornprobst 2007: 290). Through a process of social learning this aversion becomes so deeply ingrained that it becomes a habitus (Bjola and Kornprobst 2007) or disposition (Adler 2008).8 Mirroring the evolution from logic of consequence to appropriateness Bjola and Kornprobst write: Elias provides four important clues about the constitution of this habitus. First, the habitus is made up of constraints about the use of force. Second, the constraints that make up the habitus are underpinned by deeply-seated anxieties and feelings of shame. Third, the restraints that make up the habitus are distilled history. A nation’s historical practices and experiences become sedimented into its habitus. Fourth, the habitus is deeply internalised. Elias maintains that fears and shame – along with the constraints they buttress – are initially not internalised but their existence is dependent on overt sanctioning potential by,
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 23 say, a chief or a monarch. Yet over time, they sink in. Elias’s habitus, therefore, is in Hegel’s words, “a second nature” or in Bourdieu’s words, “history turned into nature.” The habitus is distilled history that is deeply ingrained and taken for granted. (2007: 290) For Bjola and Kornprobst therefore the practice of self-restraint is based upon underlying anxieties and feelings of shame about the use of force. These become so deeply ingrained that self-restraint is a constitutive norm of the state, and so long as the states’ conceptions of self-restraint are compatible then, Bjola and Kornprobst argue, the collective identity necessary for a security community can form. There are though two points that need noting here. Firstly, it is not clear why member states’ different histories and different sentiments of fear and shame should develop a collective identity. The strain on the US–German relationship that Bjola and Kornprobst describe is grounded on their separate historical experiences, but for self-restraint to underpin a community it needs to develop from a shared process of social learning and cognitive evolution. When Adler defines practices as ‘knowledge-constituted, meaningful patterns of socially recognised activity embedded in communities, routines and organizations that structure experiences’, this captures the self-reinforcing nature of social learning that arises from the interaction amongst community members (2008: 198). Self-restraint is not in itself a sufficient condition for a security community to form, as Alexander Wendt notes, ‘without positive incentives to identify self-restraint may simply lead to indifference’ (1999: 359–360). It is also worth noting that self-restraint – ‘permit nations to be restrained in their behaviour’ – underpins a security regime (Jervis 1983: 173). The second point concerns the liberal undertones to ‘shame’. In their example of German shame, dating from the German imperialism and the Second World War, Bjola and Kornprobst highlight three principles ‘to prevent the tragedies of the past from recurring’: rule of law, pluralism and dialogue (2007: 297). A liberal process of social learning would therefore appear to underpin the feelings of anxiety and shame. Adler, however, uses the practice of self-restraint to distance security community formation from liberalism. He writes, ‘liberal democratic norms are not necessary for self-restraint (as evidenced by non-liberal security communities)’ (2008: 198). For Adler self-restraint is one of six practices that produce dependable expectations of peaceful change (Adler and Greve 2009: 71–72). In addition to self-restraint: member states align their efforts in common enterprises, projects and partnerships, thus generating day-to-day practices of peace; security is conceived of as indivisible and comprehensive, which Adler calls cooperative security; and echoing Pouliot, diplomacy rather than violence is the normal or natural practice and decision-making is multilateral. These first four practices ‘institutionalise reassurance as opposed to deterrence’ (Adler and Greve 2009: 72). The fifth practice is a disposition towards spreading the values of the community through explicit or implicit socialisation or teaching; and the final practice is actually a variety of specific practices around confidence building measures, policy coordination and unfortified borders.
24 Dependable expectations of peaceable change Emphasizing that it is these practices that form a security community, Adler argues, ‘leaves open the possibility of the development of (incipient) non-liberal security communities’, and he notes ASEAN in this context (2008: 206). His argument is that as ‘communities of practice, which are constituted around liberal practices, spread to non-liberal communities, the latter may be able to develop self-restraint subjectivities, such as cooperative security, that will help them evolve into nonliberal security communities’ (2008: 206; emphasis in original). It is not though clear why the liberal practices do not infuse the self-restraint that evolves. Adler and Greve dismiss the self-restraint that operates in balance of power thinking as contingent on narrow self-interest, but is it not the intrinsic liberal values of tolerance, freedom and equality that make their self-restraint a disposition? Self-restraint explains why states are reassured that the other will not resort to the use force but it is not sufficient on its own to explain why a community is formed. After all, self-restraint is a significant part of the peace-inducing qualities of an institutionalised security regime. Ultimately we have to understand the peace-inducing qualities of a security community in conjunction with what makes the collective identity that forms the community. Wendt argues that selfrestraint is not an active cause of collective identity ‘because is says nothing about the willingness to help others’, but it enables his other ‘master variables’ – interdependence, common fate and homogeneity – to create a collective identity (1999: 363). Pluralism It is necessary to bring community back into the security community literature. The three characteristics that Adler and Barnett identify, and noted above – shared identity, frequent interaction, obligation and responsibility – reveal that at the heart of a community is a sense of loyalty toward each other that can be expressed in the acceptance of a common destiny because members’ fates are intertwined. Hence the importance of ‘we-feeling’ and sense of belonging together that negates a sense of indifference to other community member’s suffering. What makes this peaceful is not just the values that underpin the community – and while liberalism may not have a monopoly on this it is certainly well positioned – but critically the breadth of the interaction and interpenetration of member’s societies. It is the multiplicity of interactions by a variety of elites representing different aspects of society, from commercial enterprises that provide a material connection to welfare organisations that indicate mutual sympathies, which establishes the collective sense of ‘us’. This is captured by Anne Hammerstad when she argues that because a sense of community is felt by ‘ordinary members of society. Xenophobia against citizens of neighbouring states … has no place in a security community’ (2005: 76). The significance of establishing a sense of community among the masses has its strongest articulation in Hans Mouritzen’s claim that the ‘genesis and maintenance of a security community are due to the fact that top decisionmakers find themselves deprived of the option of mutual war. They are simply locked by the opinions of their publics and by the transnational affiliations between them’ (2003: 331).
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 25 The need to bring ‘community back’ means re-establishing the importance of the people, or at least non-state elite, and this in turn reveals that pluralism is essential – multiple sources of interaction by a variety of elites representing different facets of society. It is a return to the importance of people because this is Deutsch’s focus. Hence Laurie Nathan’s assertion that in ‘Deutsch’s much-cited summary formulation, a security community comprises a group of people that has become integrated, and the subject of dependable expectations of peaceful change are not states but rather the population of the territory covered by the community’ (2006: 279; emphasis in original). A refocus on people has two significant effects for studying security communities. Firstly, it raises the importance of non-state elite in their formation and maintenance, and secondly, it enables a broadening of what constitutes security. While Adler and Barnett make frequent reference to individuals, people and societies in the formation process they prefer to concentrate on the state elite. They write: While social learning can occur at the mass level, and such changes are critical when discussing collective identities, our bias is to look to policymakers and other political, economic, and intellectual elites that are most critical for the development of new forms of social and political organization that are tied to the development of a security community. (1998: 44; emphasis added) Although other elites are noted as ‘most critical’ Adler and Barnett’s emphasis lies with the political elite because it is from such ‘creative and farsighted’ individuals that the community’s social and political institutions are created (1998: 43). This makes sense in so far as they have the capacity to do this. The state elite are necessary but, I argue, not sufficient for building a security community. It is the sense of belonging together at the mass level that ensures the ‘we-feeling’ is held by more than a select group of state elite. Mouritzen again captures this very well when he states, ‘some form of pluralism is necessary in order for peace inertia to be established independently of the rulers’ (2003: 331). It is therefore the extent and depth of the transnational ties that, through a process of social learning, establishes the collective identity that is the glue in a security community. This reveals that vibrant civil societies are necessary to enable the creation of a community based civic culture. Conceiving of mature security communities as exhibiting multiple levels of societal interaction across a variety of topics reveals that Deutsch and his associates’ focus on war is unnecessarily narrow. It made sense when Deutsch et al. were writing in the 1950s given the heighten fear of nuclear war but security has come to mean much more than the absence of war. Indeed, the equating of security as the absence of war has encouraged the security community literature to concentrate on the state elite. This narrow conception of security though undercuts the peace inertia that is developed through the interpenetration of members’ societies by non-state elite. Once we conceive of security in a broader,
26 Dependable expectations of peaceable change holistic fashion, the breadth of the topics that appear – health, human rights and environmental disasters for example – creates the space for other elites to become significant and, indeed I contend, essential players in forming a community. The pros and cons of broadening the remit of security are extensively covered elsewhere in the security/strategic studies literature and indeed international relations literature more broadly (Ullman 1983; Nye and Lynn-Jones 1988; Walt 1991; Buzan 1991; Baldwin 1997; Williams and Krause 1997; Booth 2007). Here I argue that when a security community is conceived as a grouping of states that are ‘other-regarding’ – security and prosperity is inextricable tied – then insecurity in one member inevitably creates insecurity in another. A mature security community should thus not solely be marked, or identified, on the basis of dependable expectations of peaceful change with regard to the use of force, but also a pattern of cooperative endeavours that aim to mitigate the worst effects from the plethora of threats that are classified as non-traditional. The range of non-traditional security threats opens the space for non-state elites, or non-state actors, to become part of the community-building process thus enabling the interpenetration of members’ societies to be much more comprehensive than just among the state elite.
Conclusion The defining character of a security community – dependable expectations of peaceful change – does not fully capture why security communities are more robust governance structures for maintaining security. In this chapter I have sought to accomplish three tasks. The first is to note the relationship between institutionalised security regimes and security communities. The difference is the type of logic that explains the states’ behaviour. Although states in a security regime may enjoy a sustained level of cooperation that establishes a high degree of trust between them, ultimately they remain egoistical actors that calculate whether continued abidance with the regime’s norms is beneficial. This logic of consequence explains state behaviour in a nascent, or incipient, security community and remains operating within an ascendant security community. At this stage though an alternative logic of appropriateness emerges that helps explain why the states interact with each other the way they do. Whether this is more pronounced at the state-to-state level than societal-to-societal level will be dependent on the pluralist nature of the state. The logic of appropriateness becomes critical because it reveals that the norms guiding the actors’ interaction has become sufficiently embedded that it has a taken-forgranted quality. The norm is thus constitutive of the actors; they behave this way because this is who they are. The interaction that has developed through the three stages has also ensured that ‘who they are’ is a shared identity. This interpretation of the logic of appropriateness gives it the same explanatory force as the logics of practicality and habit. The key point is that the actors’ behaviour is predictable. This explains why community members are able to enjoy more dependable expectations about other members’ behaviour than is possible in a security regime.
Dependable expectations of peaceable change 27 It is though important to restate that while constitutive norms make behaviour more predictable than regulative norms do in a regime, constitutive norms are not forever fixed. Since the explanation for dependable expectations rests on states’ identities changing then the notion that a security community can disintegrate reflects the fluid nature of identity formation. Just as states’ identities can coalesce so they can diverge. This prospect has been examined in the recent security community literature with reference to strains in the Anglo–American security community (Bially Mattern 2005), the US–German relationship (Bjola and Kornprobst 2007) and the transatlantic relationship more generally (Kagan 2003). Nevertheless, although constitutive norms can change because identity is fluid, they are more resistant to change and are thus more dependable than state adherence to regulative norms, even though the latter can give the appearance of being equally dependable when an institutionalised security regimes exists that contains penalties for defection and produces benefits from norm adherence. The second task is to reinforce the importance of community when explaining why a security community creates the perception that as changes occur within the community they will inevitably be peaceful. The creation of the community’s collective identity is important because it means the members’ conceive of each other as an ‘us’ not a ‘them’, hence Adler and Barnett’s ‘we-feeling’. The sense of belonging together is manifest in their security and prosperity being inextricably tied, which is why members of a community have a common destiny and are loyal to one another. Initially the explanation for why this should create peace was based on liberal values that intrinsically ensured, for example, tolerance and respect for the rule of law underpinned the identity. Although there is a desire to search for alternative peace-inducing explanations, such as self-restraint, shared liberal values intrinsically make for a peaceful community among members. Adler’s ambiguity over the function of liberalism – which Nathan refers to as not entirely warranted (2006: 292) – is captured when he and Barnett conclude, ‘while liberalism might not be alone in enabling trust, it might be better able to encourage this outcome’ (1998: 425). Importantly they immediately then state: ‘That said, the issue might not be liberalism per se but rather a willingness to allow myriad transactions between societies among leaders who are generally secure in their domestic rule, and agree on general standards of conduct in domestic and international affairs’ (Adler and Barnett 1998: 425–426). While they maintain a primacy for state leaders the myriad transactions point to the significance of pluralism. It is the interpenetration of member societies that ensures the identity developed is felt among non-state elite and the wider populace. Hence Mouritzen’s point that ‘transnational relations can only exist where both (or all) societies are reasonably pluralist and consequently have civil societies’ (2003: 331). This ensures that the sense of belonging together generates peace inertia separate from the state elite. Finally, if we are to conceive of security communities solely as governance structures where war is unthinkable then we do not have much of a community or, for that matter, given how many peoples’ lives are blighted by the plethora of nontraditional security threats, not much security. Nathan concurs, when writing about
28 Dependable expectations of peaceable change regions marked by international stability but domestic violence and oppression: ‘It would strain credulity to claim that people and states in these circumstances are part of a “security community”’ (2006: 278). Security communities are therefore also places where, because they are communities, states help alleviate the suffering of others within the community. Once non-traditional security issues are considered significant this creates the space of non-state elite to become involved; why they are important will be explained in Chapter 3. Before examining the importance of non-state actors it is necessary to examine the argument that ASEAN is either already a security community or its modus operandi means it is on the path to becoming one. This is particularly important given that when Adler writes about the prospect of non-liberal security communities, it is Southeast Asia, and ASEAN in particular, that he has in mind.
2 ASEAN’s constitutive norms
Whether ASEAN forms a security community is a hotly disputed topic in the ASEAN literature. ASEAN has been described as a security community (Bellamy 2004; Kupchan 2010), a nascent security community (Peou 2002) and, at least during the early 1990s, a regional association on the path to the ascendant stage (Acharya 2001: 208), although this has been subsequently revised to nascent (Acharya 2009: 298). At the other end of the spectrum ASEAN is dismissed as an imitation community with no substance, just rhetoric (Jones and Smith 2002, 2006), and the thinking behind conceiving of it as a security community flawed (Khoo 2004) and those engaged in it producing imitation scholarship (Jones and Smith 2002, 2006). The argument posited here is that ASEAN, at least prior to 2003, was not proceeding along the path to forming a security community and this is because its modus operandi militated against such an outcome. The key writer on ASEAN and security communities is Amitav Acharya (1997, 2001, 2004a, 2005, 2009) and the constructivist approach to understanding Southeast Asian security that his work on security communities promote has generated a considerable literature both for and against constructivism’s applicability in general and security communities in particular (Busse 1999; Leifer 1999, 2001; Kivimäki 2001; Ba 2005; Peou 2005). For example, a special issue of The Pacific Review (2006) and subsequent book (Acharya and Stubbs 2009) is devoted to the exchange between constructivist perspectives and rationalist views, which are predominately realist. This chapter is concerned with identifying the constitutive norms that guide the member states’ interactions to explain why these have mitigated against community formation. In so doing the chapter reveals that while these norms have evolved they remain central to understanding ASEAN behaviour. If ASEAN is to become a security community then changes are needed in its modus operandi.
Constitutive norms Identifying constitutive norms is far from easy given their embedded nature but in the ASEAN context they are revealed by the Association’s habit of replicating its guiding principles in its voluminous collection of declarations. Alice Ba refers to this as social reinforcement; repeating guiding principles in declarations,
30 ASEAN’s constitutive norms even replicating social rituals at ASEAN meetings, reveals constitutive norms. Ba calls them ‘stable patterns–patterned thinking and pattern behavior, habits of thinking and acting whereby actors no longer need to be persuaded as to the merits of particular ideas and practices’ (2009: 39). A repertoire of principles or norms emerges that members can use to frame their debates, which Ba concludes defines their ‘ranges of possible and appropriate behavior’ (2009: 41). So, what are ASEAN’s constitutive norms? The model of norm evolution might give the impression that there is a blank canvas at the beginning and norms emerge from the first interaction, but this is not the case. The environment in which states initiate their first cooperative engagement will already be marked by regulative and constitutive norms and therefore to understand the norms that underpin ASEAN we need to appreciate what norms were guiding the practice of its founding members. The answer can be found in their nation and state-building preoccupation. All the founding members were engaged in what can be classified as developmental nationalism. This entailed promoting a common identification with the state, creating a unifying political ideology and establishing a relatively autonomous economy that would strengthen the legitimacy of the ruling domestic regime and lessen their reliance on external agencies, such as ex-colonial powers. A good example of this is Indonesia’s national ideology of Pancasila (Ramage 1995) and throughout Southeast Asia this nation and state-building is captured in the phrase national resilience. An inward focusing preoccupation does not bode well for establishing a regional community and indeed initial interest in the 1940s/1950s in regionalism from the region’s elite was expressed in much wider conceptions of Asia, encompassing India and China. By the 1960s rather than Southeast Asia being marked by a notion of regional community-building it was a period of heightened tension. Forerunners to ASEAN – Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) and Maphilindo – were wrecked by territorial disputes ostensibly arising from the creation of the Malaysian Federation. However, a combination of external factors, notably the British decision to withdraw its forces East of Suez and the disastrous impact of US intervention on South Vietnamese nation and state-building, coupled to a change of leadership in Indonesia, ushered in a new approach. The latter was particularly significant: not only did it remove Sukarno who had initiated Confrontation with Malaysia but it brought Suharto to power who married the idea of national resilience to regional resilience. Suharto appreciated that while picking fights with neighbours might help deflect internal criticism from the regime’s shortcomings in the short term it did not strengthen one’s economy and did not therefore enhance the regime’s legitimacy in the long-run. The US intervention in South Vietnam also gave heighten credibility to the perception that state weakness invited external intervention, an intervention that not only could be detrimental for the state but one that could spill over into neighbouring states to their detriment. A gradual weakening of regime authority in the region’s states could also increase the appeal of communism or ethnic separatism, which in turn could infect neighbours. If national resilience
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 31 was to successfully counter the forces of subversion and exploitation then it would need to be fostered at a regional level. Establishing regional resilience therefore complemented national resilience and would be manifest in limiting, as best as possible, external state intervention and minimising intra-regional discord by discouraging interference in each other’s domestic affairs. Marrying national resilience to regional resilience is significant for two reasons, reasons that pull in opposite directions. First, it indicates recognition that member states’ security is tied to one another. National resilience breeds regional resilience and regional resilience fosters greater national resilience. In other words, the more a state is able to enhance its own national resilience the less likely it is to become a victim of internal unrest and thus a source of insecurity for neighbouring states. The stability of one state was thus directly relevant to the security of others. This tying of ASEAN members’ security to one another is a significant step in creating a security community. The second reason highlights the centrality of national concerns; ASEAN is designed to assist its members in their nation and state-building enterprises. Hence Ba writes, ‘Nationalism–its ideas of self-determination, domestic preoccupations with national consolidation and national integration, anti-imperialism–in fact becomes central to the regionalism that emerged’ (2009: 65). Whereas making their security a common endeavour encourages community formation, this concentration on national concerns to protect their autonomy does not encourage or foster the greater interaction that leads to social learning envisaged in the community formation spelled out in Chapter 1 by Deutsch et al., and Adler and Barnett. Significantly, the importance of national concerns trumps regional concerns as noted by various ASEAN elites: ‘The immediate concern of South-East Asian countries is not regionalism but how long the component parts of South-East Asia can survive … as new nation states created less than two decades ago’ (quoted from Ba 2009: 95–96). The environment, or canvas, on which ASEAN’s norms evolve, is thus built on a tension between (1) the elites’ recognising that a fragmenting region invites both external intervention and the contagion of ethnic separatism and communist insurgency and so unity is needed to resist these sources of insecurity; and (2) the primacy of the national project of nation- and state-building. This tension is a recipe for soft institutionalism and weak regional organisation since it reinforces the egoistical nature of the members. Not the most fertile soil therefore for community seeds to grow. The norms of behaviour that ASEAN members abide by – whether they actually do or not is contentious – are the principles and processes collectively known as the ‘ASEAN Way’. Acharya has divided the norms of behaviour under discussion into codes of conduct that govern their interaction and ‘the process through which such interactions are carried out’ (1997: 329; emphasis in original). The codes of conduct are the principles enshrined in the 1967 Bangkok Declaration and reinforced in the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation: mutual respect for political independence, territorial integrity and national identity; non-interference in the internal affairs of one another; peaceful settlement of disputes; renunciation of the threat or use of force; and effective cooperation. The processes refer to the informal, consultative
32 ASEAN’s constitutive norms and consensus decision-making approach of ASEAN and the importance of public unity. Acharya has subsequently referred to the codes of conduct, or principles, as legal–rational norms and the process of decision making as socio-cultural norms (2009: 27). The principles in ASEAN’s founding declaration – The Bangkok Declaration – and the processes through which they interact enable us to identify ASEAN’s constitutive norms, of which they are three. The first, and its importance is manifest in it being regarded as ASEAN’s cardinal principle, is non-interference in the internal affairs of one another. The manner in which this has been interpreted has meant that it also covers the first principle in the Bangkok Declaration: mutual respect for political independence, territorial integrity and national identity. The second constitutive norm is consultative and consensus decision making, which enables ASEAN to portray a public face of unanimity, although actual unanimity is not always required. The final constitutive norm is informality of decision making, which reflects both the importance of private consultations among the state elite, the limited bureaucratic capacity of the Secretariat and, at least during its early years, the lack of formal meetings. These three constitutive norms give ASEAN its identity: it manages its members’ relations. For proponents of ASEAN this management equates to ameliorating tensions among the membership and enables them to settle their disputes peacefully. For critics it reflects ASEAN’s inability to resolve disputes; it is a mere talk shop that is largely irrelevant to understanding the foreign policies of Southeast Asian states. The notion of a norm life cycle, which is taken up in the next chapter, tells us that constitutive norms, while certainly highly resistant to change because they are internalised and embedded, are not immune to change. In ASEAN’s forty-plus years of existence these norms have evolved and thus the forty-year-old ASEAN is not the same as the adolescent ASEAN of the Cold War, or indeed the twentysomething of the 1990s. The norms have evolved but they have not been replaced and so they continue to establish the parameters in which the members interact.
ASEAN’s evolving constitutive norms The norm that has evolved the most is the informality of decision making, as manifest by the increasing number of official ASEAN meetings and their annual occurrence. For example, prior to 1995 ASEAN held four summits spanning twenty-seven years. The first summit was held nine years after the organisation had been formed in 1976. Although the second was held the following year, the third was not held until another ten years had passed in 1987. The fifth summit was held in 1995 and between the fifth and sixth, held in 1998 there were two ‘informal’ summits. The sixth summit is succeeded by a further two ‘informal’ summits (1999 and 2000) before the seventh is held in 2001. Since then, barring political and climatic disturbances, ASEAN Summits have been held annually, and, since the adoption of the ASEAN Charter, biannually. This evolution captures the transition of a norm very well, particularly the informal summits marking the transition to annually convened meetings of heads of state.
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 33 The initial preference for informality reflected the twin desire for increased contact and dialogue between the members without relinquishing authority to ASEAN. The informality is captured well by Malaysia’s Tun Razak’s reference to ‘sport shirt diplomacy’ in ASEAN’s early years. This conjures the image of state leaders in an informal setting enabling personal interactions to establish a foundation of goodwill, mutual respect and understanding. Hoang Anh Tuan quotes former Foreign Secretary of the Philippines, Carlos Romulo, saying, ‘I can pick up the telephone now and talk directly to Adam Malik or Rajaratnam [former Indonesian and Singapore foreign ministers respectively]. We often find that private talks over breakfast prove more important than formal meetings’ (Hoang 1996: 67). This informality was epitomised by the perception that the important decisions were made on the golf course.1 The use of association rather than organisation for ASEAN’s name also conveys this flexible-style and sense of informality (Beukel 2008: 24). The corollary of this informality, however, is that it was not just a means for the elite to develop mutual understandings, with all the positive connotations that has for community building, but also it avoided binding commitments. The significance of informality is therefore that it places authority in the hands of the national elite and deliberately minimises authority at the regional level. Indeed, Tunku Abdul Rahman went so far as to state, ‘an enmeshing network of bilateral arrangements between and among different countries of Southeast Asia [was] … itself a form of regional cooperation’ (quoted from Ba 2009: 71). Cooperation among the ASEAN members neither needed to be multilateral nor centrally coordinated it seems. Informality was not therefore just about the manner in which dialogue and decisions were made, it reflected where authority lay. Thus while ASEAN has certainly become busier this does not mean that formal authority has transferred to the organisation. Reflecting the initial degree of informality it is perhaps not surprising to learn that the Secretariat was not established until 1976 when it was housed at the Department of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia. Its initial staff complement was 64 officials. It did not get its own building until 1981 and reforms to expand its staff in 1983, 1989 and 1992 have increased its bureaucracy to approximately 260 (Nair 2010: 25). This has not matched the exponential growth in initiatives undertaken by the organisation, meaning that it is significantly under-resourced. Indeed, most of ASEAN’s formal coordinating work is undertaken by national ASEAN secretariats located in the member states’ foreign ministries. John Ravenhill sums it up well when he writes, Regional cooperative schemes can enhance the state capacity of their members when their secretariats develop expertise beyond that held at the national level. In ASEAN, such a development was precluded by the desire of the member states to ensure that the Secretariat remained weak and incapable of developing as an independent source of authority. The Secretariat’s professional staff was tiny by comparison with those of most cooperative institutions; staff members were all seconded from national governments, ensuring that the Secretariat did not develop an independent presence. (2006: 180)
34 ASEAN’s constitutive norms The lack of formal authority enjoyed by the Secretariat is also captured in the description of the ASEAN Secretary-General being more secretary than general. Despite changes to enhance the role of the Secretary-General in the ASEAN Charter the mandate remains limited. For example, while the Charter gives the Secretary-General the authority to monitor state compliance with ASEAN agreements and report this to the ASEAN Summit, it is state leaders that determine whether non-compliance has indeed occurred and, if so, what action should be taken. The post remains one filled according to alphabetical rotation rather than a competitive selection process, which could undermine ‘the incentive for member states to nominate the best person for the job’ (Severino 2009: 28), and although the Eminent Person’s Group proposed that the Secretary-General have the authority to sign agreements on behalf of ASEAN in non-sensitive areas and represent ASEAN in the UN these provisions do not appear in the Charter (Acharya 2009: 268). The sparse resources committed to the Secretariat, and the limited authority of the Secretary-General, reinforces the notion that the members have ensured the organisation remains dependent on the resources and energy of the member states. Thus, while the increasing number of interactions and their regularity are indicative of the community-building process Deustch et al., and Adler and Barnett identify, they do not in the ASEAN context indicate an integrative process; ‘The ASEAN Secretariat remains subordinate to national secretariats’ (Acharya 2009: 81). While the ASEAN Charter marks a distinctive shift in this norm, not least by giving the Association a legal status, it enshrines the authority of the member states by giving the ASEAN summit, a political not judicial body, the function of arbitrator in intra-ASEAN disputes. Amitav Acharya correctly states: the charter, although not an insignificant political commitment to advancing ASEAN’s institutional trajectory, makes a small break from the grouping’s traditional preference for soft institutionalism, with its rules lacking in automaticity and subject ultimately not to an inviolable regional rule of law, but to political considerations and calculations. (2009: 269–270) With the norm of informality we are therefore at the stage of some adjustment. The organisational apparatus of ASEAN has become more formalised and this has been strengthened in the ASEAN Charter with, for example, a Committee of Permanent Representatives based in Jakarta replacing the ASEAN Standing Committee of ASEAN Directors General of the foreign ministries. Non-ASEAN members can now also appoint Ambassadors to ASEAN, but in terms of where authority lays this remains firmly in the hands of the state leaders. Closely allied to the norm of informality is the second constitutive norm of consensus decision making; this norm is reinforced by the ASEAN Charter. The function of consultation and seeking a consensus over decision making more starkly reveals the block on an integrative ASEAN process. In the ASEAN context these two processes are said to relate to the Javanese notions of musyawarah
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 35 (consultation) and mufakat (consensus). In essence, they describe a discreet, informal process of negotiation where differences can be aired in private and the possibility of common ground being found ascertained before an official meeting. The nature of the negotiation is non-hostile and is often contrasted to the sabre-rattling, gunboat diplomacy of Western/colonial powers. The process of consultation may take some time and if a consensus cannot be found then the matter is left unresolved to be return to at a more apposite time when a consensus can be achieved. In the meantime, a public face of unity is expressed thus ensuring that no member is isolated or embarrassed. It is this avoidance of conflict that has earned ASEAN the reputation for conflict management rather than conflict resolution. Although a consensus is sought this does not equate to the need to achieve unanimity. If one members disagrees with a proposal but finds itself in a minority, and the issue itself will not have negative repercussions when implemented, then although it does not support the issue it need not prevent others from proceeding; a consensus is said to have been reached via the ‘Minus X’ formula. Lee Kuan Yew says: So long as members who are not yet ready to participate are not damaged by non-participation, nor excluded from future participation, the power of veto need not be exercised ... when four agree and one does not object, this can still be considered a consensus, and the four should proceed with a new regional scheme. (quoted from Acharya 1997: 332) In the ASEAN context consultation and consensus can thus be seen as positive processes towards community building since they stress a non-threatening environment where members have a shared commitment to accommodating each others’ interests. This, Acharya argues, ‘may create enough goodwill among the participants to encourage self-restrained political and military behaviour, based on “feelings of brotherhood and kinship”’ (2009: 84). While this may be true, the public show of unity and the need for consensus also ensures that national interests cannot be compromised and ultimately nothing can be done against member states’ wishes. A pessimistic reading of musyawarah and mufakat would therefore be that rather than encourage a process of social learning in which members are induced to adopt certain practices and norms, they enable the member states to avoid confronting differences. In addition, these processes also reinforce the idea that ASEAN regionalism is not about encouraging an integrative process but about supporting national priorities. For example, in the 1970s when ASEAN members negotiated a preferential trading agreement – the Agreement on the ASEAN Preferential Trading Arrangements (PTA) was signed in February 1977 – an exclusion list of sensitive products was also established so that no member would have to liberalize those parts of its economy that it deemed ‘central to its national development or political integrity’ (Ba 2009: 96). A similar exclusion list for ‘highly sensitive’ products also existed twenty years later during the ASEAN Free Trade Area (ATFA) negotiations (Collins 2003: 115–117). Hence Ravenhill’s
36 ASEAN’s constitutive norms comment that AFTA’s implementation is ‘pursued selectively when it does not threaten entrenched domestic interests’ (2006: 197). Although the safeguarding of national interest is to be expected during the early (nascent) stages of community building, ultimately social learning is supposed to lead to a reconceptualising of what constitutes national security interest so that it becomes synonymous with regional or community security interests. This explains Adler and Barnett’s definition of social learning ‘as an active process of redefinition or reinterpretation of reality on the basis of new causal and normative knowledge’ (1998: 422). The problem for ASEAN is that these processes do not encourage this level of social learning because they are designed to minimise member states’ exposure to other members’ interests. Far from encouraging an interactive process of socialisation that produces a shared understanding they enable members to remain unchanging in their outlook. The AFTA experience revealed that little had changed in the economic sector and the ASEAN Charter did likewise for both the economic sector, where Article 21 codifies the Minus X formula, and intra-ASEAN relations more broadly conceived with Article 20 reaffirming ASEAN’s central decision-making processes of consultation and consensus (ASEAN Secretariat 2008a). ASEAN’s informality of decision making and consultation and consensus approach reflect the regionalism of Southeast Asia; primacy lies with the sovereign state. This points to a soft, or weak, form of institutionalism that while giving the appearance of supporting a community building process actually negates such an outcome. ASEAN may well be at an incipient or nascent stage but its modus operandi ensures that it will not progress to a mature stage. This becomes even more evident in the third constitutive norm: non-interference. The final norm is ASEAN’s most famous: non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. It succinctly captures the lack of mutual responsiveness required by the members and explicitly limits the type of intensified interaction, which for Adler and Barnett produces a shared identity. For critics of ASEAN it is this principle that undermines the notion that ASEAN is building a community. David Jones and Michael Smith write, ‘[t]his implacable commitment to noninterference constitutes ASEAN’s core weakness. It is simply a non sequitur to build a community among neighboring states on the basis of official indifference to those neighbors’, and consequently the ‘inviolable canon of noninterference negates any expression of regional identity’ (2002: 108). The accusation of indifference is damning since this clearly negates a community but it misrepresents what non-interference means in the ASEAN context. It is not about indifference, it is about the nature of assistance they give each other. Lee Jones makes a similar mistake when he argues that despite the scholarly consensus that non-interference explains ASEAN state behaviour, this is simply inaccurate (Jones 2010: 481). However, he mistakenly sees non-interference to mean never intervening, but this makes little sense because states have to respond to developments in neighbours because these developments will have an impact on them; transnational problems existed as soon as territorial borders were established. In the ASEAN context non-interference is about members helping each other, so when he writes about ASEAN states defending a particular social order from those
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 37 struggling against the status quo (Jones 2010: 487–488) this is evidence in favour of, not against, non-interference. It is though, as I now explain, the nature of the assistance that counters community‑building. The centrality of national resilience to ASEAN regionalism reveals that the member states were, and arguably still are, engaged in nation- and state-building. Since nation- and state-building is often a brutal business, the governing elite wanted to be able to conduct their policies in the knowledge that neighbours would refrain from interfering in their domestic affairs. What they had in common was their sense of regime insecurity. This was their common cause and non-interference was their primary means of supporting one another. Hence Malcolm Chalmers’ statement that, ‘common security took the form of a strong norm of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs’ (1997: 105). Acharya identifies four aspects to ASEAN’s non-interference (2009: 72–74). First, refrain from criticising the actions of a member government towards its own people, including the violation of human rights and its political system (dictatorial, military, authoritarian etc.). This is the best known aspect of non-interference and the one that generates the greatest degree of criticism levelled at the Association. It is precisely its willingness to turn a blind eye to human rights abuse, and indeed to provide political support to the perpetrators of these acts as ASEAN did for Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea (DK) when it was overthrown by Vietnam, that explains Kuhonta’s description of ASEAN as an illiberal security community (2006).2 It is this aspect of non-interference that also explains the ASEAN members support for Indonesia when it was subjected to a hostile resolution in the General Assembly of the UN in December 1975 when it annexed East Timor.3 It is also this avoidance of criticising member states that explains its non-response to Thailand’s military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1992 and its non-response to the coup that overthrew Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. However, as will be noted below, it is also this aspect that has undergone some adjustment, especially with regard to Burma. The second aspect of non-interference is to criticise states that do breach the non-interference principle, the primary example of this was the criticism directed at Vietnam for its invasion of Cambodia in 1978. The third aspect is not to recognise or support rebel groups seeking to overthrow the incumbent elite. This explains ASEAN ignoring the Philippine ‘People’s Power’ revolution against the Marcos regime in 1986. This aspect has also undergone some adjustment as will be demonstrated below when examining Burma. However, a good example of this adjustment could be witnessed in ASEAN’s response to the Thai military crackdown in April 2010. On this occasion the military turned on the demonstrators from the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (better known as the Red Shirts) killing 91 people and leaving more than 1800 injured in the streets of Bangkok (Areethamsirikul 2010). The initial ASEAN position was to ignore the crisis and no mention was made of the crackdown at the 16th ASEAN Summit held at Hanoi in April. However, a month later ASEAN did release a statement in which the member states emphasized ‘their support and solidarity with the people and the Government … of Thailand’, and expressed their confidence in the ‘Thai
38 ASEAN’s constitutive norms Nation’ overcoming the country’s difficulties (ASEAN Secretariat 2010f). Not then support solely for the regime but also the Thai people, which implicitly includes the red shirts; a subtle adjustment for certain, but nevertheless a recognition from member states that a solution lies in the Thai elite acknowledging the ‘rebels’ grievances. The fourth aspect of non-interference is to provide political and material support to assist member government campaigns against subversive elements. As Lee Jones aptly demonstrates assistance was plentiful during the Cold War to counter communist insurgents (Jones 2010). Material support, in the guise of military transport aircraft, was provided by Indonesia to aid Marcos’ fight against insurgents. Bilateral defence cooperation arrangements between Malaysia and Indonesia and Malaysia and Thailand were established to help fight insurgency movements. Indeed, despite Malaysian and Thai relations being strained because of the activities of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) operating out of Thailand, and Muslim separatists in Southern Thailand operating out of Malaysia, Thailand granted Malaysia the right to pursue guerrillas across the border. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack against the USA on 11 September 2001, counter-terrorism agreements have been made. In December 2001, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines began joint naval interdiction operations, while in February 2002 foreign ministers from the three countries signed a comprehensive agreement to facilitate counter-terrorism cooperation and interoperability (Collins 2003: 138–139). Examples of political support include the ASEAN elite supporting Corazon Aquino by attending the Manila summit in December 1987, despite security concerns arising from threats to Aquino from both communists and disgruntled military officers. The presence of personnel from some ASEAN members in the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET), in response to a request for assistance from Jakarta, represented both material and political support to the Habibie government. Non-interference does not therefore equate to indifference in the ASEAN context; instead it captures the reciprocity that Adler and Barnett identify as one of the three characteristics of a community, although the reciprocity is more in line with not reciprocating negatively. That is, deliberately eschewing the opportunities for self-aggrandizement presented by neighbouring states’ moments of weakness. Hence not criticising member states’ brutality and not supporting rebel groups. Even the fourth aspect of giving support, which is positive reciprocity, is actually very limited and, as will be noted below when looking at ‘regional solutions to regional problems’, not the primary source of support ASEAN members seek. What non-interference does reveal is the nature of the reciprocity counters the move towards building a security community. For Adler and Barnett the exchanges between the members is critical since it is from this process of social learning that a ‘transmission of practices’ occurs. Hence they write, ‘transactions are [an] essential feature for the development of collective learning and collective identities’ (1998: 44). Non-interference is though essentially about minimising interactions; member states should be left to their own devices with regard to the messy business of nation- and state-building. It is not a subject for either
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 39 neighbouring states or external powers to become involved in unless invited. This type of support matches the requirement of a security regime, since the reciprocity envisaged ensures members do not take advantage of each other as soon as an opportunity to do so arises, but the ‘hands-off, go-it-alone’ approach is not going to establish a shared sense of belonging – ‘we-feeling’ – that underpins the members’ mutual identification. This becomes manifest in the notion of ‘regional solutions to regional problems’, but before examining this it is necessary to pause and consider the claim that ASEAN has rejected, or fundamentally altered, its non-interference principle because of Burma. Lee Jones argues quite forcefully that ASEAN has drifted towards a policy of critical disengagement towards Burma. The policy amounts to ‘criticism of Burma’s internal affairs in violation of non-interference, coupled with resignation as to ASEAN’s inability to influence Burma and a desire to transfer responsibility to the UN’ (2008: 282). Christopher Roberts concurs when he writes that because of Burma there have been ‘increasingly frequent violations of the non-interference principle, thereby rendering the “ASEAN Way” essentially outmoded’ (2010: 180). Finally William Cole and Erik Jensen not only assert that ‘ASEAN statements and measures regarding Burma represent a real departure from the noninterference principle’, but just for good measure it ‘is also important in departing from the long-standing ASEAN principle of acting only on the consensus of all members’ (2009: 253). The question of Burma and non-interference has plagued the Association since Burma became a member and it can be traced back to the late 1990s and the thenThai Foreign Minister and now ASEAN Secretary-General, Surin Pitsuwan’s, proposal of flexible engagement. In part Surin’s proposal was a reaction to the blow to ASEAN’s credibility caused by the Asian financial crisis, as well as a series of transnational issues that were emerging, notably environmental degradation that was euphemistically called ‘haze’, but the primary source of his proposal was Thailand’s attempt to resolve problems with neighbouring Burma. It was an attempt to distance the new Thai government from its predecessors’ ‘constructive engagement’ with Rangoon and manage the increasingly difficult problem of refugees fleeing Burma and settling on the Burmese–Thai border. At the June 1998 Asia-Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur, Surin argued: ASEAN members perhaps no longer can afford to adopt a non-committal stance and avoid passing judgement on events in a member country, simply on the grounds of ‘non-interference’. To be sure, ASEAN’s respect for the sovereignty of fellow members is one reason why the grouping has come this far and enjoyed such longevity. However, if domestic events in one member’s territory impact adversely on another member’s internal affairs, not to mention regional peace and prosperity, much can be said in favour of ASEAN members playing a more proactive role. Consequently, it is obvious that ASEAN countries have an overriding interest in the internal affairs of its fellow members and may, on occasion, find it necessary to recommend a certain course of action on specific issues that affect us all, directly or
40 ASEAN’s constitutive norms indirectly. Or, to be explicit, we may need to make intra-ASEAN relations more dynamic, more engaged, and, yes, more ‘constructive’ than before. (quoted from Haacke 1999: 585–586) It was a call for openness in dealing with domestic matters that had regional implications. Speaking explicitly about Burma, Surin’s deputy, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, stated it means speaking frankly about domestic matters: ‘True friends speak frankly to each other. We don’t talk sweet’ (quoted from Acharya 2009: 176). Surin’s proposal was, however, rejected by the other ASEAN leaders with the only exception being the Philippines’ Foreign Minister, Domingo Siazon. Malaysia and Singapore cited concerns that encouraging debate about internal matters would do more harm than good and ruin ASEAN. There was concern that bilateral issues would needlessly become regionalised, and for the new members abandoning non-interference could raise questions about their own regime’s survival. There was also suspicion that flexible engagement represented a Thai attempt to assume leadership of ASEAN in the wake of Suharto’s fall and the leadership vacuum this created. ASEAN instead adopted the less interventionist notion of enhanced interaction. What flexible engagement did was reveal that some members were prepared to adjust ASEAN’s cardinal principle. The explanation for this lies not just with the realisation that specific transnational issues required greater coordination but also the impact of democratisation. This is taken up in the next chapter when the liberalising of some Southeast Asian polities is posited as a necessary condition for non-state actors to help challenge existing norms. For now though noninterference withstood the challenge but subsequent interactions with Burma indicate willingness in some instances for members to ‘speak frankly’. This was none more so than when Singapore’s foreign minister, George Yeo, speaking on behalf of the ASEAN foreign ministers, responded to Burma’s crackdown against protesting monks in September 2007 (known as the Saffron Revolution) by expressing their ‘revulsion’ to the Burmese foreign minister and being ‘appalled’ by the government’s use of automatic weapon fire (Roberts 2010: 155–156). While by November 2007 the ASEAN foreign ministers issued a statement reiterating the need to release Aung San Suu Kyi and other political detainees while also engaging Suu Kyi in meaningful dialogue (ASEAN Secretariat 2007b). These comments certainly show that ASEAN has both criticised the regime for its actions and, by supporting the inclusion of Sui Kyi in the country’s future, it has given the regime’s opponents support. Is non-interference on the wane? ASEAN’s Burmese experience suggests not. What becomes apparent is that a division exists within the membership over how to respond to the challenges that Burma creates for the other members. Thus while Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines were of the view that Burma’s internal problems could no longer be considered a domestic affair, this was not shared by Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This division ultimately led to ASEAN having difficulty reaching a consensus on statements over Burma and in 2008 it repeated its statement of 2003 that urged the junta to resume its efforts towards national reconciliation and a
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 41 peaceful transition to democracy (Haacke 2008). The consensus norm therefore stymied ASEAN as a means of applying pressure on Burma’s military leaders, and the November 2007 ASEAN statement from the foreign ministers, in which ASEAN disengages Burma stating that it was on its own in its dealings with the UN and the international community, marks the end of ASEAN as a tool to engineer change (ASEAN Secretariat 2007b).4 While this indicates that ASEAN’s consensus norm is alive and well since it led to the Association’s disengagement, surely the fact that members were trying to pressure another member means noninterference was ignored? It is worth recalling that the reason why non-interference is a constitutive norm is because it supported the members in their pursuit of national resilience. Abiding by the norm not only prevented domestic upheavals spreading to neighbouring states it also minimised extra-regional powers interfering in the region. The problem with Burma is that in the post-Cold War world concerns with democracy and human rights had been elevated on the international stage and those countries out of line with Western thinking were attracting criticism. Hence Sukhumbhand’s warning that, States or groups of states which hope to play an influential role in the international political arena may not wish to conform to [Western] norms and values, and in many cases get away without having to do so. But they cannot blatantly and cynically ignore or violate them on a sustained basis … it is essential that members do their utmost to make themselves acceptable in the eyes of the international community. No one can live in isolation. (quoted from Jones 2008: 275) As a member of ASEAN it was made explicitly clear that Burma’s poor record on both democratic reform and human rights affected the image of all members. After Burma’s admission the then US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, stated, ‘Burma’s future and ASEAN’s future are now joined. And now, more than ever, Burma’s problems need an ASEAN solution’ (The Straits Times 1997). With the opportunity to exploit Burma’s natural resources a number of ASEAN countries, including Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, were keen to constructively engage Burma so to liberalise its economy; political liberalisation in the guise of constitutional trappings of democracy as found in other members was adequate. The goal for ASEAN, as it had always been, was to enhance domestic stability and relieve external pressure. The problem the ASEAN members found was that the Burmese junta were just as willing to accept investment from China, which did not require any form of democratic progress. The result, as Lee Jones comments, was rather ‘than embarking on tightly controlled liberalization, the military used the revenue from ASEAN’s economic engagement … to entrench itself in power… The military was thus able to recover from the period of mass unrest in 1988’ (2008: 274). ASEAN’s relationship with Burma is thus different from other members. The goal is to engage with domestic change and assist the military leaders in
42 ASEAN’s constitutive norms accomplishing this; hence the extolling of national reconciliation. When the junta refused to budge along the democracy path – and ASEAN as a whole attracted external criticism – then individual ASEAN countries criticised the leadership. For example, after the May 2003 Depayin incident, when a National League for Democracy (NLD) motorcade was attacked and Suu Kyi was forced to return to her home in what was called ‘protective custody’ but was in effect house arrest, Malaysia’s Foreign Minister, Syed Hamid Albar, stated we need to explain to the international community Burma’s situation ‘in a very credible manner to ensure ASEAN’s reputation and image was not questioned’ (quoted from Jones 2008: 279). Depayin did though attract a great deal of international attention and criticism and the other members found themselves pressurized to bringing about change in Burma. The frustration felt by the ASEAN leaders was most keenly felt by the then Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, who had negotiated hard for Burma’s admission to ASEAN. Citing the Depayin incident as embarrassing for ASEAN leaders he warned the junta that if they refused to release Suu Kyi then they risked being expelled from ASEAN (BBC 2003). While this is clearly out of line with the description of non-interference posited above it is important to note that when Burma, albeit superficially, did take conciliatory steps then ASEAN sought to deflect external criticism, in other words, to minimise external interference. This could be seen in 2010 and Burma’s long-awaited national election, marking the superficial end of military rule. The election, held on 7 November 2010, was a farce with the result predictable; the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development party (USDP) won 80 per cent of the seats in an election the NLD refused to participate in and one marked by fraudulent activities, such as vote buying and intimidation, low voter turnout, crippling media restrictions and a ban on international election monitors. Nevertheless, the following day whilst the international community and civil society groups were condemning the election, ASEAN ‘welcomed’ the election as ‘a significant step forward in the implementation of the 7-point Roadmap for Democracy’ (Vietnam 2010). Indeed throughout a year in which the junta prevaricated over when the election would be held and it was widely dismissed as a sham, the ASEAN Secretary-General gave the election a veneer of respectability by hoping that it would be marked by freedom of speech and travel, both of which were plainly not going to happen (Irrawaddy 2010). This reveals two important points to consider with regard to non-interference and Burma. First, where non-interference was no longer capable of achieving ASEAN’s purpose of enhancing national and regional resilience then it was adjusted, but not abandoned. That is, ASEAN leaders explicitly discussed the internal politics of a member with the intent of persuading and cajoling them along of path of political change. This though is an adjustment but not abandonment because so long as a process of national reconciliation could be witnessed, then the ASEAN leaders sought to deflect external criticism of Burma, to minimise interference. The second point is that the specific reasons for this adjustment to non-interference are Burma-oriented; there are no grounds to assume it is indicative of a change applicable to other members. Thailand’s suppression of internal unrest in its Southern provinces, for example, is not a matter for ASEAN
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 43 debate. The reinforcement of non-interference is examined in the next chapter where it is confirmed in the ASEAN Charter.
Regional solutions The case for ASEAN proceeding along the path of security community formation is that they have a common understanding of what constitutes security (a resilient region built on strong states and not a strong regional organisation) and a common approach to help achieve this (do not interfere in each other’s affairs). This shared understanding of how to interact with one another is based upon complying with certain norms, which have over time become embedded. This produces predictable and thus secure interstate relations, and although the use of force remains possible and therefore Southeast Asia is not yet a security community, nevertheless it is proceeding in a manner that will, in time, accomplish this outcome. There are though two problems with this. The first, as intimated above, is that ASEAN’s constitutive norms do not encourage the type of elite interaction that will produce a sense of community; there is a lack of mutual identification and this will be revealed next. The second is that ASEAN’s norms limit the interaction to the state elite and thus constrain the ability of non-state actors to develop a sense of ‘we-feeling’ separate from the state elite: Mouritzen’s separate ‘peace inertia’. The lack of mutual identification has been revealed by the work of Tobias Nischalke (2002). Nischalke examined fourteen events between 1988 and 1997 and tested ASEAN’s norms compliance in each case. In order to determine if the members acted as though they had a collective identity he used three criteria: (1) shared meaning structures and values; (2) mutual identifications among community members; (3) compliance with norms and practices. The first criterion is that the members recognise and respond to problems in the same way, the second is the ‘we-feeling’ that epitomises their shared identity, and the third is that they display diffuse reciprocity. He found, especially between 1992 and 1997, that the incidence of norm compliance and shared interpretations had increased. This was particularly the case with ASEAN’s response to China’s crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Burma’s admission in 1997 and how ASEAN responded to Chinese actions in the South China Sea. Thus with regard to the principles enshrined in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, he concludes, these norms ‘have constituted a “shared meaning structure” for ASEAN leaders throughout the post-Cold War period and previously also informed ASEAN’s response to the Cambodia conflict’ (2002: 107). However, he also found that because ASEAN members have continued to conceive of their security as requiring the involvement of outside powers, as opposed to relying upon one another, this negated a concomitant rise in mutual identification. This is a critical point. Nischalke is arguing that while the members have a shared interpretation of their security problems, and the appropriate response to them, these responses have not generated a sense of ‘we-feeling’ or mutual identification. I agree with Nischalke’s findings and his reasoning (Collins 2007: 214–215); member states do rely more on the assistance of external powers for their security
44 ASEAN’s constitutive norms than they do on one another. Hence the strong security links between Thailand and the Philippines and the United States and between Malaysia and Singapore and the United Kingdom. This was particularly evident in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the designating of Southeast Asia as the second front in the war on terror, hence Acharya writes, ‘ASEAN members looked beyond Southeast Asia to garner support in combating terrorism. Cooperation with the US and Australia proved especially important’ (2009: 246). However, I contend that this lack of mutual identification can also be explained by ASEAN’s constitutive norms. Despite the many annual ASEAN meetings and gatherings amongst the state elite intra-ASEAN relations are easily marred by long-standing rivalries that have not been mitigated by these interactions. Thus despite the generally cordial relations within the membership some of the bilateral relations can become easily fraught over relatively minor incidents. For example, in January 2003 a local newspaper reported, inaccurately, that a Thai movie star had said that Cambodia’s famous Angkor Wat temple belonged to Thailand. These remarks initiated a riot with over 1000 students setting ablaze the Thai Embassy along with several Thai businesses. After a night of anti-Thai riots, diplomatic officials and some Thai nationals were evacuated from Phnom Penh by two Thai military transport aircraft. Ownership of the Preah Vihear temple has since continued to blight their relations with a lethal exchange of fire between troops occurring in April 2008. In late 2009 Thailand withdrew its ambassador from Phnom Penh in protest at Cambodia’s refusal to extradite Thailand’s former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, a move that led to a tit-for-tat expelling of diplomats. What enables these incidents to develop into at best spats, and at worst actual use of force, is long-standing simmering resentment from a bygone era of clashes between the Siamese and Khmer kingdoms; precisely the sort of historical animosity that interaction within a nascent/ascendant security community should mitigate. This historical animosity is also reflected in Malaysian–Singaporean relations that continue to have an undercurrent of suspicion born from their unhappy merger in the Malaysian Federation from 1963–1965 and subsequent bitter separation. This was particularly marked in the early 2000s when the two countries were disputing the price Singapore should pay Malaysia for water, and it is Singapore’s need to secure reservoirs in Malaysia that explains its offensive force posture.5 Finally, relations between Malaysia and Indonesia, a relationship that is ‘acknowledged along the corridors of power in ASEAN as the cornerstone of the organization’ (Liow 2005: 1) is likewise one fraught with historical rivalries. Despite the rhetoric of these two countries sharing sufficiently close cultural ties to be kin states enjoying the expectations and obligations of kinship, their relations are equally defined by rivalry and discord. At the heart of this appears to be an expectation from Indonesia of Javanese dominance or at least Malaysian deference, which has not been forthcoming (Liow 2005: 171–172). Since independence the most serious clash was the period of Confrontation but in more recent times the relations have soured over migrants’ rights leading Indonesia in 2010 to place a temporary ban on sending domestic workers to Malaysia. In addition to these three relationships there are territorial disputes between Malaysia and the Philippines and infrequent
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 45 exchanges of fire between Burmese and Thai troops, as well as numerous naval clashes over maritime boundaries and fishing rights. Why do these minor incidents continue to blight their relations, and in the case of Singapore and Malaysia lead Adler and Greve to note minority issues and the economic crisis of the late 1990s ‘exposed a background of hostile relations, for example, between Singapore and Malaysia, inconsistent with security community practices’ (2009: 76)? Because the norms in place reflect the primacy of national solutions to national problems, which if successful will in turn make a strong region. The norms thus negate the type of elite interaction that, via social learning, produces a conceptualization of regional solutions to national problems. Hence they can agree on what the problems are – ‘shared meaning structure’ – but the solution is not through relying upon positive cooperative endeavours reflecting mutual identification. ASEAN’s constitutive norms therefore negate the process of social learning that will create a mature security community. The second reason why ASEAN has not moved in the direction of a mature security community concerns the need for pluralism. In the previous chapter the significance of multiple interactions between societies was highlighted as essential when explaining the peace-inducing and security-enhancing quality of a security community. In the next chapter this is explained in detail, but in short the argument is that through a combination of encouraging social learning among the wider populace and bringing expertise to bear on a topic, and such expertise includes acting as a watchdog on the activities of states, the nonstate elites both encourage and maintain community formation. It is therefore important that non-state elites, which will be referred to in the amorphous term civil society organisation (CSO), are able to engage in the community-building process and do so with a degree of independence. Although Adler and Barnett’s preference is to concentrate on the state elite when explaining the move through the phases forming a security community, and they are of course essential, they also acknowledge the importance of non-state elite in the latter stages. They write: One of the interesting characteristics of the development of a security community is that as states moved from one phase to the next they were more willing to become mutually accountable to one another in a host of areas, including how they treat their citizens. There are many reasons why states might become more willing to submit themselves to oversight and reduce their autonomy in once highly sensitive spheres, but one possibility is that the growth of transnational identification and linkages encourages citizens and groups to become mutually accountable on particular issues. (1998: 432) It is precisely the prospect that transnational linkages and a consequent emergence of shared identification among non-state elite could emerge in a ‘people-oriented’ ASEAN that indicates ASEAN could form a security community. However, it is also precisely the realisation that a people-oriented ASEAN represents a departure for the Association that indicates for most of its existence it has not encouraged
46 ASEAN’s constitutive norms such linkages. The dramatic change in regional, and international, CSOs’ attitude and approach towards ASEAN since Bali Concord-II and specifically 2005 is examined in the next chapter. For now it is the nature of ASEAN’s interaction with CSOs and the inhibiting affect of non-interference that concludes this chapter’s argument that past ASEAN practice has not laid the foundations for a mature security community. Although ASEAN is first and foremost an association for the elite this does not mean that it has not engaged with regional non-state actors. ASEAN has encouraged business involvement via the ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASEAN-CCI) established in 1972, a vehicle through which businesses could have an input on regional economic issues. ASEAN-CCI was, for example, to play an important role in the creation of AFTA. Since the 1980s ASEAN has engaged with academics from the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS). This is known as track-II dialogue and since 1991 ASEAN-ISIS has met the members of the ASEAN Senior Official Meeting prior to the annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. The human rights body established in the ASEAN Charter has its origins in the ASEAN-ISIS Colloquium on Human Rights. ASEAN began granting accreditation to CSOs as far back as 1979 although formal guidelines for affiliation were not adopted until 1986 and these were revised in 2006. Under the new guidelines fifty-five CSOs now have ASEAN accreditation (Chandra and Chavez 2008). Thus in terms of encouraging transnational affiliations and providing avenues for non-state actors to engage with ASEAN it would be wrong to say ASEAN prevents such endeavours. However, it is the controlling nature of this interaction that reveals that it remains very much a state elite-driven exercise. The 2006 guidelines for CSO accreditation provide a valuable insight into this top-down process. CSO affiliation requires CSOs granted accreditation to have objectives that enhance, strengthen and realise the aims and objectives of ASEAN. They are required, in writing, to abide by the policies, guidelines, directives and other decisions of ASEAN, and CSOs that are deemed by the ASEAN Standing Committee to have acted in a contrary manner will have their accreditation terminated. They are required to invite officials of ASEAN Member Countries to participate at their meetings and activities and they should submit, on an annual basis, a written summary of their activities to the ASEAN Standing Committee (ASEAN Secretariat 2006a). The nature of this engagement is thus one determined and directed by the state elite. It is a top-down process where ASEAN establishes the objectives that the CSOs pursue, and it is perhaps not surprising that the types of CSOs that are granted accreditation represent professional and industry associations such as ASEAN Law Association, ASEAN Orthopaedic Association and the ASEAN Federation of Accountants.6 This type of controlling relationship has also bedevilled the interaction academics have had with the state elite. It has lead to accusations of academics becoming bureaucratized and coopted by the state elite (Jones and Smith 2006: 32–39) and, as will be noted in the next chapter, has led some CSOs to accuse ASEAN-ISIS of restricting rather than opening channels for dialogue with ASEAN.
ASEAN’s constitutive norms 47 The nature of ASEAN’s interaction with CSOs, which essentially amounts to co-opting them, thus curtails their independence and does not encourage the creation of the separate peace inertia Mouritzen describes. The embedded norm of non-interference, and specifically not supporting government critics, helps to explain this. Thus independent advocacy groups that have sought to make ASEAN states accountable for how they treat their own citizens have found other members abiding by non-interference and blocking their initiatives. For example in 1996 the Malaysian authorities arrested and detained participants attending an Asia Pacific Conference on East Timor taking place in Kuala Lumpur stating that the meeting was ‘insensitive to Indonesia-Malaysia ties’ (Gecker 1998). Two years later both the Philippines and Malaysia were hostile to NGO-sponsored conferences on East Timor. Acharya writes that this manifests a ‘continued reluctance of ASEAN states to provide a platform to the dissidents and critics of the governments of fellow members’ (2009: 73). In late 2010 the Thai Foreign Ministry, at the request of Vietnam and citing a ‘long-standing position of not allowing organizations and/ or persons to use Thailand as a place to conduct activities detrimental to other countries’, informed two speakers that were travelling to Thailand to launch a report titled, ‘From vision to facts: human rights in Vietnam under its chairmanship of ASEAN’ that they would not be permitted entry to the country (FIDH 2010a). Thus when Adler and Barnett write that as the community’s normative structure develops there is a ‘tendency to supplement or, in some cases, even to replace the norm of non-intervention with the norm of “mutual accountability”’, which includes ‘how they treat their citizens’, this has not occurred in ASEAN (Adler and Barnett 1998: 432). The nature of ASEAN’s controlling interaction, coupled to its members’ unwillingness to put pressure on fellow members, traditionally made ASEAN an unattractive Association for CSOs to engage. Consequently it can be argued that little was done to promote, and on issues entailing criticism of domestic rule even sought to discourage, transnational affiliations between its people. Acharya, a strong advocate for ASEAN becoming a security community, recognises that although ASEAN has established a number of socio-cultural associations, ‘the reach of these groups into the hearts and minds of ordinary people remains limited and they have not created a sense of community’ (2004b: 33). What we need to witness is a change in the extent to which non-state elite are able to develop transnational affiliations supported by ASEAN. Such support would entail not just encouraging such activity but also providing a means through which they could engage ASEAN and be part of the community building process. Is this what ASEAN means by becoming people-oriented? This is the subject for the next chapter.
Conclusion In a recent, somewhat startling claim, Charles Kupchan writes despite ‘the ambiguity about exactly when stable peace set in, a consensus does exist among scholars that ASEAN constitutes a security community’ (2010: 231). The case for ASEAN being a security community is solely based on the absence of war
48 ASEAN’s constitutive norms in Southeast Asia but this is both (1) insufficient evidence since other governing structures such as a security regimes can reduce the likelihood of war; and (2) overlooks the resort to force in recent border incidents between Thailand and Burma and Thailand and Cambodia. It also fails to acknowledge the Singaporean deterrent strategy of threatening to seize Malaysian territory if needed in time of war; such military strategies have no place in a security community. Contrary to Kupchan’s claim the literature is divided between those that see ASEAN as largely irrelevant to the international relations of Southeast Asia and those that see the members on the path to becoming a mature security community. For the former, it is a region that has avoided war simply because the member states preoccupation has been with domestic challenges. For the latter, the ASEAN Way has enabled a combination of norms to establish an identity among the elite that has made the resort to force increasingly inappropriate. For security community proponents the discussion is whether it is at a nascent (incipient) or ascendant stage. In this chapter I have argued that ASEAN’s constitutive norms hinder community formation and thus ASEAN has not been, at least until Bali Concord‑II, proceeding down a path leading to a mature security community. This is because ASEAN’s constitutive norms are designed to create a strong region from strong, autonomous, states. The type of intensive interaction envisaged via social learning producing a mutual identification is missing. This is important because in many respects ASEAN appears to be forming a security community. The state elite have achieved a shared understanding of their common security threats and the means to resolve them and norm compliance is largely maintained. However, the means of responding to their security threats is to minimise neighbouring involvement (which is what the constitutive norms seek to accomplish) and if external assistance is needed, to seek that from extra-regional powers; hence Nischalke’s finding about lack of mutual identification. What ASEAN has established is a security regime; the abidance with the norms of the ASEAN Way help to dampen the security dilemma by establishing greater certainty in their relations. However, they remain egoistical actors and they have not engaged in the type of transformative interaction that security community formation requires, hence the ease with which bilateral difficulties can arise. Finally, the notion that member states’ societies become interpenetrated and this acts as a separate check on potential hostilities has not occurred in Southeast Asia. The important function non-state elite can perform has been negated by past ASEAN practice, a conclusion that Acharya concurs with when he writes, ‘the true meaning of community involves identity among peoples, and not just states’, but that, ‘ASEAN has done little thus far to draw in the citizenry and the civil society into the ambit of regional interactions’ (2004b: 32). Nevertheless, perhaps armed with its ‘peopleoriented’ rhetoric ASEAN is about to take the road not so much less-travelled as untravelled and form a security community.
3 Norm entrepreneurs, community plans of action and the ASEAN Charter
The notion that ASEAN is to become ‘people-oriented’, and the embrace of community discourse contained in the community blueprints adopted in March 2009, which were noted in the introduction chapter, reveal that ASEAN in its forties has undergone something of a makeover. The question is how far this rhetorical change has amounted to an adjustment in the Association’s constitutive norms, norms the previous chapter showed hindered community building. This chapter is therefore concerned with explaining how norms can change, which is dependent upon the type of norm entrepreneur in place and the context in which they are operating. The movement through the phases (nascent, ascendant, mature) of security community formation are testing periods according to Adler and Barnett (1998: 431) since they entail community members rising to the challenge of greater commitments or expressions of obligation and support; in essence to reveal an ‘other regarding’ approach that ultimately will be based on ideational rather than material grounds. We can equate the movement between the phases as the adjustment of established norms or emergence of new norms that guide the members in these transitional moments. Adler and Barnett identify disputes, either within or with an external member to the community, as the likely cause of such transitions. In the case of ASEAN we can identify a shift in how some of the members conceived what the Association could do in the aftermath of the 1997– 1998 Asian Financial Crisis; hence the challenge to non-interference noted in the previous chapter from flexible engagement. This ‘unsettling period’ culminates with the adoption of the ASEAN Charter. This chapter will chart the emergence of challenging ideas to the traditional norms underpinning ASEAN, and in so doing reveal both the context and actors (or norm entrepreneurs) from which these ideas emerge. There are two specific ASEAN documents that are to be examined. The first are the communities’ plans of action since these establish the type of community ASEAN is building. The second is the ASEAN Charter, which among other things codifies the Association’s modus operandi. Before looking at these incidences though the chapter begins by explaining the value of the norm life cycle since this helps to clarify how new norms emerge, how they become widely adopted and how this relates to community building.
50 Norm entrepreneurs
Norm life cycle The notion that norms evolve is captured by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink’s ‘life cycle’ model (1998). This posits a three-stage process as norms emerge, then cascade before becoming internalized. The move from emergence to cascade is divided by a threshold they call the ‘tipping point’. At the first stage those actors promoting the norm seek to convince a critical mass of key actors, those that will be guided by the norm, to adopt it; those doing the persuading are called norm entrepreneurs while Finnemore and Sikkink refer to the key actors as norm leaders. Having been convinced to adopt the norm a critical mass is said to have been achieved once enough key actors – roughly one third of the total – take on the responsibility to socialise the other actors. This is the tipping point and the norm is now said to have moved to the cascade stage. If this socialisation is successful so that additional actors adopt the norm then it may become so ingrained that it takes on a taken-for-granted quality. If this occurs then it has reached the final stage of becoming internalised. A good example that Finnemore and Sikkink use to explain this life cycle is women’s suffrage (1998: 895–896). They found that prior to 1930 no country had adopted women’s suffrage without pressure from domestic pressure groups. However, after 1930 – the tipping point – when a number of Western countries had granted women’s suffrage, international and transnational influences became more important than domestic pressure. In the twenty years that followed the tipping point forty-eight countries adopted women’s suffrage. They argue that it took over eighty years for the norm entrepreneurs – various women’s rights advocates – to accomplish a critical mass of key actors, approximately twenty states, before the cascade occurred and the other forty-eight countries adopted the norm without the need for domestic pressure groups. Today, in many countries it has become internalised with little to no debates about whether women should have the vote. Finnemore and Sikkink identify two elements that are necessary for norms to emerge. First, the activity of norm entrepreneurs since norms, ‘do not appear out of thin air’ (1998: 896), and second, organisational platforms through which these entrepreneurs can promote their norms. In examining each of these elements in turn not only do I intend to show why non-state actors are essential norm entrepreneurs but also why they are important in helping to establish connections between states’ societies and thus play a critical role in helping to build security communities. Norm entrepreneurs In some cases the emergence of new norms can be traced to the pioneering work of one individual, such as the case of Henry Dunant whose personal experience at the battle of Solferino in 1859 led him to champion the norm that medical personnel and those wounded in war be treated as neutrals and non-combatants. Dunant’s work helped to found what would become the International Committee of the Red Cross. Whether the work of a particular individual, or an organisation,
Norm entrepreneurs 51 a norm entrepreneur is someone or something that seeks normative change; such change, according to Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink ‘is inherently disruptive or difficult because it requires actors to question … routinized practice and contemplate new practices’ (1998: 35). It is the sense of the activist in being a norm entrepreneur that tends to identify the role with non-state actors. Of course this need not be the case. In those circumstances where a change of regime or government occurs and the new incumbents wish to distance themselves from their predecessors then state elite may well become norm entrepreneurs. This can partly explain Surin Pitsuwan’s flexible engagement proposal and, as will be noted below, Indonesia, post-Suharto, has encouraged norm entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the source of new norms is mostly to be found from non-state activists who are responding to state practices they consider wrong. In helping to explain what motivates norm entrepreneurs Finnemore and Sikkink highlight qualities that resonate with the sense of obligation and common destiny that make a community. They write, it is very difficult to explain the motivations of norm entrepreneurs without reference to empathy, altruism, and ideational commitment. Empathy exists when actors have the capacity for participating in another’s feelings or ideas. Such empathy may lead to empathetic interdependence, where actors ‘are interested in the welfare of others for its own sake, even if this has no effect on their own material well-being or security.’ Altruism exists when actors actually take ‘action designed to benefit another even at the risk of significant harm to the actor’s own well-being.’ Kristen Monroe argues that the essence or ‘heart’ of altruism is a ‘shared perception of common humanity … a very simple but deeply felt recognition that we all share certain characteristics and are entitled to certain rights, merely by virtue of our common humanity.’ Ideational commitment is the main motivation when entrepreneurs promote norms or ideas because they believe in the ideals and values embodied in the norms, even though the pursuit of the norms may have no effect on their well-being. (1998: 898) The motivation to promote a public good, whether women’s rights, safety for medical personnel in times of war or, in the following chapters, human rights and security from health pandemics and natural disasters are necessary starting points. These are of course qualities that can be found in state elite as well. What then makes non-state actors particularly important as both norm entrepreneurs and community builders? There are a number of different types of non-state actors, ranging from local to regional to international NGOs, to academics and/or think tanks that may or may not form epistemic communities, to staff at international organisations, such as UNAIDS and those that are seconded from international bodies to work at the ASEAN Secretariat. Some, but not all, of these non-state actors fall under the umbrella label of CSOs; it has become a popular label in Southeast Asia to
52 Norm entrepreneurs describe the activity of two specific groups engaging ASEAN that are not in government or seeking office or acting in the interests of commercial companies. These groups are classified as track-II and track-III. Track-II refers to the region’s academic think tanks and specifically the ASEAN-ISIS network, while track-III refers to a fragmented collection of regional NGOs, although as will be noted they have, in engaging ASEAN, formed a coalition to coordinate their activities. The popularity in Southeast Asia of the label CSO explains its adoption in ASEAN documentation and for this reason I adopt the term here. As the title CSO implies the groups loosely represent the notion of civil society. Although the concept of civil society has different origins and meanings depending upon whether it is conceived in Hegelian (European) terms or one that has affinity with Tocqueville (American), it is in its current usage that it has been adopted in Southeast Asia, which has its origins in the opposition movements to authoritarian rule in Eastern Europe and authoritarian rule and capitalist dominance in Asian and Latin American countries. Civil society ‘has become the comprehensive term for various ways in which people express collective wills independently of (and often in opposition to) established power, both economic and political’ (Cox 1999: 10). CSOs are those organisations that are the tangible manifestation of that collective will, and because that will often is in opposition to state and corporate economic power, it embodies an emancipatory or transformative agenda. Robert Cox writes that civil society is ‘the realm of contesting ideas in which the intersubjective meanings upon which people’s sense of “reality” are based can become transformed and new concepts of the natural order of society can emerge’ (1999: 10). This clearly echoes Adler and Barnett’s sentiments regarding transformative change and therefore bodes well for CSO engagement in security community formation; although it will be noted below that successful engagement in security community formation entails working with state actors. There are two aspects of CSOs’ activities that help to explain how they are norm entrepreneurs and why they help build security communities. The first concerns expertise, which can be further divided into two functions. First, is the form of knowledge, documentation and experience CSOs have over the subject matter in question. This knowledge enables CSOs to reinterpret or reframe the debate so that their alternative ideas resonate with the wider public and some key actors. The expertise that CSOs can bring to the subject matter fulfils two specific functions. Firstly, it provides legitimacy to the CSOs’ cause in reframing the debate. Secondly, if they are able to persuade key actors that their interpretation is correct then their expertise could enable the CSO to play a function in the framing of the adjusted norm. This could be both in participating in the drafting of a new modus operandi that incorporated the reframed norm, and/or being involved in the implementation of the new norm. The activity of CSOs in the framing of the Plans of Action and ASEAN Charter will be examined in this chapter and their activities, including functions in the implementation of ASEAN directives, will be noted in the following chapters. The second expertise function is that of advocate and watchdog of norm compliance. In this role CSOs can pressure the state elite by monitoring and
Norm entrepreneurs 53 evaluating state compliance. Keck and Sikkink refer to this as accountability politics. Interestingly, while the key point they make is that monitoring compliance with international standards promotes norm implementation, they arguing that in ‘doing so [CSOs] contribute to changing perceptions that both state and societal actors may have of their identities, interests, and preferences, to transforming their discursive positions, and ultimately to changing procedures, policies, and behavior’ (1998: 3). The interesting part concerns societal actors since this alludes to the second aspect of CSOs’ community building function: how CSOs are effective conduits for social learning at the societal level. For now though we can determine that expertise enables CSOs to be norm entrepreneurs and have a function in developing the normative change that is needed for a security community to form. The second aspect CSOs bring to norm entrepreneurship and community building is that they are facilitators of social learning. CSOs are good conduits for social learning because they can inculcate among a wider populace civic virtue, which not only helps check abuses of power but it also lays the foundation for the type of cooperative relations between societies that Adler and Barnett, or in Deutsch et al.’s terminology ‘people’, note are important for community formation. Here the work of Robert Putnam becomes instructive. In Making Democracy Work, Putnam is concerned with why in Italy some regional governments work better than others. His answer lies in the ‘civic-ness’ of their community (Putnam 1993: 91), which Quentin Skinner defines as a ‘steady recognition and pursuit of the public good at the expense of all purely individual and private ends’ (quoted from Putnam 1993: 88). Putnam’s work has received both acclaim and criticism. The critiques are largely concerned with Putnam’s claim that civic virtue underpins successful democratization (Koelble 2003). What Putnam actually reveals concerns governance not democracy (Laitin 1995) and that the differences between North and South Italy can be accounted for by the South’s historical dependence on the North rather than lack of civic virtue in the South (Tarrow 1996). It is not Putnam’s democracy claim that concerns us though; instead we are interested in the importance of civic-ness to community building. Putnam adopts four criteria for determining civic-ness: vibrancy of associational life; newspaper readership as an indicator of citizens’ interest in community affairs; electoral turnout in referendums that by their nature will be concerned with a major issue of public policy; and preference voting. It is the first of Putnam’s criteria that concerns us (the vibrancy of associational life) since this directly links to CSO activism. Putnam draws upon Alexis de Tocqueville to explain why civil associations contribute to effective government but in doing so he also explains why they are important community builders. Tocqueville notes associations have both an internal effect on members and an external effect on the broader populace. Thus Putnam writes: Internally, associations instill in their members habits of cooperation, solidarity, and public-spiritedness… Participation in civic organizations inculcates skills of cooperation as well as a sense of shared responsibility for
54 Norm entrepreneurs collective endeavors. Moreover, when individuals belong to ‘cross-cutting’ groups with diverse goals and members, their attitudes will tend to moderate as a result of group interaction and cross-pressures. (1993: 89–90) This latter point is particularly pertinent since it implies that membership of multiple associations, or interaction among associations, will encourage at best integration and at worst toleration of the groups’ different views. Putnam writes the ‘civic community is not likely to be blandly conflict-free, for its citizens have strong views on public issues, but they are tolerant of their opponents’ (1993: 89). This toleration of others, Michael Walzer writes, ‘is probably as close as we can come to that “friendship” which Aristotle thought should characterize relations among members of the same political community’ (quoted from Putnam 1993: 89). This becomes clearer in Tocqueville’s external effect of associations. Putnam makes reference to ‘interest articulation’ and ‘interest-aggregation’ to argue that ‘a dense network of secondary associations both embodies and contributes to effective social collaboration’ (1993: 90). This network of CSOs can therefore broaden their member’s self-conception, helping to transform their notion of ‘I’ into ‘we’. These habits of cooperation, solidarity and public-spiritedness are thus infectious and associations are therefore effective channels through which Adler and Barnett’s socialization can occur. How though do associations do this? Putnam’s answer lies with social capital, which he defines as ‘trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions’ (1993: 167). Social capital arises from generalized, or diffuse, reciprocity, which refers to a cooperative relationship in which the exchange between the participants ‘is at any given time unrequited or imbalanced, but that involves mutual expectations that a benefit granted now should be repaid in the future’ (Putnam 1993: 172). Adler and Barnett also note the significance of diffuse reciprocity for establishing a community (1998: 32). Growth of social capital therefore relates to increasing incidents of diffuse reciprocity over time and among a growing network of associations. It becomes a virtuous cycle as social growth encourages more growth as norms of acceptable behaviour are reinforced, trustworthiness of actors is communicated throughout the network and costs to defectors correspondingly rise. The community is one high in civic virtue. Although it perhaps pertinent at this point to acknowledge that Putnam’s use of social capital has an ethical dimension; collaboration is positive because it breeds toleration and this is precisely why it is valuable for building a security community. Social capital, however, in its original conception was morally and ethically neutral (Coleman 1988). Hence Bob Edwards and Michael Foley assert that social capital ‘can just as easily enhance the operations of a community improvement organization or human rights advocacy efforts as it can a drug gang or death squads (1998: 131). Organised criminal gangs, such as the Mafia, exhibit high levels of social capital but given their violent nature they do not create zones of peace. Social capital is not a panacea that creates harmonious relations. It has that potential, but whether it breeds toleration is dependent on the association’s objectives.
Norm entrepreneurs 55 Meredith Weiss suggests that social capital among individuals has an organizational equivalent. In a similar vein to the external impact of social capital, Weiss argues that the experience of societal organizations as they interact can create coalitional capital. Coalitional capital develops out of the experience of societal organizations working over time in the same arena and interacting so that the reputations of various organizations are known, groups have some sense of the strategic and ideological orientations of their counterparts, and coordination of efforts is readily conceivable when political opportunity structures are favourable for change. (2006: 3) In other words, CSOs may forge a conception of shared goals as they coordinate their activities. Hence Weiss concludes, ‘social capital bonds individuals; coalitional capital bridges collectivities’ (2006: 4). The second function that CSOs bring to community building and norm entrepreneurship is therefore that they are conduits for social learning, and by using the notion of social and coalitional capital it is possible to determine the extent to which CSO networks are achieving a conception of shared goals and identity among state and societal actors. For the purpose of this study I am going to concentrate in this chapter on coalitional capital to assess the extent to which CSOs have been able to establish an avenue through which they can engage and influence ASEAN decision making. In essence, have they been able to act as conduits for social learning by becoming stakeholders in ASEAN’s ‘people-oriented’ community? The reason for this focus is because it is too soon to assess the success CSOs have had in developing social capital within the populace regarding ASEAN’s community building project. Suffice to say, however, that a number of CSOs are active in bringing NGOs together to share their ideas and normative outlooks about what a people-oriented ASEAN might mean. For example, in Thailand the People’s Empowerment Foundation (PEF), established in 2006, facilitates people-topeople contact to strengthen grass roots organisations. In 2008 and 2009 PEF focused on ASEAN in response to its community building rhetoric. It has initiated a number of meetings and exchanges between NGOs in ASEAN countries with the long-term goal to establish a peoples’ mechanism for monitoring ASEAN’s performance (PEF 2009). Similar people-to-people initiatives are undertaken byAsiaDHRRA, Forum-Asia and the South East Asian Committee for Advocacy (SEACA), to name just three. Why though would CSOs in different states seek to coordinate their activities and thus initiate coalitional capital? Specifically, why would they do this in the security arena? This takes us back to the notion of security community proposed in Chapter 1. Here it was argued that narrowly defining a security community to the absence of, and preparation for, war, neither captured the peace-inducing quality of a community nor necessarily provided the people with security. Once security communities are conceived in terms of threats being commonly felt and
56 Norm entrepreneurs the sense of security being inextricably tied to other community members, then the obligation and responsibility to alleviate suffering in other members more fully captures the sense of common destiny and belonging that underpins the dependable expectation of peaceful change in their relations. Once we conceive of security in a broader more holistic fashion then the value of CSOs becomes self-evident. It is precisely the emergence of non-traditional security problems on states’ security agendas, such as HIV/AIDS, the narcotics trade and environmental degradation that galvanise CSO activity. Southeast Asian CSO interest in the broadening remit of security at the state level can be easily discerned in their activities vis-à-vis ASEAN since the Bali summit of 2003; this is examined later in the chapter. The prevalence of these transnational non-traditional security problems in Southeast Asia not only provide CSOs with a reason to coordinate their activities, they also, because they are problems common throughout the region, enable CSOs to act as conduits for shared understandings and normative expectations to develop among them, and through secondary associations the populace more broadly, over what the states should do to alleviate these threats. Amitav Acharya refers to this as participatory regionalism (2009: 271–275) and its emergence would indicate the type of multilayered interaction across societies that Mouritzen identified as creating a shared identity that would establish a separate peace inertia from the state level. A final point concerning identity formation needs clarifying before turning to the organisational platform. Southeast Asia is a region rich in ethnic and religious diversity and creating a security community does not entail replacing this with a homogenous Southeast Asian identity. People have multiple identities that have greater or lesser salience depending upon the specific circumstance in which they are operating. The common problems the people of the region face enable them to share an identity but they may in many respects be quite different from one another. Organisational platforms While the existence of norm entrepreneurs driven by a sense of empathy, altruism and/or ideational commitment is a necessary starting point for both norm creation and community building, it is not sufficient on its own. Finnemore and Sikkink’s second element is an organisational platform, which can be either created for the purpose of promulgating the norm, such as NGOs and/or transnational advocacy networks, or are established international organisations that promote the norm. In the latter case, international organisations such as the World Bank and the UN can, through the use of expertise and resources, champion specific norms. This will be seen in Chapters 5 and 6 over the norms that guide state responses to HIV and AIDS, and natural disasters respectively. Whatever organisational platform the norm entrepreneurs have available to them, the point is that they must be able to secure the support of key actors, ostensibly state-elite, to endorse their norm and to socialise others. Once a critical mass of key actors is achieved the norm is at the tipping point, the threshold between emergence and cascade. What
Norm entrepreneurs 57 then are the strategies that CSOs can use to both achieve a critical mass and, in conjunction with key actors already persuaded, convince a wider grouping and ultimately achieve a cascade of norm adoption? Keck and Sikkink identify four strategies that CSOs can use to persuade or even coerce (1998: 16–25). These are: information politics, symbolic politics, leverage politics and accountability politics. The first and last strategies have already been noted as part of expertise. The specialised knowledge that CSOs have enables them to disseminate alternative information to that espoused by state actors, and thus challenge the prevailing understanding of a particular issue. Accountability politics is the watchdog role CSOs perform in monitoring state compliance with norms. Information politics is also used by Keck and Sikkink, when they refer to it binding a network; what here is referred to as a conduit for social learning. The flow of information binds members of a network together, which resonates with the point made in Chapter 1 that in building a community people need to have direct interaction, such as through various social networking sites on the Internet and email based discussions groups, such as ASEANcats.1 The second strategy, symbolic politics, is where an event, or a juxtaposition of events, helps the CSO’s attempts to reframe a norm by providing convincing evidence of their interpretation. For example, the increasing numbers of natural disasters that have struck Southeast Asia have helped to reinforce the need for the region’s states and ASEAN to adopt international norms to guide how they can reduce their inhabitants’ vulnerability. This is examined in Chapter 6. The final strategy is leverage politics. Keck and Sikkink divide this into material or moral leverage and it relates to influencing actors either through financial (material) means or by shaming them (moral) for violating standards of internationally regarded appropriate behaviour. Material leverage will be seen in Chapter 5 over how to respond to HIV and AIDS, while moral leverage plays a significant part in responding to human rights as detailed in Chapter 4. These strategies are not only used by norm entrepreneurs at the emergence stage but, as Finnemore and Sikkink highlight, they play a role once the norm reaches the cascade point and key actors are also seeking to promulgate the norm. At the tipping point Finnemore and Sikkink highlight the importance of shared identity. It is the adoption by the key actors, or norm leaders, of the new norm, and their subsequent redefinition of their own identity in accordance with the new norm that acts as a form of peer pressure on other states. That is, other states should adjust their identity too. Finnemore and Sikkink provide three connected motivations for peer pressure: legitimation, conformity and esteem (1998: 902– 903). Legitimation has both an international and domestic aspect. Once adherence to the new norm is conceived as being an identifier of a particular identity then not to comply may carry the consequence of being an outsider, or rogue state, and thus potentially one not to be trusted. The domestic aspect is concerned with citizens being able to compare their government’s behaviour with others and being able to judge whether alternatives exist and whether their government deserves obedience. Conformity is the need to feel part of a group and thus norm adoption demonstrates that the state belongs in this new environment. Finally,
58 Norm entrepreneurs esteem relates to the desire by state leaders to ‘want others to think well of them, and they want to think well of themselves’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998: 903). Norm entrepreneurs and norm leaders are thus able to pressure others into norm adherence by specifically targeting state leaders and highlighting discrepancies between words and actions and/or holding them personally responsible for the adverse consequences suffered by not adopting the norm. This clearly has overtones of moral leverage and accountability politics. The value of noting norm entrepreneurs and organisational platforms is not just to note that non-state actors are important players in producing normative change but that the adoption of new norms is marked by power politics. Norm entrepreneurs and states are engaged in discursive, and in some instances literal battles, over what constitutes appropriate behaviour. This tussle is because norms do not appear out of thin air, they are not entering a political vacuum but are instead competing against established, perhaps even constitutive, norms. In cases where an existing norm is internalised and norm compliance can be explained by the logic of appropriateness, an entrepreneur challenging this norm may have to engage in deliberately inappropriate behaviour in order to reframe the debate; hence the suffragettes’ civil disobedience. What is revealed by the norm life cycle is that for a norm to be reframed and adopted by others during the cascade, state actors join with non-state norm entrepreneurs in encouraging, persuading and coercing other states. When at the cascade stage Finnemore and Sikkink are highlighting the importance of shared identity as a means of promoting the new norm, we can conceive of norm entrepreneurs and states as significant agents in building a community. That is, it is the collaboration between these that makes forming a community possible. While the state elite could be the norm entrepreneurs, and flexible engagement is an example of a state elite attempt to adjust an ASEAN constitutive norm, they represent only one source of new norms and not usually the most transformative, which instead comes from CSOs. Norm entrepreneurs and key actors can therefore be significant agents in building a community. Once the norm has cascaded and has become widely accepted there exists the potential for it to become internalised and become a constitutive norm. In the context of ASEAN and building a security community the previous chapter identified three constitutive norms that have stifled the emergence of a security community. Therefore if a security community is to emerge norm entrepreneurs will be needed to reinterpret these constitutive norms. While the state-elite can be norm entrepreneurs, and indeed they are essential for norms to be adopted, in order for ASEAN’s constitutive norms to be challenged the source for alternative ideas is more likely to come from non-state actors. These, as will be elaborated below and in the subsequent chapters, come from international organisations and CSOs that encapsulate track-II and track-III actors. It is not though possible for these actors to achieve norm change if the state elite are unwilling to adjust and thus we need to examine the political context in which these norm entrepreneurs are operating to make an initial judgement as to their likely success.
Norm entrepreneurs 59
Political context The notion that Southeast Asia would be fertile ground for non-state norm entrepreneurs would have been met with incredulity not so long ago. Indeed, while the ground is not quite as infertile and barren as it was it is true that it remains hardly the most productive. For example, in Singapore a political gathering of more than four people requires a security permit (Rodan 2006) and in late 2010 Singapore’s reputation for stifling criticism and restricting free speech was further substantiated when Alan Shadrake, the author of Once a Jolly Hangman – a book that questions the independence of Singapore’s legal system and its use of the death penalty – was sentenced to six weeks in prison and a large fine after being found guilty of contempt of court (The Guardian 2010). Indeed, Singapore’s reputation for inhibiting free speech and curtailing public protest drew a sharp rebuke from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in 2006. In September, Singapore was hosting an IMF/World Bank meeting and CSOs were planning on attending and protesting at IMF/World Bank policies as they had done on many previous occasions. In the lead-up to the meeting Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister, Wong Kan Seng, had reportedly said that certain civil society actions may ‘attract severe punishment, including caning and imprisonment’. Only certain CSO groups were allowed to attend and those that were given permission could only gather in a designated area inside Suntec City, an area not large enough to house the number of participants given permission to attend. It was these restrictions that drew the rebuke by the IMF and World Bank, which called on the Singaporean government to reverse its decision to ban IMF/World Bank accredited civil society representatives (World Bank and IMF 2006). In neighbouring Malaysia the government of Najib Razak has been accused of displaying intolerance towards dissent and free speech reminiscent of the Mahathir era (AFP 2010), while the use of water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters is not uncommon (Zappei 2009; Arukesamy and Ramendran 2010; Hong 2010). Thailand has banned members of CSOs from airing their views (FIDH 2010a) and it is alleged that militia forces were sanctioned by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippines President 2001–2010, to spread fear and terror in Mindanao; this drew international attention with the killing of fifty-eight people in Maguindanao province in November 2009 (HRW 2010a). Elsewhere in Southeast Asia expressing views contrary to the ruling party is simply not tolerated (Buncombe 2007; FIDH 2010b; HRW 2010b). Yet changes in some member states’ domestic polities have coincided, indeed have enabled, an opening of avenues for greater participation by NGOs in domestic politics and this has spilled over into space being made available for non-state actors at the ASEAN level. This is most captured in the Socio-Cultural Community Pillar as detailed below. The explanation for why a participatory form of regionalism, as opposed to the state-centric elite-driven version that describes much of ASEAN’s history, has begun to emerge can be traced to the democratic transitions that occurred primarily in Thailand and the Philippines, but most especially Indonesia after the fall of Suharto in 1998. This was alluded to in the
60 Norm entrepreneurs last chapter when the process of democratisation was noted as an explanation for the former Thai Foreign Minister, Surin Pitsuwan’s, flexible engagement proposal. While flexible engagement was primarily a Thai response to border problems (refugees and narcotics trafficking) arising from the Burmese junta’s solution to its ethnic minorities’ conundrum, it was also a means for the new democratic government of Chuan Leekpai to distance itself from the previous Thai regime. Pitsuwan clearly states that flexible engagement reflected Thailand’s ‘commitment to freedom and democracy’ and, while not aggressively pursued, it was a means to promote democracy in the region. Asada Jayanama, a senior Thai diplomat, stated: ‘We want to encourage Indonesia to move towards democratisation because then we’ll have three important democratic countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. That will change the picture’ (quoted from Acharya 2009: 179). Interestingly, three out of ten ASEAN members falls just short of Finnemore and Sikkink’s rough approximation that you need one third of the membership to achieve a tipping point. If they could be joined by an Aung San Suu Kyi led Burma these four would be a real force for change; a paradigm shift perhaps (The Nation 2011). Jayanama is though probably correct to state that these three would ‘change the picture’ because within the category of key actors some will be more important than others because they carry more political weight over a particular issue. Finnemore and Sikkink refer to these as ‘critical states’ and use the example of France and Britain as essential in supporting the treaty that banned landmines because these were two landmine producing states; their support was simply more important than a state that did not produce or use landmines (1998: 901). Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines certainly represent heavyweights in the ASEAN family. Unfortunately the subsequent retreat of liberal politics in the Philippines under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand left ASEAN short of progressive-minded members during the 2000s. The arrival in the Philippines by the end of the decade of a new President, Benigno S. Aquino III the son of former President Corazon Aquino, may help reassert Filipino liberalism but at the time of writing Thai politics remains in a domestic quagmire following the fall-out from the military coup that overthrew Shinawatra’s government. In Indonesia, however, although democratic change has been slow, the country has emerged as the most progressive among the membership and, as the primus inter pares of the Association, it is the most critical of critical states. In the previous chapter it was noted that the only state to support Pitsuwan’s proposal was the Philippines. Acharya writes it is ‘no coincidence that the two open societies in ASEAN, Thailand and the Philippines, also emerged as the strongest advocates of a more interventionist ASEAN, while Vietnam and Burma, the two least democratic systems in ASEAN, remained the most opposed to rethinking non-interference’ (2009: 179). This has therefore emerged as the battleground for norm entrepreneurs in adjusting ASEAN’s constitutive norms; gaining enough support from the progressive liberal-minded states in order to reframe what it means to be an ASEAN member and achieve a cascade, after which others adopt this reframing because they perceive it as part of ASEAN’s shared identity. Before
Norm entrepreneurs 61 turning to our first case study of this, Indonesia’s ASEAN Security Community proposal, it is worth returning to the importance of liberalism and security communities covered in Chapter 1. The prospect that ASEAN has been on the path of forming a security community has underpinned much of the belief that non-liberal security communities can form. Acharya’s work is critical here (Adler and Barnett 1998: 425; Acharya 2009; 35– 36) although his argument is not so much that liberalism is unnecessary but rather that you do not need liberal values at the outset and that economic interdependence could emerge from a shared commitment to economic development, regime security and political stability. Since the peace-inducing nature of economic interdependence is a liberal argument it appears as though the emergence of liberal views has some importance and this is further confirmed by his claim that the pressures to revise ASEAN’s constitutive norms, which arose from a liberalisation of some members’ polities, ‘carried the promise of helping the revitalisation of ASEAN and furthering its development as a security-community-building regional institution’ (2009: 182). That is, the emergence of liberalism helped revitalise the building of a security community that had, in the wake of the financial crisis, slowed and even reversed. Here though the argument is that ASEAN was not on the path of building a security community, but the liberalism Acharya correctly identifies has encouraged plurality and so the prospect of a security community forming has now emerged. Whether it does so though depends on whether new norms can alter, adjust or even replace ASEAN’s constitutive norms, which in turn is dependent upon the existence of norm entrepreneurs and effective organisational platforms.
Civil society organisations In order to ascertain the extent of CSO impact on ASEAN norm adjustment we need to address four questions. First, have CSOs been invited by ASEAN to engage in discussions about the Association’s future and its modus operandi? Second, have CSOs wanted to engage ASEAN given its image of being an elitist, state-centric organisation? Third, if they have, were they able to influence the discussions leading to the production of the ASEAN Charter, a document that, amongst other things, codifies the norms underpinning the Association’s modus operandi? Finally, have CSOs been able to institutionalise, rather than have on an ad hoc basis, an avenue for engagement with ASEAN thus providing a conduit for social learning? ASEAN’s Security and Socio-Cultural Communities The first question can be addressed by examining the deliberations over ASEAN’s Security Community (ASC) proposal and the objectives outlined in ASEAN’s Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) proposal. In keeping with the significance of the political context, it is Indonesia’s democratization that provides the space for norm entrepreneurs to challenge ASEAN’s norms. Writing specifically about
62 Norm entrepreneurs Indonesia’s desire to see political reform in Burma, Acharya captures this perfectly when he writes: What is most important, it was no longer the Presidency and the foreign ministry, but also the Indonesian parliament and NGO groups who had their voices expressed in pressurizing Burma to liberalise its polity… Democratisation in Indonesia opened up space for foreign policy debate, if not decision-making, to groups who had been previously kept out of it. (2009: 255) In the ASEAN context this opening of space can be seen with the ASC proposal, later renamed ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC). The idea of an ASC came from Indonesia in 2003 and it was driven partly by the need to resurrect ASEAN, which had been floundering since the 1997–1998 financial crisis, but also to reassert Indonesian leadership of ASEAN. The previous year Singapore had proposed an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and, with Indonesia assuming the Chair of ASEAN in 2003–2004, now was the opportunity for Indonesia to ‘reclaim its strategic centrality’ (quoted from Roberts 2010: 181). The Indonesian foreign ministry sought advice from Rizal Sukma, an academic at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta. We can think of Sukma as a norm entrepreneur and the Indonesian Foreign Ministry as the organisational platform. Sukma presented his concept paper to the Foreign Ministry on 20 March 2003 and it indicated a significant degree of influence from academic writers such as Michael Leifer and Amitav Acharya. It was subsequently presented as a draft concept paper by the Indonesian Foreign Ministry on 9 May 2003; it was called ‘Towards an ASEAN Security Community’ but became better known as the ‘Deplu Paper’ (Deplu stands for Departemen Luar Negri (Department of Foreign Affairs)). The Deplu paper contained such references to the security community literature as ‘expectations of peaceful change’, the non-use of force as a means of resolving problems and the generation of ‘we-feelings’ (for details see Acharya 2009: 259). It contained both elements of security communities: to settle disputes peacefully and the need for collective action to address common problems. The latter was a reflection of the transnational non-traditional security problems that were besetting the region. The paper contained a number of practical measures to coordinate action, such as an ASEAN Police and Defence Ministers Meeting, an ASEAN Centre for Combating Terrorism and even an ASEAN Centre for Cooperation on Non-Conventional Issues. It also noted that some core ASEAN principles needed to be looked at if the ASC was to be realised, including noninterference and consensus decision making. The paper was circulated and modified at a number of ASEAN meetings, including a Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) on 13–14 June 2003, the 36th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting retreat in Phnom Penh on 16 June 2003, a special SOM in Bogor, Indonesia on 4–6 August 2003 and another SOMs in Surabaya, Indonesia on 26–28 August 2003 (Roberts 2010: 181). It was during the course of these
Norm entrepreneurs 63 meetings that the Philippines proposed a third pillar to complement the ASC and the AEC, which was to become the ASCC pillar. The modifications to the Deplu paper included defining a conflict-free ASEAN as one where there was an absence of intra-regional threat perceptions and for ASEAN to become a democratic entity. Steps to accomplish this included creating an ASEAN Peacekeeping Operation and to promote ‘political development’ through democracy, good governance and an ASEAN Human Rights Commission (Acharya 2009: 260–261). The Foreign Ministry’s decision to draw upon the expertise of Sukma therefore led to both a document infused with the academic language of security communities and proposals for implementation that required a level of cooperation and coordination among the ASEAN members that had not been sought before. The Deplu paper therefore reflects precisely the type of alternative thinking that can arise when non-state elite are brought into the process of community building. Given that the institute Sukma works for, the CSIS, is part of a wider epistemic community called ASEAN-ISIS, this may give the impression that a body of alternative ideas are ready and waiting to influence the ASEAN state-elite. This is not entirely true. While working closely with government officials ASEAN-ISIS became sufficiently intertwined with the governing bodies for their independence to be questioned. Rather than a source of alternative ideas the criticism levelled was that such scholars were promoting the state’s official line; hence David Jones and Michael Smith’s description of track-II as the co-option of academics leading to ‘ASEANthink’ and thus in ‘practical terms, there could be little pretence that such gatherings offered any critical evaluation of regional relations’ (2006: 36). Whatever the merits of this description, the Deplu paper clearly was not an example and quite evidently challenged ‘ASEANthink’. Given its radical nature it is perhaps not surprising that this initial challenge to ASEAN’s modus operandi garnered little support, indeed it was met with scepticism. Malaysia questioned whether intra-ASEAN threat perceptions were the same and whether the language of security and defence cooperation, which was to be found in the Deplu paper, indicated that the ASC was an unwelcome step towards a military alliance. The SOM in early August clarified that a military alliance was not sought after and that security in the ASC was not about military attacks but combating terrorism, human trafficking and transnational criminal activity. The ASC adopted at Bali on 7 October 2003 contained both an indication of where Indonesia wanted the ASC to go but also a reaffirmation of ASEAN norms that other members had no desire to lose. Thus the ASC noted that its aim was to take ‘ASEAN’s political and security cooperation to a higher plane’, but it also restated the fundamental principles of non-interference and consensus decision making as well as the other principles from the Bangkok Declaration. After Bali Concord-II, Indonesia was tasked with drawing up a plan of action for the ASC and this represented for Indonesia, and Rizal Sukma, another opportunity to adjust ASEAN’s norms. The first draft of the ASC’s Plan of Action (ASC PoA) was produced in February 2004; it contained seventy-five concrete steps to achieve its objectives including dates for implementation (see Roberts
64 Norm entrepreneurs 2010: 182–183). There was a heavy emphasis placed on democracy and human rights, including a proposal for a human rights commission. For example, political development was equated to members being committed to making democracy a shared ASEAN value, while democracy and human rights were common sociopolitical values for members to nurture. The finalisation of the ASC PoA required an unusually large number of meetings among senior officials, indicating that agreement was difficult to achieve.2 Faced with opposition from several ASEAN members the ASC PoA was watered down; the human rights commission and dates for implementation were removed and an especially controversial proposal for an ASEAN peacekeeping force was also rejected (see Acharya 2009: 263– 264). Given the divergence of the regime-types in the ASEAN membership, including a military dictatorship, an absolute monarchy and communism, the priority given to democracy as a shared value was, unsurprisingly, also dropped. Roberts concludes that the ASC PoA contained ‘such a radical departure from the traditional ASEAN Way that the many non-democratic members of ASEAN simply could not tolerate them’ (2010: 183). The final version, endorsed at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers meeting in June 2004 and given final approval at the 10th ASEAN Summit in Vientiane in November 2004, had five components: political development; shaping and sharing of norms; conflict prevention; conflict resolution; and post-conflict peace building. In the political development section the shared ASEAN value of democracy and human rights was replaced with the promotion of common values and a shared vision to achieve peace, stability, democracy and prosperity. The shaping and sharing of norms contained the desire to develop a ‘we-feeling’ among the grouping, but significantly, when thinking in terms of norm evolution, the processes guiding the implementation of the ASC were ASEAN’s well-established principles. In other words, the core norms that had guided ASEAN practice since its inception. Nevertheless, within the ASC PoA also existed commitments that were to be seized upon by CSO activists and herein lies one of its greatest achievements. The shaping and sharing of norms was to contribute ‘to the building of a democratic, tolerant, participatory and transparent community in Southeast Asia’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2004a; emphasis added). This ambition could be seen in the ASC PoA’s annex, which included activities to promote a democratic environment that included strengthening popular participation, promoting the free flow of information among ASEAN countries and enhancing good governance (ASEAN Secretariat 2004b). Although a human rights mechanism was not approved, activities designed to promote human rights were adopted. Finally, the promotion of people-to-people contacts was explicitly endorsed with the following organisations noted: ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organisation (AIPO); the ASEAN People’s Assembly (APA); the ASEAN Foundation; ASEAN-ISIS and the ASEAN University Network; and finally the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ABAC). These CSOs and activities were to appear in the Vientiane Action Programme (VAP), a six-year plan adopted at the 10th ASEAN Summit in November 2004 to initiate the community building process (ASEAN Secretariat 2004c).
Norm entrepreneurs 65 The opening of avenues for non-state elite was complemented in the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community’s Plan of Action (ASCC PoA). One of the ASCC PoA’s key features was for ASEAN to engage with civil society so that it could provide ‘inputs for policy choices’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2004d: para. 1). The non-traditional security problems emphasized by the ASC were extended in the ASCC to include poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability. The ASCC also covers matters arising from the social impact of economic integration and strengthening regional cohesion through identity building. These are of course precisely the type of issues that galvanise CSO interest and their value is captured in the ASCC PoA, which states: Implementing the ASCC PoA will require intensive and sustained capacity building at the national and regional levels in a wide range of areas. Active participation of various stakeholders in ASCC activities will also be encouraged to draw from their wealth of expertise and experience and to promote a strong sense of commitment and ownership of projects and activities. Building region-wide networks of NGOs, training centres, academic institutions and other ASEAN organisations will gradually weave into the fabric of the ASEAN Community and help to strengthen social cohesion. (ASEAN Secretariat 2004d: para. 18) The ASCC and the ASC PoAs are a clear endorsement that CSOs are an essential component of community building because they have the expertise to address non-traditional security threats and can, through their collaboration, generate a sense of community. It is also an endorsement of their need to be active in the decision-making process and it indicates a degree of plurality in the formation of the ASEAN community. The PoAs were incorporated into the VAP. While this looks promising for encouraging CSO participation in ASEAN’s community building project, and possibly indicating that a ‘people-oriented’ ASEAN meant drawing CSO into the decision-making apparatus thus giving transformative norm entrepreneurs a chance to challenge ASEAN’s constitutive norms, ASEAN’s history is one littered with unfulfilled rhetoric. We now turn to our second question, have CSOs responded to ASEAN’s invitation to be stakeholders in an intensive and sustained capacity building exercise to realise an ASEAN Community? CSOs’ interest in ASEAN This question has less to do with track-II than track-III; the ASEAN-ISIS network has a long history of engaging ASEAN so this question is whether activist NGOs have responded to ASEAN’s invitation. In the previous chapter the controlling nature of ASEAN’s engagement with CSOs was noted and this has traditionally meant that activist CSOs have ignored the Association. Regarded as an elitist organisation unable or even unwilling to put pressure on member states there
66 Norm entrepreneurs seemed little point in wasting scarce resources seeking change via ASEAN. Instead, Southeast Asian CSOs have gone beyond the region hoping for a boomerang effect. That is, by applying pressure through international organisations, such the UN, the World Trade Organisation and the IMF for instance, these organisations would then put pressure on the Southeast Asian elite. These extra-regional bodies would therefore act as conduits through which CSOs could pressurise their own governments to change their policies. Have CSOs therefore responded to ASEAN’s invitation and are ASEAN members really interested in engaging CSOs? The answer to whether CSOs have responded is a resounding yes (Collins 2008). Although an increasing interest in ASEAN from regional CSOs can be discerned since the 1997–1998 financial crisis, when the impact of economic liberalisation (ASEAN Free Trade Agreement for example) on social welfare drew their attention, it was 2005 that marked a CSO response to ASEAN’s community building project as unveiled in Bali Concord-II with a surge in the number of civil society conferences organised in that year. Three civil society conferences were organised and they provide an insight into CSO–ASEAN engagement. The first was the convening of the fourth APA, held in Manila in May. APA is the brainchild of the academics working in ASEAN-ISIS. It is a direct response to the ASEAN Eminent Persons Group report at the 4th Informal Summit, held in Singapore in November 2000, for the people of ASEAN to take ownership of Vision 2020; Mely Caballero-Anthony actually refers to APA as ‘people-empowering’ (2005: 243). APA’s inaugural meeting was in 2000; it subsequently met in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009. APA is a significant forum because it brings CSOs and government officials together. It is attended by between 200 and 300 participants, including prominent NGOs, such as Forum-Asia and Focus on the Global South as well as members of the ASEAN Secretariat, and at the 5th APA meeting held in December 2006 observers from each ASEAN member attended. It is precisely this bringing together of representatives from government (track-I) and NGOs (track-III) that led ASEAN-ISIS (track-II) to characterise APA as a ‘bridge’. APA is also significant because it was identified in the VAP as the forum to promote people-to-people contact thus giving it an ASEAN endorsement. Finally, the 5th APA held in 2006 presented its recommendations to the 12th ASEAN Heads of State Summit and the 6th APA report, ‘ASEAN at 40: Realising the People’s Expectations’, was submitted to ASEAN through the ASEAN-ISIS network. The second civil society conference convened in 2005 was held in Bangkok in October and was organised by SEACA. This was attended by the ASEAN Secretariat and it was significant because it was a track-III organised conference. The third conference coincided with ASEAN’s 11th Heads of State Summit held in Kuala Lumpur in December. This was the inaugural meeting of the ASEAN Civil Society Conference (ACSC). The ACSC was the initiative of the Malaysian government, which commissioned the ASEAN Study Center at the Universiti Teknologi MARA to organise the event. The ACSC was attended by the ASEAN Secretariat and it was particularly noteworthy for it marked the first time that Southeast Asian CSOs were invited to present their deliberations to the ASEAN Heads of State; it is this procedure that APA continued the following year. The
Norm entrepreneurs 67 ACSC has subsequently met annually, and in 2009 biannually, to coincide with the ASEAN Heads of State Summit. In February 2009 the 4th ACSC was also called the 1st ASEAN People’s Forum (APF) since a number of the participating NGOs preferred ‘people’ to ‘civil society’. It subsequently adopted both acronyms for the 2nd APF/5th ACSC held in October 2009 but by the time it convened a year later it had amalgamated the acronyms to the 6th APF. This upsurge in interest, and again in 2007 three civil society conference were organised (6th APA, 3rd ACSC and another organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA)), reveals three points of interest. First, CSOs were, and they remain, interested in ASEAN and this was further manifest in the 2006 creation of the Solidarity for Asian Planning on Advocacy (SAPA). SAPA held its inaugural meeting in Bangkok on 3–4 February, which was attended by thirty-five regional Asian organisations and networks. The following year more than sixty national and regional NGOs attended SAPA’s General Forum and by 2008 its membership had grown to one hundred. The inaugural meeting was organised by Asian Partnership for Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (AsiaDHHRA), Focus on the Global South, Forum-Asia, SEACA and Third World Network; Forum-Asia has subsequently become the convenor of SAPA’s Regional Steering Committee. SAPA was born out of the first ACSC when several regional CSOs saw the need to enhance cooperation so that they could develop common strategic action plans for forthcoming meetings with the ASEAN Eminent Persons Group (EPG), which had been established in December 2005 to examine and provide practical recommendations on the directions for ASEAN and nature of the ASEAN Charter. This is examined below, but for now SAPA can be seen as an excellent example of Meredith Weiss’ coalitional capital; identifying the changing ASEAN rhetoric and recognising the ASEAN Charter as marking a moment of change (‘political opportunity structures are favourable for change’) these NGOs have formed a coalition to coordinate their activities and so enhance their chance of bringing about change.3 Whether they have been successful is examined below when looking at the ASEAN Charter. The second point of interest concerns the relationship between CSO actors, in this instance the relationship between track-II and track-III. While the number of civil society forums do indicate an interest in engaging ASEAN they also reveal tensions about who should have the leading role. The convening of ACSC and to a lesser extent the formation of SAPA indicated disquiet among NGOs with ASEANISIS and in particular APA. A perception exists among some CSOs that rather than acting as a bridge between ASEAN officials and civil society, ASEAN-ISIS acts as a gatekeeper restricting CSO access (Caballero-Anthony, 2004: 581; Morrison, 2004: 561–562). While this is hotly denied by ASEAN-ISIS the CSOs that are allowed to participate at APA is determined by ASEAN-ISIS and this enables ASEAN-ISIS to determine the APA agenda. It is in this context that it is pertinent to note that in December 2006 immediately after APA, which met 8–9 December, the second ACSC was convened in Cebu City, the Philippines on 10–11 December. It is also pertinent to note that in 2007 some CSOs indicated their preference for the ACSC to be recognised by ASEAN as the ASEAN–CSO consultative body. This is
68 Norm entrepreneurs not to suggest that CSOs will abandon APA, indeed quite the opposite since CSOs support the APA process, rather their preference for the ACSC indicates they no longer view ASEAN-ISIS’ ‘bridging’ role as necessary. The final point concerns the importance of state actors assisting non-state actors in participating in the community building process. It is not by coincidence that it is the more liberal-minded members that have hosted the conferences, hence SEACA’s conference in Thailand in 2005 and the hosting of APA in Indonesia in 2000 and the Philippines in 2007. In the APA cases Singapore’s hosting of the ASEAN Summits proved an impediment. The launch of APA was intended to coincide with the 4th ASEAN Summit in Singapore but ‘for political reasons’ (Caballero-Anthony 2005: 243) this was not possible so it was held on the neighbouring Indonesian island of Batam. Singapore’s approach towards CSOs in 2007 was noted previously and this explains APA’s decision to convene in Manila. Although the 3rd ACSC did convene in November in Singapore, the Singaporean government had already organised, in conjunction with SIIA, an ‘official’ ASEAN–CSO conference in October, which was attended by the ASEAN Secretary-General, H.E. Ong Keng Yong, although only forty CSOs attended. The Singaporean government’s decision can be interpreted, after the 1st ACSC’s recommendations were submitted to the 11th ASEAN Summit and the following year the 5th APA recommendations were submitted to the 12th ASEAN Summit, as an attempt to curtail a precedent developing, institutionalising CSO reports being presented to the ASEAN Summit.4 While Singapore is certainly a strong proponent of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), it is less enthusiastic about the ASC and ASCC. Finally, Malaysia’s decision to host the inaugural ACSC can be partly explained by the then new Abdullah Ahmad Badawi administration’s attempts to revitalise Malaysia’s liberal credentials. The importance of generating a sufficient level of support among ASEAN members so that an ASEAN–CSO interface could be established is examined in the final section. For now, it can be seen that CSOs responded to ASEAN’s invitation and the more liberal-minded members gave them a platform to do so. Of course what CSOs interpreted ASEAN’s invitation to mean and what ASEAN members understood by their invitation was not necessarily the same thing. The extent to which CSOs would be able to transform ASEAN’s modus operandi was to be revealed in the discussions leading to the establishment of the ASEAN Charter. The ASEAN Charter The decision to create a charter reflected the need to adjust ASEAN to manage two changes facing the Association. First, the expansion of its membership in the late 1990s to ten Southeast Asian states and, second, the rise of transnational security problems, such as environmental degradation, the crippling effect of financial flows and the need for coordinated counter-terrorism efforts. The EPG, which was tasked with making recommendations for what the ASEAN Charter might look like, was therefore given the brief to update its principles and objectives, ‘in line with the new realities confronting ASEAN, and to strengthen regional
Norm entrepreneurs 69 solidarity and resilience’ (Gonzalez-Manalo 2009: 41). The normative changes to ASEAN’s constitutive norms, which were prominent in the Deplu Paper but somewhat diluted in the PoAs, were to be seized upon by the predominately retired officials that comprised the EPG. Capturing the sense of innovative and transformative normative ideas, the EPG was tasked with coming up with ‘bold and visionary’ ideas (Alatas 2009: 17) that would propose ‘out-of-thebox’ recommendations (Gonzalez-Manalo 2009: 40). The gravitas of the EPG membership, which consisted of one representative from each member state, was particular impressive consisting of such influential characters as Ali Alatas, S. Jayakumar and Fidel Ramos.5 The membership of the EPG therefore contained people that can be considered as norm entrepreneurs, while the EPG itself is an organisational platform giving these norm entrepreneurs, and indeed others they engaged with, an opportunity to frame the official discussions that would later create the Charter. The drafting of the Charter itself would fall to a High Level Task Force (HLTF). The EPG, created at the December 2005 ASEAN Summit and disbanded once it submitted its report to the ASEAN Summit in January 2007, engaged throughout 2006 with both track-II and track-III actors; Tun Musa Hitam, the Chairman of the EPG, stated ‘we have made it a point to meet with representatives of civil society’ (EPG 2006a: 7). In the case of track-II the EPG requested input from ASEANISIS and the network convened during March and April. ASEAN-ISIS produced three memorandums for the EPG, one specifically about the ASEAN Charter, which they presented to the EPG on 18 April, and the other two in August about the AEC and ‘narrowing the development gap’ between the new and old ASEAN members (Hernandez 2007). In addition to ASEAN-ISIS two other academic institutions presented ideas to the EPG, these were the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS). In the case of track-III actors SAPA presented its views on the ASC on 17 April 2006 at Ubud, Indonesia, and on 28 June SAPA submitted its second submission to the EPG, this time about the AEC. Although there was no separate meeting for the ASCC, SAPA did submit proposals to Fidel Ramos, the Philippine EPG member, on 10 November and submitted a letter to the EPG reiterating their points on 24 November 2006 (SAPA 2006a). The CSO proposals, and particularly those from ASEAN-ISIS, had a significant impact on the EPG report. On the specifics of ASEAN’s constitutive norms Caroline Hernandez argued that the Association had ‘reached a substantive and challenging crossroads where its norms and processes need to be transformed in response to these changing and challenging times, and in particular to realise the goals of Bali Concord II’ (Hernandez 2007: 15). The April memorandum contained changes to ASEAN’s consensus decision making by introducing two thirds majority voting and the need to impose sanctions on members that fail to implement ASEAN decisions. These were taken up in the EPG report, where it was recognised that ASEAN’s Achilles heel is not a lack of vision but rather a lack of implementation. The EPG report emphasizes the need to monitor state compliance and establish dispute settlement mechanisms to enforce compliance, mechanisms that would
70 Norm entrepreneurs include sanctions depriving a member of membership rights and privileges and, in extraordinary circumstances, expelling a member (EPG 2006b: para. 31–32). In order to enable ASEAN members to hold each other to account in this fashion the report argued that the ASEAN Way can be improved upon and that this will require ‘ASEAN Member States to calibrate their traditional approach of noninterference in areas where the common interest dictates closer cooperation’ (EPG 2006b: para. 18) and that, ‘while decision-making by consultation and consensus should be kept for all important decisions, majority voting can be used in less sensitive and non-controversial areas’, an example of which they wrote would include economic cooperation (EPG 2006b: para. 29–30). The EPG’s proposed changes to ASEAN’s organisational structure, which were noted in the previous chapter, while not fully endorsed by the HLTF also indicated an adjustment of the norm of informality and likewise reflected some of ASEAN-ISIS’ ideas. SAPA’s proposals amounted to seven key points, which were broadly concerned with: environmental sustainability, including agricultural practices and energy consumption; CSO institutionalised involvement in ASEAN decision making; and placing human security, including human rights and human dignity at the core of ASEAN’s raison d’être. The latter two were also to be found in the ASEAN-ISIS proposals. Whereas the track-II recommendations included specific adjustments to ASEAN’s constitutive norms the SAPA proposals were more concerned with interpreting the notion of ASEAN becoming ‘people-oriented’ to mean protecting the people from human rights abuses and establishing procedures or mechanisms for CSOs, and the wider populace, to engage with ASEAN (SAPA 2006b). On this matter the results were mixed. The EPG did recommend ‘that ASEAN should strengthen its links with civil society organisations and draw upon their networks and strengths as strategic partners for ideas and initiatives to develop the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. In particular, the ASEAN Secretariat should establish consultative mechanisms with civil society organisations to interact regularly with these groups’ (EPG 2006b: para. 48). The label ‘strategic partners’, denoting a degree of equality and the need to ‘interact regularly’ certainly indicates that the EPG concurred with CSOs; they should have a role in the decision-making process. The clear directive that this engagement should be concerned with the ASCC is also positive given the human security dimension within the ASCC’s PoA. The EPG also made reference to CSOs being conduits for societal social learning by writing, ‘ASEAN Leaders recognise that there is a need to rally the people of ASEAN – not just government officials or diplomats – to support ASEAN’s objectives … this will become increasingly important given that people-to-people relations can bind ASEAN closer together’ (EPG 2006b: para. 17). The notion of enhancing people-to-people relations so that it ‘binds’ ASEAN members speaks directly to the societal peace inertia Hans Mouritzen identifies as critical in a security community. However, there are reasons to be cautious about the role the EPG envisioned for CSOs. The EPG report certainly envisions a role for CSOs but that role appears less to do with having an input on the problems that the people of ASEAN face (the human security dimension noted in the ASCC PoA) and being agents to resolve
Norm entrepreneurs 71 these problems. Instead, the role of CSOs is how they can help raise the profile of ASEAN among the people of Southeast Asia. Thus while the EPG report recognises CSO expertise and that ASEAN members have made use of it – ‘In coping with the HIV epidemic, ASEAN Governments have worked closely with civil society organisations’ (EPG 2006a: para. 16) – the report notes that CSOs should be ‘encouraged to participate in ASEAN activities … to promote greater regional identity and consciousness’ (EPG 2006a: para. 48), and what activities does the EPG have in mind? ‘ASEAN Day celebration, activities in culture, sports, arts, heritage, museum exchanges, exhibitions…’ (EPG 2006a: para. 48). Other suggestions for generating a regional identity include an ASEAN anthem, flag and a motto. All of which were subsequently to be adopted in the ASEAN Charter; the ASEAN motto is ‘One Vision, One Identity, One Community’. Raising awareness of ASEAN is a function that CSOs can perform and indeed some are keen to do this. To what extent it will bind people together will depend upon whether the exercise is about establishing a regional identity and encouraging the growth of social capital or whether it is about promoting ASEAN so that the organisation can throw off its elitist image. This is a long-term project and it may well contain both elements; its latest manifestation is the Orwellian sounding phrase Think ASEAN (ASEAN Secretariat 2011k). The more that it is about establishing a regional identity the more it could have a significant role in helping to build a security community. Whatever its merits though this role for CSOs falls a long way short of their desire to be active agents in making ASEAN more responsive to the threats that bedevil the people of Southeast Asia. This was clearly presented by CSOs in the 5th APA report (APA 2007) and the Statement from the ACSC in December 2006 (SAPA 2006c). The notion of CSOs acting as agents to raise ASEAN’s profile among the people of Southeast Asia seems more in tune with a top-down process with very little input in the decision making from non-state actors. It is perhaps this disjunction between what the EPG proposed and what SAPA sought that helps to explain the claim from a senior official in the ASEAN Secretariat, who was closely involved in drafting the Charter, that any similarity between the report and SAPA’s submission, or any other civil society input, was pure coincidence (Dosch 2008: 535). There are two points worth clarifying here. First, the EPG report was regarded by those close to its drafting to have been based on a draft presented by Ali Alatas. It was Alatas that invited ASEAN-ISIS to make recommendations, which indicates that track-II CSOs were extremely significant in the EPG’s final report (Hernandez 2007: 15, 16). The second point is that while SAPA certainly lacks the well-established connections of ASEAN-ISIS to lobby ASEAN and the EPG, it is not a coincidence that its emphasis on human rights and greater participation by non-state actors did resonate with influential EPG members, such as Alatas and Ramos, because of the growing political liberalism in many places of Southeast Asia. Ramos, for example, thought that people-oriented sounded too top-down and should be called ‘people empowering’ (EPG 2006a: 32). What is evident is that while the wording in the EPG report and SAPA’s submissions do differ, the former does reflect the latter’s norms and consequently Jörn Dosch is right to assert ‘SAPA … reports can be considered
72 Norm entrepreneurs important contributions to the process of ASEAN’s growing awareness and responses to democracy and human rights’ (2008: 533). Coalitional capital was in abundance. The EPG report therefore reveals both a close relationship between ASEANISIS and members of the EPG, as well as input from SAPA. It was not the EPG though that would craft the Charter; that duty fell to the HLTF, which was composed of senior foreign ministry officials, and despite a request in the 5th APA report, did not have a non-governmental representative. Our third question concerns the extent to which CSOs influenced the ASEAN Charter and while it can be seen that they did influence the EPG this represented the high point of their influence. The HLTF mandate did not require it to consult with CSOs although it did do so once at its third meeting in late March 2007. However, at this meeting Rosario Manalo, the HLTF chair, quashed any notion of a ‘strategic partnership’ by stating there were no guarantees that CSOs recommendations would be taken up (Chongkittavorn 2007). The baton of altering ASEAN’s constitutive norms, by diluting consensus decision making and non-interference, shifted from the nonstate norm entrepreneurs that had had their say in 2006 to the key actors in 2007. Would these key actors, notably the Philippines and Indonesia, be able to cause a cascade? The HLTF met thirteen times in 2007 and had a further three meetings with the ASEAN foreign ministers, meetings that starkly revealed the division between those seeking normative change (Indonesia, the Philippines), those opposed (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma) and Vietnam) and those in the middle ground that could be persuaded either way (Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand6 and Singapore). According to Jörn Dosch, the ‘pressure that both Indonesian and Philippine governments put on initially reluctant member states in the HLTF and intergovernmental negotiations on the ASEAN Charter was probably unprecedented in ASEAN’s history’ (2008: 536). The topic that dominated the HLTF’s discussions concerned human rights and the contentious question of a human rights mechanism (Koh 2009). It is over this topic that a bargain was struck which would stymie progress towards changing ASEAN’s constitutive norms. According to Dosch, in July 2007 … Jakarta and Manila managed to achieve approval for the clause on the establishment of a regional human rights body in a compromise that avoided the introduction of a majority voting mechanism. The Vietnamese, Laotian and Burmese governments saw changes to consensus-based decisionmaking in ASEAN as the greater evil. (2008: 537) Thus when the charter was unveiled consensus decision making and noninterference remained unchanged while the establishment of an ASEAN Human Rights Body was secured. The compromise halted the momentum for change to ASEAN’s constitutive norms, no cascade occurred, and thus the charter the HLTF proposed was received with great disappointment by CSOs. Rizal Sukma called it neither bold nor visionary and that ‘[c]onservativism, marked by fear
Norm entrepreneurs 73 of change, continues to prevail in ASEAN’ (Sukma 2009: 58). Indeed he had earlier cautioned that, ‘it is Indonesia’s moral obligation to warn ASEAN and the people of Southeast Asia that the charter, in its current form, would do more harm than good’ (Sukma 2008). Sukma’s thoughts reflected the view that rather than present the Charter for approval at the 13th ASEAN Summit it would be wiser to postpone and continue negotiating. For SAPA the Charter falls far short of what is needed to establish a ‘people-centred’ and ‘people-empowered’ ASEAN. The ASEAN Charter makes no provision for an institutionalised role for CSOs. Indeed, the Charter provides no space for citizens of civil society to have any input into ASEAN decision making; the apparatus (coordinating councils, community councils, sectoral ministerial bodies, committee of permanent representatives, national secretariats) remains state-centric. Where civil society is noted, and it is only noted once, it is to act in collaboration with the ASEAN Foundation. It is the ASEAN Foundation that, along with the national secretariats, is tasked with promoting greater awareness among the people of the ASEAN identity. SAPA sums up the shortcomings with the statement: The Charter focuses on how governments will interact with each other, but not about how they should interact with the people. And where the Charter is able to protect the sovereignty of governments and enshrine confidencebuilding through consensus, it fails to specify a role for ASEAN with regards to the behaviour of states to their own citizens. (SAPA 2007) In his summary of the norms underpinning the ASEAN Charter Amitav Acharya writes: These principles mirror the norms and practices enunciated by ASEAN at different stages in its history, including the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. This suggests that one of the key purposes of the charter was to codify and consolidate the earlier principles and modalities of ASEAN that had evolved though many different stages and documents, rather then break significant new ground. The charter shows considerable path-dependency in ASEAN’s normative evolution. (Acharya 2009: 270) The ASEAN Charter is subject to review after five years from when it came into force on the 15 December 2008 and thus the possibility of normative change remains. However, in its present form it codifies ASEAN’s constitutive norms thus revealing that not enough member states were convinced that the vision Indonesia and the Philippines shared of what being an ASEAN member entailed had changed. Indeed, they remained alone, and as will be seen in the next chapter, when it comes to human rights Jakarta has found itself in a minority of one. The final question concerned the prospect of CSOs, especially track-III, having an institutionalised interface with ASEAN. Although the charter failed to provide
74 Norm entrepreneurs such a mechanism SAPA continued to use the ACSC as a platform to push for this. The final section marks the high and then fall of the ASEAN–CSO interface. ASEAN–CSO interface The presenting to the ASEAN Summit of the recommendations from APA and/or the ACSC was to be built upon in 2009. ASEAN held two summits in 2009, the first in February–March and the second in October; both in Cha-am, Thailand. The 14th Summit in February–March marked a high point for track-III ASEAN engagement with CSO representatives orally presenting their thoughts directly to the ASEAN Heads of State. The experience was sufficiently uncomfortable for some ASEAN leaders that by October so many restrictions had been placed on who could represent civil society that the interface was abandoned. With a new Thai civilian government chairing ASEAN the setting was conducive for CSO input. Prior to the 14th Summit the 1st APF/4th ACSC had been held in Bangkok, which was attended by more than 1000 participants. Ten CSO representatives were selected to represent each member state and the intention was for these ten to meet the leaders after the leaders had met with ASEAN Parliamentarians and Youth leaders. Prior to the meeting the names of the CSO representatives were sought by government officials and as a consequence the Burmese and Cambodian representatives were refused admission to the interface; the Burmese representative, Khin Omar, is an American citizen and known to the Burmese regime as a vocal critic, while the Cambodian, Pen Somony, was a young man who was probably unknown to the Cambodian government and presumably, as an unknown quality, was not acceptable to Hun Sen (Chongkittavorn 2009). The refusal to accept these two led to the possibility of the other CSO representatives withdrawing from the interface but a compromise was agreed with the Burmese and Cambodian seen separately by the Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, who was the ASEAN Chair. Although scheduled for thirty minutes the interface lasted only fifteen. However, during this time the CSO representatives presented a series of critical commentaries, including human rights abuse in Burma. Given ASEAN’s normal quiet diplomacy it was no doubt an uncomfortable moment for ASEAN’s leaders. The only two members to respond to the CSO representatives at the interface were Thailand, as ASEAN Chair, and Vietnam because it was to take up the Chair in 2010. Vietnam said they wanted more focus on socio-development issues rather than the political ones raised at the Hanoi interface; while clearly a statement to clip the CSOs’ wings it was nevertheless a commitment to continue the interface and thus regarded positively by SAPA. Although the Indonesian CSO representative, who talked about Burma, was privately congratulated on her performance others, including in the ASEAN Secretariat, were critical. The unease with the interface was immediately evident in that no ASEAN commentary was issued about the interface, which stood in marked contrast to the ones issued about the meetings with the Parliamentarians and Youth leaders. More was to follow. For the October interface it was proposed by Laos that (1) attendance for the leaders should be optional; (2) the names and
Norm entrepreneurs 75 organisations must be submitted beforehand for approval; and (3) it should be conducted as a seminar. These criteria were unacceptable to the CSOs who insisted that it was not for state leaders to appoint non-governmental representatives and if the meeting was optional then state leaders opting out was the most likely outcome. The change in format was sought primarily from the new members but it was endorsed by Singapore and Brunei who questioned the legitimacy and mandates of the non-state actors (Chongkittavorn 2009). In responding to the legitimacy of the CSO representatives it was decided that at the 2nd APF/5th ACSC elections would be held to select the representatives. This was either not understood by all ASEAN members or ignored by them since a number selected their own CSO representative; Thailand and Indonesia were the exceptions. In the case of Burma and Cambodia they sent government-organized non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) to the 2nd APF/5th ACSC to ensure, as best they could, a state representative was selected. It became a farce as representatives selected by the 2nd APF/5th ACSC were rejected in favour of the state-appointed CSO representatives. The independent CSOs refused to attend the interface, with only three (Vietnam, Burma and Cambodia) attending thus marking an end to a shortlived truly people-oriented ASEAN–CSO interface. Thailand had hoped to cement a permanent place at the ASEAN Summit for an ASEAN–CSO interface but the February experience had caused too much anxiety and consternation among state leaders and so a process of downgrading began, which ultimately left it doomed (Chongkittavorn 2009; Macan-markar 2009). In 2010 under Vietnam’s chairmanship the downgrading continued. The commitment Vietnam had made at the 14th ASEAN summit to continue with the interface, albeit with a focus on socio-development rather than political issues, was dropped with the farce at the 15th ASEAN Summit in October enabling Hanoi to relegate the significance of the interface even further. No interface with CSOs was timetabled for the 16th Summit held in April and even the meeting with the Parliamentarians was downgraded to an informal gathering for fifteen minutes before the summit officially began (Chongkittavorn 2010). The 6th ACSC, which was called the 6th APF, was convened in Hanoi in September prior to the 17th Summit held in October. However, SAPA representatives criticised the Vietnamese government for interfering in the running of the event by stifling the participation of independent CSOs in favour of GONGOs in the Steering Committee, refusing to allow two representatives of a human rights network called the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to participant, and censoring proceedings so that references to Burma were excluded. As for engagement at the 17th Summit, the ASEAN leaders took note of their suggestions (ASEAN Secretariat 2010c: para. 66) but the only engagement they had was with the Secretary-General in a public forum broadcast to ten states; an event designed to publicise the Summit’s theme of ASEAN connectivity but it also symbolised the extent of the downgrading that had occurred from the previous year (ASEAN Secretariat 2010d). In a reflection though that who is chairing ASEAN makes a significant difference to the interface a volte-face occurred in 2011. With Indonesia swapping the chairmanship with Brunei, and thus assuming ASEAN leadership ahead of its
76 Norm entrepreneurs scheduled time, CSOs had a supporting key state in place. The interface was back on the ASEAN agenda, albeit as an informal meeting. At the 18th Summit held at Jakarta in May ASEAN leaders met with ten CSO representatives. Seven of the representatives were independently selected by CSOs (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) at the proceeding civil society conference, while three were appointed by their governments (Brunei, Myanmar and Singapore) (Wahyuni 2011). In 2011 the civil society conference reverted back to its twin designation: from 3–5 May 1,300 CSOs attended the 7th ACSC/4th APF. At the interface the civil society representatives delivered recommendations for the provision of universal health care, and the need for ASEAN to address the issues of gender equality, provide poverty eradication programmes, achieve the Millennium Development Goals, address the impacts of climate change, ensure energy security and support migrant workers. They did not though get a commitment to institutionalise the interface, although Indonesia’s proclivity for such an outcome was expressed by President Yudhoyono when he stated that, ‘in the future he hopes that the relationship can be enhanced further and formed into a proper mechanism to make sustainable society-government talks’ (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology 2011). The Indonesian CSO representative at the informal meeting, Indah Suksmaningsih, was hopeful that it would ‘set an example for other member countries of ASEAN’ (Wahyuni 2011), but ultimately this will depend on the member state chairing ASEAN; an institutionalised interface between state leaders and CSOs remains elusive.
Conclusion ASEAN’s constitutive norms of consensus decision making and non-interference that were noted as hindering community building in the previous chapter have been codified by the ASEAN Charter and thus remain central to the Association’s modus operandi. Although the ASEAN Charter therefore reveals that a cascade of normative change has not enveloped ASEAN, nevertheless the process leading to its creation, and the objectives in the community action plans, do reveal that norm entrepreneurs and supportive key states in the ASEAN membership exist. Indeed, William Cole and Erik Jensen argue that while the Charter disappointed some, the EPG Report and the presence of good governance, democracy and human rights in the Charter indicate ‘the overall trend lines are positive’ (2009: 258). Determining just how positive, and indeed where on the trend normative change is, can be accomplished by making use of Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm life cycle model. The notion of a norm life cycle not only enables us to identify particular stages of normative change but it also reinforces the point that while normative change can be quick, as epitomised in the notion of a cascade, the emergence stage can be long in the making. When the norms that are being challenged are embedded not only are new norms likely to be long in gestation but the environment in which these norm entrepreneurs are operating will need to change in order for it to become conducive for their new ideas to take root. In the case of Southeast Asia this means a political context that encourages input from
Norm entrepreneurs 77 non-state norm entrepreneurs. The encouraging sign is that a process of liberalism creating pluralism within some member states has occurred in the region. The consequence of these domestic changes have been felt at the regional level, both through a greater interest by non-state actors in engaging ASEAN and among state actors seeking to adjust the Association’s constitutive norms so that it better reflects their new identity. This, and the challenge it creates, is captured perfectly by Mely Caballero-Anthony when she writes: Despite the prevailing reservations on the prospects of democratic transitions in the region, the new political actors who have emerged from these transitions and the new domestic agendas on political reforms and governance that have dominated the discourses in many ASEAN capitals are significant forces in moving ASEAN beyond the confines of its (restrictive) normative framework. Thus, the challenges facing ASEAN now include finding ways to navigate the forces of change against the tide of conservatism that is still prevalent in the region (2010: 139) That conservatism is still prevalent in the region, and can be found among those regarded as the more progressive, underpins William Case’s warning that, ‘political regimes across Southeast Asia, however ornamented with democratic procedures…, have settled finally in ways that are best understood as contemporary forms of authoritarianism’ (2009: 264). While a useful reminder that the region remains one where soft authoritarianism dominates, the period from Bali Concord II until the adoption of the ASEAN Charter can be conceived as one of Adler and Barnett’s ‘unsettling periods’ precisely because some members did seek to change/adjust the Association’s constitutive norms. However, the disappointment expressed with the Charter indicates that although an attempt was made to adjust ASEAN’s constitutive norms a tipping point was not accomplished because not enough key actors were convinced and so a cascade failed to transpire. Normative change to consensus decision making and non-interference remains at the emergence stage. The period from Bali Concord II to the ASEAN Charter is though not just significant for the attempt to alter ASEAN modus operandi but also because it reveals the value of non-state actors as both sources of transformative ideas and players in helping to build a sense of community. This is both a consequence of their ability to be conduits for societal social learning, which is manifest in rising levels of social and coalitional capital, and the expertise they bring to a community building project. The importance of CSOs acting as conduits for societal interaction and social learning is captured in the phrase increasing ‘people-to-people’ interaction that is manifest in the EPG report and in the ASEAN Charter, while the emergence of coalitional capital with the formation of SAPA indicates a willingness among CSOs to help fulfil this role. However, it becomes clear that what CSO envisage as their role and the role envisaged in ASEAN documentation is not
78 Norm entrepreneurs the same. For SAPA, while greater interaction among the people could lead to a shared community identity, it is the people’s involvement and participation in the process of building the community by being part of the decision-making process that creates a sense of belonging to the community being built. Hence for SAPA people-oriented means putting people at the centre of the community building process, in essence to empower them. In practical terms this means an institutionalised forum for ASEAN–CSO engagement. For ASEAN, CSOs’ role in helping to increase ‘people-to-people’ interaction is much more functional and concerned with developing, although the phrase used is ‘raising awareness’, of an ASEAN identity. People-oriented in this sense is thus about making the people more aware of ASEAN and trying to shake off its image of being a gentlemen’s club for the elite; hence the motto, flag and other symbolic gestures. With the ASEAN Charter codifying ASEAN’s constitutive norms it signifies that while the vision of a security community exists, as contained in the communities’ action plans and then blueprints, the means to implement them are stymied. The goal of establishing a security community may therefore not lay with visible attempts to adjusting ASEAN’s constitutive norms, but instead to incrementally challenge them by pursuing functional cooperation.
4 Human rights
This chapter begins the second half of the book, in which three topics are examined to determine whether the guidelines regulating the ASEAN members’ actions strengthen or undermine the Association’s constitutive norms. If they are seen to be at odds with the norms of non-interference, consensus decision making and informality then they may very well represent the type of transformative norms that could underpin the formation of a security community. If such guidance was to be in evidence then this would beg the question as to their origin and to what extent a clash occurs between them and ASEAN’s constitutive norms. In the introduction it was explained that cooperation in functional areas is currently seen as the most likely source of community building in ASEAN. This is primarily because such cooperation occurs in less sensitive areas, and thus offers the prospect of maximising benefits while minimising costs that arise from loss of autonomy that occurs when entering into cooperative ventures. Human rights, the topic for this chapter, would therefore not appear to be an obvious candidate for functional cooperation since it is one of the most sensitive topics for ASEAN members. Nevertheless, since 1993 it is a topic that ASEAN has officially discussed, including with non-state actors, and such discussion has produced an ASEAN human rights mechanism that is seen by many as a tangible manifestation of ASEAN’s proclaimed desire to be people-oriented. This evolution in ASEAN’s comfort levels with discussing, then promoting and even protecting human rights does therefore represent a steady increase in cooperation that entails a certain loss of national autonomy as authority transfers to community institutions. This reflects the movement through security community formation Adler and Barnett identify when they write, ‘as states moved from one phase to the next they were more willing to become mutually accountable to one another in a host of areas, including how they treat their citizens’ (1998: 432). This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the spiral model to reveal explanations for why states adopt human rights, before proceeding with an explanation for ASEAN’s interest in human rights. The next section identifies the organisational platforms that give CSOs the opportunity to engage state elite and transform ASEAN’s norms, while the fourth section charts their engagement and details what type of human rights body ASEAN has established. In doing so the
80 Human rights chapter aims to determine how successful CSOs have been in adjusting ASEAN’s constitutive norms and if they have not been, why not?
Spiral model Tracing the adoption of human rights norms is captured in the spiral model posited by Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink (1999). The spiral model identifies five phases in the socialisation of a target state from norm violator to norm adherer and in doing so it both identifies the types of actors essential in the process of socialisation, and also the dominant explanation for why the target state is responding to the pressure by adopting/rejecting the human rights norm. The spiral model encompasses Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s boomerang effect, where domestic opposition movements seek to apply pressure on their government by gaining the support of external actors, whether those are NGOs, international organisations or other sovereign states (1998). In this chapter we are not concerned with how CSOs have sought to put pressure on ASEAN members over their human rights abuses, although the model is certainly applicable, but rather what the establishment of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) reveals about the norms underpinning ASEAN’s community building project. The five phases the spiral model identifies is thus of less importance than the explanations for why states adopt human rights norms; Risse and Sikkink refer to these as three social actions: instrumental adaptation, argumentative discourse and institutionalization. These three explanations for why a state adopts human rights can be seen as evolutionary. In the first instance governments may adapt their behaviour to fit with a human right norm for instrumental reasons. That is, the adoption of the norm maybe done to deflect criticism and assuage other states, with the elite having little intention of abiding by the norm in the long term. It is a tactical concession that may reflect a rhetorical change that amounts to little more than window dressing. However, Risse and Sikkink argue that while state leaders may regard talk as cheap they can become entrapped by the rhetoric they endorse, and thus in the long run find they cannot so easily explain away a gap in their rhetoric and actions. This is where the second explanation arises. Governments respond to continuing criticism by engaging in dialogue over the meaning of the particular norm. They are in effect engaged in argumentative discourse. The key point is that the debate has shifted over whether the government intends to act in accordance with the human right norm at all, to how it will abide by it. The existence of a dialogue also indicates that the government takes the opposition actor more seriously and treats them as valid interlocutors. The stage of argumentative discourse is, according to Risse and Sikkink, the most important. Here the debate clarifies the prescriptive essence of the norm and thus how the government should behave by abiding with it. Once the meaning of the norm has become understood then a form of institutionalisation can begin as domestic laws and practices, especially those adopted by enforcement agencies, are established. This process of institutionalisation marks the final stage and indicates that norm compliance has become a habitual practice of actors and enforced by the rule of law.
Human rights 81 This evolutionary path, which may be marked by periods of stagnation and even reversal as the validity and meaning of the norm is contested, mirrors the pathway Adler and Barnett sketch for security community formation. The logic of consequence explains instrumental adaptation and then as the norm becomes institutionalised through a process of argumentative discourse the logic underpinning the government’s abidance with the norm changes to one of appropriateness. It should be clarified that there is nothing preordained about norm adherence; while an evolutionary path can be mapped out this might not occur with norm abidance remaining contested and adopted for solely instrumental reasons. In the same fashion therefore that security regimes underpinned by logic of consequence can be starting points for security communities, there is nothing to indicate that a security community will form. If the norm becomes institutionalised and norm compliance is habitual then it has reached the stage of being an embedded, constitutive, norm. The movement through the phases of security community formation requires a greater sense of obligation and responsibility toward one another that entails replacing non-interference with mutual accountability. Human rights becomes a good case study precisely because establishing a regional benchmark as to what is, and what is not, acceptable practice for a member state in how it treats its own people is a significant step towards a security community. Given though that ASEAN’s constitutive norms hinder such a development we need to know where the desire to establish a human rights mechanism came from, and what the norms are that underpin the type of mechanism ASEAN has established. This will give us an insight into whether the community ASEAN is building equates to a security community.
ASEAN’s interest in human rights The first time ASEAN officially addressed the subject of a human rights mechanism was at the 26th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) held in Singapore in 1993. The immediate impetus for this lay outside the region. On 25 June 1993 the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna produced the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. In their joint communiqué from the AMM the ASEAN Foreign Ministers rhetorically supported the Vienna Declaration and agreed to consider establishing an appropriate regional human rights mechanism. Support in this instance meaning: (a) pay lip service to – it was some sixteen years later the mechanism was formed (AICHR) – and for much of that time the consideration was, at best, lukewarm; and (b) note regional specifics limiting not so much the universality of human rights but rather their sequencing. That is, the need for economic rights to come before political rights, or as ASEAN-ISIS refers to it, ‘the “situational uniqueness” of human rights in Southeast Asia’ (Kraft 2006: 76). ASEAN interest in human rights was not therefore internally driven but rather a response, and a negative one, to changing external conditions. This supports the importance of what Risse and Sikkink refer to as world time. An important context for explaining why a repressive government would consider adopting human rights norms concerns the international political climate in which it is
82 Human rights operating, or world time. For example, prior to 1973 international human rights treaties had not yet entered into force and so the norms contained within them and the institutions designed to safeguard them were weak. Risse and Sikkink note that at this time no ‘country had yet adopted an explicit bilateral human rights policy, and fewer human rights NGOs existed’ (1999: 21). However, between 1973 and 1985 there was an expansion in the number of NGOs and advocacy networks concerned with human rights and this reflected the coming into effect of the 1976 international human rights covenants and new institutions, such as the UN Human Rights Committee. The 1993 Vienna Declaration marked a change in the international political climate from the Cold War. It reflected an increasing interest among Western states to use protection of human rights to both intervene in states’ internal affairs, such as the former Yugoslavia and Somalia, and to link provision of economic and political assistance to human rights observance. In the specific case of ASEAN this Western interest in human rights was manifest in their interaction with the European Union (Manea 2008). Since the end of the Cold War, dialogue and debate over human rights has taken place within the ASEAN–EU Ministerial Meetings (AEMM) and also from 2000 at the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM). Since this interest in promoting and protecting human rights were perceived in ASEAN capitals as a Western tool for intervening in their internal affairs it was rebuffed. For example, because European leaders refused to participate in the AEMM while members of the Burmese junta were in attendance, the AEMM was cancelled between 1997 and 2000. Human rights did not even appear on the first two ASEM summits. The argument posited, by such political heavyweights as the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamed, and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, was that Western notions of human rights were based on a Western liberal philosophy that was grounded on the individual’s inalienable rights to life, liberty and estate. This they argued, in what became known as the Asian values debate, was responsible for the moral decay in Western societies and that human rights should be shaped by each society’s historical experience and unique cultural development. In particular, a balance needed to be achieved between the rights of the individual and those of the wider community. In the 1993 AMM joint communiqué this was expressed in the claim that ‘development is an inalienable right’ and that freedom, progress and national stability are accomplished through a balance between the rights of the individual and those of the community. The rhetoric of Asian values captured the sense of argumentative discourse and while the rhetoric dissipated after the 1997 financial crisis these concerns, which were starkly revealed in the 1993 joint communiqué, remain of importance today. We can divide them into two. First, the communiqué stresses economic, social and cultural rights are of equal importance to political rights; hence development is an inalienable right. This mirrors the ex-Soviet Union’s response to the civil and political rights trumpeted by the West during the Cold War. The emphasis on economic and social rights meant, according to Rodolfo Severino the ex-ASEAN Secretary-General, some member countries would argue that ‘because of their specific circumstances, more stringent rules, closer guidance by the state and the curtailment of some
Human rights 83 civil liberties may be necessary for citizens to attain a better standard of living and, therefore, greater dignity as human beings’ (Severino 2006: 150). Second, the communiqué stressed that human rights should not be politicised, which meant that outside powers should not tie economic cooperation and development assistance to human rights. Such conditionality, they argued, could undermine an international consensus on human rights. This concern that human rights would be used to criticise the ASEAN members ensured that the communiqué clearly states that the promotion and protection of human rights in the international community should take cognizance of the principles of respect for national sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of states. These two conditions – development as well as civil rights, and noninterference – remain useful criteria in determining the parameters the AICHR is likely to have to work within. Indeed, Termsak Chalermpalanupap, Director for Political and Security Cooperation in the ASEAN Secretariat, states that the 1993 joint communiqué ‘remains valid and relevant today’ (2009). Before moving onto assess the AICHR we need to identify the norm entrepreneurs and their organisational platforms that have been engaging with ASEAN officials in establishing the ASEAN human rights body (AHRB), as well as the changing political context in which they operate, since this will provide a means of judging the norms that ultimately have come to underpin the AICHR. Throughout the discussion the acronyms AHRB and AICHR will be used interchangeably; which one is used at any precise time reflects the stage of discussion being examined since the AHRB’s name (AICHR) was not confirmed until late 2009.
Norm entrepreneurs and organisational platforms ASEAN’s cautionary response to human rights appearing on the international agenda does not mean that Southeast Asia was entirely hostile for human rights activists. While the Asian values argument was an attempt to counter the notion of universal political rights it was in turn countered by other Asian leaders who argued that human rights norms were compatible with democracy and development in Asian cultures. South Korean leader, Kim Dae Jung, and Philippine President, Corazon Aquino, sought to counter the hegemony of the Asian values discourse when they founded the ‘Forum of Democratic Leaders in the Asia-Pacific’ in 1994. Supported in the 1990s by state representatives from Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, what this counter-argument did was to encourage and create space for non-state actors to engage and challenge elite interpretations of human rights. The first such forum, and our first organisational platform, was established in 1993 by the ASEAN-ISIS network; it remains in operation today and is called the ASEAN ISIS Colloquium on Human Rights (AICOHR). It is a track-II forum in which academics within the ASEAN-ISIS network bring state actors and non-state actors together to discuss human rights. It was essentially a confidence-building measure that would make dialogue on a sensitive matter as human rights possible and ultimately lead to an AHRB. The sensitivity of the topic was captured at the
84 Human rights outset of the AICOHR process. Disquiet was expressed about AICOHR among the ASEAN membership and within some member institutes of the ASEANISIS network. Consequently, funding for the first AICOHR was provided not from within the region but by external agencies: the Asia Foundation and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). An outcome that provided ammunition for those that saw the process as part of a Western campaign to push for an agenda of Western human rights. Given how uncomfortable some ASEANISIS members felt about the topic it is not a coincidence that the first meeting, which took place in January 1994, was held in the Philippines, ‘with much careful preparation and great sensitivity to the concerns of a number of ASEAN governments as well as the member-institutes of ASEAN ISIS themselves’ (Kraft 2006: 79). The first meeting was attended by state representatives, academics and experts. All the member countries were represented – Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – with state officials for the most part drawn from ministries of foreign affairs and non-government representatives from academic institutions or think tanks. At the first meeting state representatives explained their country’s position on human rights, which gave priority to cultural and economic conditionality for human rights observances. This reflected the wide gap between ASEAN members’ interpretation of human rights and those held by the region’s NGO networks. Many Asian civil society groups support the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights as reflected in the Vienna Declaration. They do though broadly share their governments’ opposition to the perceived downgrading of economic and social rights relative to civil and political aspects of human rights. However, their understanding of development tends to be egalitarian and participatory and thus in opposition to both their governments’ corporatist and state-capitalist models and the neoliberal approaches advocated by powerful organisations in the West (Eldridge 2002: 214).1 Since the goal of AICOHR was to establish a non-threatening environment for government representatives to explain their country’s interpretation of human rights it was not intended to be a forum in which NGOs could criticise member states. Initially this close relationship between state representatives and ASEANISIS led NGOs to remain wary of the value of AICOHR, feeling that under ASEAN-ISIS’s leadership the process was not sufficiently critical and therefore lacked the impetus needed to bring about substantive change. In other words not a particularly fruitful platform for track-III norm entrepreneurs. This interpretation certainly has some merit. In its early years AICOHR sought to establish some degree of harmonisation of the differences (what was known as baselining) among the ASEAN members over what constituted human rights. Baselining was to dominate the AICOHR’s agenda during these early years, which validated the NGOs perception of it as a limited organisational platform. At the second meeting representatives from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam joined and at the sixth meeting Burma became part of the AICOHR. This expansion in state representation has, overtime, also been manifest in interest from NGOs. Since the sixth meeting in 1999 there has been greater participation by regional NGOs,
Human rights 85 including Forum-Asia, which indicates a willingness to use AICOHR as another avenue for engaging member states about human rights. This partly reflects a more dynamic AICOHR agenda in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the dissipation of the Asian values debate, as well as a greater willingness among CSOs for engaging ASEAN on this subject. The 1997–1998 financial crisis was a significant event in exposing the levels of nepotism, corruption and collusion inherent within the region’s political and economic structures. Lee Kuan Yew was moved to admit that nepotism is a Confucian weakness, and Amitav Acharya writes, ‘guanxi – roughly, the use of personal connections to one’s advantage outside the legal framework – is now said not to be a good Asian value’ (1999: 422). Thus, while prior to the Asian financial crisis ASEAN’s interpretation of human rights successfully rebuffed Western interpretations, indeed given the economic success of Asian tigers it was the European Union in the mid-1990s that downplayed the importance of human rights (Manea 2008: 377–378), by the end of the decade the argument that you could have good governance without democracy lost its credibility. The fall of Suharto and the process of democratisation in Indonesia also gave additional space for the alternative viewpoint espoused by NGOs. This was reflected both in a more dynamic agenda on the AICOHR and also the emergence of new platforms to champion political human rights. With regard to the latter, for example, the first ASEM Informal Seminar on Human Rights was held in December 1997 and the previous year saw the first meeting of the Asia–Europe People’s Forum (AEPF). These continue to convene with the 10th ASEM Informal Seminar held at Manila in July 2010 and the 8th AEPF held at Brussels in October 2010. The AEPF is held biennially and is attended by CSOs from Asia and Europe, and the reports from both forums are sent to ASEM governments. It was also at this time that the first meeting of the APA was held. The 2000s thus witnessed an adjustment in the argumentative discourse and this was reflected in the AICOHR agenda and more widely with new forums such as APA and AEPF. For example, in conjunction with APA it was decided that a scorecard would be created to assess which countries in the region were making progress in human rights observation and which were backsliding; the AICOHR took on this initiative, which was tried out in 2005. The themes that the AICOHR examined broadened to include political and social as well as economic developments. Coordination with APA lead to discussion over topics such as women’s rights, children’s rights, migrant rights and indigenous people’s rights, debates that would pave the way for the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC) and the ASEAN Committee on the Implementation of the ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers (ACMW). Space was also created for debates about repression in Burma, East Timor and Mindanao being presented at forums such as APA. The specific issue of human rights abuse in Burma led to the creation in November 2004 of the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) by parliamentarians from Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia.
86 Human rights The first decade of the twenty-first century saw a series of ASEAN documentation promote the importance of respecting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, ultimately leading to their endorsement in the ASEAN Charter and the Political–Security Community blueprint. This, coupled to the rhetoric of ASEAN becoming people-oriented, certainly indicated a significant shift in ASEAN discourse from the previous decade. However, while this indicates a greater receptivity to human rights in ASEAN it is not true for all members as the heated discussions over the AICHR revealed, which is examined below. For now, returning first to the AICOHR, we need to continue identifying the organisational platforms that could be used to alter ASEAN’s interpretation of human rights and establish an AHRB. The AICOHR process resembles the steady evolutionary approach characteristic of ASEAN, relying as it does on incremental change as members became more comfortable discussing what is a sensitive subject for most member governments. The AICOHR is a dialogue process and it is supposed to get government officials and activists to talk to one another rather than at one another. ASEAN-ISIS would claim that success equals making government officials less wary of human rights talk and making activists see benefits in opposing governments through political dialogue rather than just political action. Herman Joseph Kraft sums up the accomplishment of AICOHR by writing: its contribution is in the realm of ideas and language…, it was the idea that human rights can be discussed in a public forum in an open and candid manner without having to worry about political repercussions. It became part of the process which made human rights and the language of human rights an increasingly acceptable part of the political discourse in ASEAN. This can be easily overlooked because even ASEAN now routinely acknowledges the importance of human rights – a situation that was not normal when AICOHR was established. (2006: 86–87) While there is substance to this claim it is worth noting that the AICOHR reflects the prevailing political climate, or world time, rather than challenging the state elite by proposing alternative ideas. This explains the dominance of baselining for the first ten years and the lack of interest from regional NGOs. With a more conducive environment leading to an acceptance of the need for an AHRB, however, the AICOHR has attracted more interest from NGOs. The 2009 agenda reflected strongly the concerns of track-III CSOs as it included examining how existing regional human rights networks could locate their advocacy roles within the context of the ASEAN Charter, and harmonize their efforts towards persuading and pressing governments into establishing a strong and independent regional human rights body. It also sought to draw from the collective experiences of the members of these networks to influence the form and structure of the AHRB, including the qualifications and process of appointment of its representatives, and also the oversight mechanisms that will be needed to ensure that the AHRB will effectively
Human rights 87 implement its mandate and monitor the promotion and protection of human rights in the region. The AICOHR therefore reflects perfectly the need for the political context to alter for it to become a platform that norm entrepreneurs can use. A similar conclusion can be drawn from another forum designed to persuade ASEAN to create an AHRB; the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism (WG AHRM), which is often referred to as simply ‘the Working Group’. The Working Group was established in 1995 and it is a coalition of national working groups from ASEAN states, which are composed of representatives of government institutions, parliamentary human rights committees, academics and NGOs. It convenes two events annually: a workshop specifically concerned with a human rights mechanism and a roundtable discussion on human rights. The workshops are attended by government representatives, members from the region’s four national human rights institutions (NHRIs), the ASEAN Secretariat and NGOs. The roundtables involve government representatives, NHRIs as well as members of the Working Group. Since the 29th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting held in 1996 the Working Group has met regularly with ASEAN officials, and this has been reflected in the Foreign Ministers joint communiqués since 1998, which have acknowledged the Working Group’s proposals (Drummond 2010: 27). Named as a recognised ‘entity’ in the ASEAN Charter, the significance of the Working Group as a forum for engaging the AICHR was confirmed when it met with AICHR Representatives on the sidelines of AICHR’s third meeting to discuss their future cooperation (ASEAN Secretariat 2010e). The Working Group’s preeminence as the organisational platform for engaging AICHR was also manifest in its Executive Director travelling with AICHR’s Principal Assistants to Europe in November 2010 on a fact-finding mission (Working Group 2010). The composition of the Working Group is not dissimilar to the AICOHR with a mix of state officials and non-state actors. This has enabled the Working Group to emerge as the pre-eminent forum for discussing the modalities of the AICHR and it is likely to play a role in assisting the AICHR create an ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD). This composition though also means that its utility as an organisational platform for norm entrepreneurs is limited. It does, much like the AICOHR, reflect what ASEAN governments find acceptable. Therefore, while stating that the AICHR’s Terms of Reference (ToR) are not as strong as they would have liked, which reflects Indonesia’s position, the Working Group recognises that the ToR is a political document formed out of negotiations and compromises and that the AICHR, much like other ambitions in the ASEAN Charter, such as adherence to the rule of law and good governance, have to be nurtured; in other words, one should not expect too much too soon but rather support the AICHR and it will become stronger (Working Group 2009a, 2009b). This notion that adopting a mandate for human rights protection is one that will be achieved at some indeterminate time in the future as all members become more comfortable with what is required of them, reflects the continuing prevalence of consensus decision making. The limitation of the Working Group as an organisational platform for those norm entrepreneurs seeking to challenge ASEAN’s constitutive norms can be
88 Human rights witnessed in the scaling down of the Working Group’s ambitions. For example, at its first Workshop in 2001 the Working Group tabled seven models representing examples from other regional and international mechanisms for protecting human rights, such as establishing a commission and/or court etc. While this seems an eminently sensible place to begin discussing an ASEAN human rights mechanism the member states were ‘unprepared to discuss such “revolutionary” systems’, and in the second Workshop the Working Group members were encouraged to continue engaging in dialogue and establish national working groups to foster indigenous, as opposed to externally inspired, mechanisms (Hsien-Li 2011: 139). Tan Hsien-Li interprets this scaling down as the Working Group replacing its ‘ideological’ proposals with more ‘practical’ ones. She writes: These measures respect ASEAN exigencies and modus operandi while simultaneously recommending specific steps towards advancing regional human rights. This marks a departure from the more ambitious proposals submitted in the earlier years. The Working Group’s change of tack in taking intermediate steps towards the end goal has merited much success. (2011: 142) Success, in this instance, equates to the Working Group’s proposals influencing ASEAN’s decisions and its emergence as the pre-eminent non-ASEAN entity for AICHR to engage. An evaluation of this success is noted below when we turn to examine AICHR. However, for now, this success is achieved by ‘respecting’ ASEAN’s constitutive norms (exigencies and modus operandi) and thus does not represent for norm entrepreneurs an organisational platform from which to challenge ASEAN’s constitutive norms. Indeed, echoing the need for the political context to change for AICOHR to become an effective organisational platform, Tan Hsien-Li writes, it ‘seemed that ASEAN was content to continue indefinite discussion with the Working Group without actual implementation of any of its proposals’, until the political context change and the 2004 Vientiane Action Programme was adopted; Hsien-Li refers to it as a ‘turning point’ (2011: 140). One recommendation from the Working Group is that an ASEAN human rights mechanism should not be seen as synonymous with the AICHR, but rather it should be seen as a regime encompassing other bodies as well, including NHRIs. These have emerged as a potential third platform for norm entrepreneurs. Four NHRIs exist in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand), with a fifth soon to be established (Timor Leste), and their primary purpose is to promote understanding and implementation of international human rights law, expressed through UN covenants and conventions.2 These institutions enjoy both official status and autonomy, with a mandate for outreach to civil society. They therefore operate in accordance with the 1991 Paris Principles, which stipulate that the NHRI must be independent from government and have a membership that includes CSOs. NHRIs also have powers of investigation since they can receive and report upon complaints of human rights violations. NHRIs submit recommendations and reports to state officials as well as conduct
Human rights 89 activities to promote public awareness of human rights laws (Eldridge 2002). The four Southeast Asian NHRIs are all accredited ‘A status’ institutions, which is the highest level of accreditation in accordance with the Paris Principles (Drummond 2010: 15). NHRIs undergo a periodic evaluation exercise by the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) to remain accredited. NHRIs cannot though initiate prosecutions and as Philip Eldridge writes, their ‘overall ethos is … one of cooperation rather than confrontation with their governments, reflecting both the inclusive nature of their mandates and the need for government goodwill to facilitate their work’ (2002: 225). In terms of being a platform to engage ASEAN and alter ASEAN’s understanding of human rights it is important to recall these are national, not regional, institutions. Nevertheless, in response to ASEAN’s adoption of human rights in its various declarations the NHRIs have held regular meetings to foster collaboration on measures to respond to human rights issues of common concern or with transborder implications. These include: international terrorism; trafficking in persons (particularly women and children); migrant workers; economic, social and cultural rights and the right to development; and human rights education. These are topics that are very much functional in nature and within the comfort zone of their states. During their 4th Consultative Meeting in January 2008 in Manila, the Philippines, they agreed to adopt ‘ASEAN NHRI Forum’ as the official name by which they shall be collectively known. The use of ASEAN in the title, however, was objected to by the ASEAN Secretariat since the NHRI collective is not an ASEAN body and they have subsequently renamed it the South East Asia NHRI Forum (SEANF). Whereas AICHOR and the Working Group have engaged with ASEAN since the 1990s the NHRIs have sought to engage with ASEAN in response to the Association’s interest in establishing an AHRB. They submitted position papers on AICHR and for AICHR’s ToR and the details of these are noted below. As a regional organisational platform what has emerged from this experience is that AICHR has rebuffed the NHRI’s request for engagement. AICHR’s official explanation is that until it has adopted its Rules of Procedure, which have subsequently been renamed Guidelines of Operation, it cannot engage with NHRIs. Whatever the merits of this position AICHR’s reluctance may well reflect unease with how SEANF is developing. In June 2011 the NHRIs announced they intended to strengthen SEANF with a five-year strategic plan, which will include strengthening the organisation as an independent and credible institution and establishing and strengthening Paris Principles-compliant NHRIs. Given that NHRIs have stronger mandates than AICHR and they are accountable to an international body (the ICC) SEANF not only appears to be a potential competitor to AICHR as the region’s human rights mechanism, but also a much more robust one. The fourth organisational platform, as with the SEANF, was created in response to ASEAN’s decision to create an AHRB. Unlike the other three though this one contains just NGOs and represents a much more critical voice of ASEAN and AICHR specifically; it is the SAPA Task Force on ASEAN and Human Rights (SAPA TFAHR). The TFAHR is part of SAPA’s Working Group on ASEAN. It was created in 2007, it has two NGOs convening it (Forum-Asia
90 Human rights and KontraS) and it has NGOs representing most member states and thematic focal points, the latter including Children, Persons with Disability, Indigenous Peoples, Migrant Workers, Refugees and Housing Rights. It is a track-III forum and while this means that it does not enjoy the same degree of access to policy makers that AICHOR and the Working Group have, neither does it suffer from the constraints that operate on these other forums. There is no scaling down of proposals because of elite sensitivities with the TFAHR, and in this respect its value as an organisational platform for the various norm entrepreneurs within the SAPA network depends on the extent to which its voice is heard. To determine this we need to examine the level of engagement norm entrepreneurs, from these four organisational platforms, have had over the establishment of AICHR and thus in turn determine what sort of human rights body it will become and what this reveals about ASEAN’s people-oriented community building project. We can thus conclude the section on organisational platforms by noting that four exist and that they provide non-state actors with the opportunity to voice their ideas and proposals about human rights in Southeast Asia and specifically the type of human rights mechanism that ASEAN will establish. Of these four, AICOHR and the Working Group have a long established relationship with ASEAN members and the ASEAN Secretariat, while SEANF and TFAHR’s engagement is a relatively recent one. The exposure of ASEAN to norm entrepreneurs in AICHOR and the Working Group has produced a form of socialisation, in which member states have become more comfortable discussing human rights and norm entrepreneurs have learnt what topics are acceptable for discussion. The composition of AICHOR and the Working Group and the socialisation by ASEAN of their membership has made them conservative forums operating within ASEAN members’ comfort zone. In the 1990s this meant that little progress was achieved, although they would argue that making human rights a subject for discussion was an achievement. However, once the political context changed and member states, most notably Indonesia, were willing to discuss the regional promotion and protection of human rights, then these forums were well positioned to be used to promote a human rights mechanism; hence the interest in them from track-III CSOs.
CSO engagement To determine the extent to which new ideas are challenging ASEAN’s constitutive norms we can divide the discussion into three time periods: (1) achieving the commitment for an AHRB; (2) the ToR for the AHRB; and (3) AICHR’s initial period of operation, since this reveals what type of human rights body ASEAN has created. The first time period links directly to the discussions about the ASEAN Charter and the significance of an ASEAN human rights mechanism in the deliberations of the HLTF, since it is in the Charter that the commitment to an AHRB is established. The second examines the fifteen-month period between the establishment of the High Level Panel (HLP) and the inauguration of AICHR, since it is the HLP that drafts the ToR. The final period concerns the work of AICHR Representatives during the first period of AICHR’s existence.
Human rights 91 These time periods see challenges to ASEAN’s three constitutive norms (noninterference; consensus decision making; informality) but, as will be shown, over the sensitive matter of human rights little adjustment will be seen to have been achieved. Nevertheless the challenges that took place reveal much about the fissures within the ASEAN membership, the influence of state and non-state norm entrepreneurs, as well as confirmation that for many ASEAN members the existence of AICHR represents an example of Risse and Sikkink’s instrumental adaptation. This section thus reveals levels of coalitional capital, the failure to establish a critical mass and the conflicting explanation of why ASEAN members established the AICHR. Evidence that the constitutive norms are withstanding a challenge will be revealed by, firstly, how limited the AHRB’s monitoring function will be since an intrusive monitoring function will entail interference in what member states interpret as appropriate provision of human rights. We are therefore interested in what monitoring function, if any, is established, and whether the AHRB operates in accordance with international standards of human rights promotion and protection and thereby whether its performance is monitored by an international agency. We can also deduce the prevalence of non-interference by examining whether the AHRB’s ToR contains reference to regional peculiarities that negate the application of universal human rights and also the need not to politicise the subject and treat certain human rights (civil and political) as more important than others (social and economic). In other words, does AICHR confirm the ASEAN position on human rights articulated during the 1990s and explained at the beginning of this chapter? Secondly, to what extent did consensus decision making remain the modus operandi of ASEAN during the discussions for the AHRB’s formation, and does it underpin the method by which the AICHR Representatives fulfil their duties? Finally, what status does the AHRB have within ASEAN? An ad hoc consultative forum with little capacity to act retains the informality of ASEAN, while either a dedicated staff within the ASEAN Secretariat or a separate secretariat would indicate a shift in this constitutive norm. HLTF For the first time period the specific bargaining over whether to have a human rights body at all took place within the HLTF established to create the ASEAN Charter. This was the body initially chaired by Rosario Manalo, which met thirteen times throughout 2007 and was noted in the previous chapter. The HLTF met with three of the organisational platforms in 2007. In March with SAPA during the HLTF’s third meeting, and at its seventh meeting at Bali in June 2007 the HLTF met with the four NHRIs and the Chairman of the Working Group for two hours. While these meetings were not unimportant, and indeed they helped to buttress the position of those states pressing for a human rights body that would challenge ASEAN’s constitutive norms, it was ASEAN’s prior engagement with AICHOR and the Working Group that explains their impact. The lengthy period of engagement, coupled to favourable domestic changes within some ASEAN
92 Human rights members, had convinced these elites that a human rights mechanism was a laudable goal. Hence Jörn Dosch’s finding that, Southeast Asian observers agree that ASEAN-ISIS has been instrumental in shaping the democracy and human rights agenda. At several ASEANISIS meetings, the Indonesian Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta and the Institute for Strategic and Development Studies (ISDS) in Manila pushed hard for the inclusion of democratic values and a human rights mechanism in the ASEAN Charter and managed to get at least silent consent from less enthusiastic delegations. Even representatives from Vietnam and Laos did not object (Burma is not represented in ASEAN-ISIS). At an ASEAN-ISIS conference on the establishment of a human rights mechanism in ASEAN in May 2007 in Manila, the Vietnamese and – to a markedly lesser extent, though – the Laotian sides joined the discourse proactively, constructively and with previously unknown openness. A frequent participant of ASEAN-ISIS meetings is convinced that the role of CSIS and ISDS was decisive ‘for getting human rights in the ASEAN Charter’. (2008: 535) The groundwork done by ASEAN-ISIS, and AICHOR in particular, as well as the Working Group thus ensured that when the HLTF began discussions four ASEAN members were convinced of the need for a human rights mechanism. These four, not coincidentally, were the members that had National Human Rights Institutes – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Most significantly what these CSOs were able to achieve was the perception that a human rights mechanism was critical to the meaningfulness of the ASEAN Charter, and thus by implication, the future of ASEAN. Throughout 2007 this message was reinforced by CSOs and that these sentiments were felt by HLTF members is revealed by the Malaysian representative: Continuous pressure was … being exerted by the relevant NGOs during the drafting process on the governments concerned to the extent that the inclusion or otherwise of a reference to an ASEAN Human Rights mechanism was looked upon as a measure of the relevance and significance of the Charter itself. (Abdul Razak 2009: 21) This is strong evidence in favour of CSOs being able, via coalitional capital, to put pressure on the HLTF. Did it though succeed in garnering a critical mass of support among the state representatives in the HLTF? The discussion over the AHRB throughout 2007 revealed very starkly the fissures within the membership. It was the topic of greatest discussion, and according to the Bruneian representative it was the ‘most explosive and tense of all’ (Osman Patra 2009: 7). The HLTF was urged by the Philippine President
Human rights 93 Arroyo to include a human rights clause in the Charter, and the Burmese representative has revealed that it almost derailed the whole process: ‘at times we almost came to blows – literally speaking’ (Aung Bwa 2009: 33). By the end of the 8th meeting in July the HLTF representatives were unable to reach a consensus on the obligations member states would have in participating in a human rights body and the issue was referred to the Foreign Ministers for their guidance. The directive from the Foreign Ministers was that an AHRB was to be established, a decision some HLTF members received with disbelief (Koh 2009: 60). This directive, as noted in the previous chapter, reflected the bargain Jakarta and Manila struck with Vietnam, Laos and Burma over having an AHRB at the expense of introducing a majority-voting system (see Dosch 2008: 536–537). While this reveals that a critical mass in favour of an AHRB had been achieved, and this was sufficiently strong to secure a commitment from all members, the political expediency of the bargain reveals that to treat this as a cascade following a tipping point is premature. Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam (CMLV) members acquiesced not because they were convinced of the merits of an AHRB but rather it was the least worst outcome. This scepticism continued to blight the HLTF. With a commitment to an AHRB secured the disagreement moved on to the function of the AHRB and whether the HLTF had been instructed to draft its terms of reference and, if so, whether this had to be accomplished before the Charter was signed. By the 10th meeting, held at Chiang Mai in September, the fissures in the membership revealed two sides. On one side of the disagreement was the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand who argued that the ToR would be established after the Charter and the AHRB would have a monitoring function, while for the CMLV members, which constituted the other side, the ToR should be completed by the HLTF and the AHRB should only have a consultative status. The differing opinions resulted in the opposing groups occupying different rooms during the 10th meeting with the Chair shuttling between the two. Later in September the HLTF met with foreign ministers at an Informal ASEAN Ministerial Meeting and this directed that the ToR should not be included in the Charter and that the HLTF could work on producing these, but they need not be ready in time for the Charter’s signature. In keeping with the impetus provided by the Foreign Ministers in July, the Chairman of the Informal meeting stated, ‘ASEAN is in favour of the promotion and protection of the human rights of its citizens … ASEAN should therefore view human rights in a positive light and not adopt a defensive attitude’ (quoted from Koh 2009: 65). The result was that the ASEAN Charter established a human rights body, and that its ToR were to be determined by the ASEAN Foreign Ministers. The battle for establishing an ASEAN human rights body that included all ASEAN members, and therefore all citizens of ASEAN, had therefore been won. Indeed, the Charter mentions human rights three other times with the promotion and protection of human rights a purpose of ASEAN, and a purpose member states were to act in accordance with. What type of AHRB would be established though was the next battle.
94 Human rights The HLTF experience reveals interesting challenges to the constitutive norms. Of the three, informality has been the one that has witnessed the most adjustment and here the conflating of a human rights mechanism with an AHRB is potentially significant. There was no guarantee that a separate human rights body would be established to act as the mechanism to promote and protect human rights so the commitment to establishing an AHRB gives the mechanism an organisational base. Of course the extent to which this creates a formal ASEAN mechanism for promoting and protecting human rights will be dependent upon AICHR’s ToR. The HLTF process also revealed that consensus decision making ultimately prevented the representatives making decisions and they had to rely on the Foreign Ministers to resolve impasses. The sensitivity of the topic and the fear that AICHR could become an intrusive monitoring system that would interfere in domestic affairs, despite all the years of AICHOR and the Working Group’s socialisation of member states, is given tangible evidence by the volatility of some of the HLTF’s meetings. ToR The second period of examination begins in July 2008 with the creation of the HLP.3 It was the HLP that was commissioned by the Foreign Ministers to draft the ToR for the AHRB; the ToR was adopted at the 42nd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting a year later at Phuket in July 2009. The AHRB was inaugurated a further three months later as the AICHR at the 15th ASEAN Summit on the 23 October 2009 at Hua-Hin, Thailand. During this period the HLP engaged with three of our organisational platforms on three separate occasions and also received proposals from them. The HLP had ten representatives, one for each member state, who were mostly appointed from member states’ foreign ministries, and in some cases were the country representatives on the HLTF.4 It met eight times between July 2008 and February 2009 when the first draft of the ToR was completed. The initial Chair of the HLP, Bilahari Kausikan, certainly dampened any expectation that the process producing the ToR would be ripe for progressive norm entrepreneurs by stating at the outset that the aim was ‘to achieve a result that is realistic, balanced and credible, and which would be in the best collective interest of ASEAN’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2008b; emphasis added). Nevertheless, he also noted the importance of engaging CSOs and the HLP did indeed do so. The first meeting with CSOs was on 11 September 2008 in Manila and the HLP met with the Working Group, SEANF and TFAHR, as well as the Women’s Caucus for the ASEAN Human Rights Body.5 With a greater and lesser degree of overlap in the membership of these CSO organisational platforms it is not surprising that they shared a general sentiment about what the ToR should be in order to empower the AHRB. These can be categorised as to how they challenge our three constitutive norms. For non-interference this would entail an intrusive monitoring system and eventually an enforcement mechanism, such as a court. Among the CSOs there was indeed widespread conformity for the AHRB to have
Human rights 95 investigative powers that could monitor and report on human rights violations by member states. Hence in their submission to the HLP the TFAHR proposed the AHRB have the power to: ‘Carry out on-site visits to inquire on specific human rights concerns and obtain all necessary information during investigation of human rights violations’, and to, ‘[i]nitiate discussions on the establishment of an ASEAN human rights court’ (SAPA 2008; emphasis in original). The ultimate creation of a human rights court could also be found in the Working Group’s submission, which noted that in ‘all regional human rights systems, a human rights court has already been established to adjudicate cases concerning human rights. An ASEAN human rights body should be nothing less than what is the accepted norms and standards in other regions, such as Africa, Inter-Americas and Europe’ (Working Group 2008). In a direct challenge to non-interference the Working Group’s submission also made an explicit reference to the international convention concerning the Responsibility to Protect. It stated: ‘While the Charter upholds the “independence, sovereignty” as well as “non-interference in the internal affairs of ASEAN member states”, proper acknowledgement should be accorded to the internationally recognised responsibility to protect its populations, on the part of individual states, from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity’ (Working Group 2008). A challenge to informality, capturing the limited authority of ASEAN to act independently of member state authority, can be seen over the procedure to appoint representatives and to whom they would be accountable. Hence the TFAHR proposal that: the ‘commission and its members shall be independent, especially from government … and guided by [the] Paris Principles’; that the commissioners ‘shall be given privileges and immunities according to provisions specified under relevant international instruments’; and the ‘secretariat of the commission shall be independent from the ASEAN secretariat’ (SAPA 2008; emphasis in original). The independence of the AHRB and the importance of working within the international standards encapsulated by the Paris Principles was emphasised by the SEANF submission – ‘Independence of the AHRB must be ensured, taking into account the minimum standards as stipulated in the Paris Principles’(SEANF 2008) – and also the Working Group’s submission: the AHRB should be guided by taking direction from ‘international law on human rights, universally recognised human rights standards and principles, and regional and national laws, policies and practices consisted with international law’ (Working Group 2008). A challenge to consensus decision making would be manifest by how the representatives would reach decisions and ultimately whether something akin to the Minus X principle would operate. While none of the submissions touched directly on this subject, the protection mandate they espoused included holding a member state accountable for a breach of human rights, and this implicitly would not be possible if consensus decision making was the modus operandi since it would give the member state in question the ability to veto an investigation by the AHRB. In February 2009 the draft ToR was leaked and it confirmed CSO fears that the AHRB’s ToR would reflect what was permissible for the most conservative
96 Human rights members; consensus decision making would therefore produce a lowest common denominator outcome. The manifestation of ASEAN’s constitutive norms within the ToR is noted below, but the leaked draft galvanised the CSOs to once again use the organisational platforms to attempt to influence the HLP. The second engagement occurred on 20 March in Kuala Lumpur. The SEANF submission stipulated the importance of the AHRB, which was now referred to as a Commission, operating in accordance with the international standards outlined in the Paris Principles. These include a transparent and consultative process of appointing a commissioner and safeguarding the independence of the body from government interference. In this respect the SEANF submission stated that commissioners should not ‘hold any official post in their respective Governments, nor be an official or employee of a state agency’ (SEANF 2009a). The necessity of a protect mandate was reiterated with the Commission having the right to ‘receive, analyse, investigate and take action on complaints on alleged violations and abuse of human rights by any person or group of persons, any non-governmental entity legally recognized in one or more Member States of the Commission, or on its own initiative’ (SEANF 2009a). The need for the Commission to have its own institutional base was also reiterated with a separate Secretariat and staff. The TFAHR submission contained thirteen key concerns with the draft ToR (SAPA 2009). They included specific rejections of the three constitutive norms. Firstly, the draft ToR noted that a guiding principle of the AHRB would be to respect the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of ASEAN Member States and this, the TFAHR argued, was not ‘consonant with principles of human rights’, and thus, ‘We strongly propose that the HLP delete this clause.’ (SAPA 2009) The draft ToR contained few provisions to protect human rights with promotion its primary concern. Consequently, the TFAHR urged the HLP to: include provision for the assessment and review of the general human rights situation in the region through publicly available reports; carry out on-site visits; establish an individual complaint mechanism; issue urgent letters including press statements and letters of inquiry to request government action in response to information received; issue progress reports and recommendations to member states to remedy violations committed; develop an early warning system; and establish independent and impartial coordination mechanisms dealing with trans-boundary human rights issues. Also noted was the lack of an enforcement mechanism. In other words, what was missing was a monitoring system. The TFAHR explicitly rejected consensus decision making, arguing: ‘The decision-making process must be based on majority vote if the AHRB cannot come up with consensus. The decision-making process by consensus alone undermines the effectiveness and efficiency of the body’ (SAPA 2009). As with SEANF the TFAHR also expressed concern over the independence of the commissioners and the need for a separate secretariat for the AHRB. The ToR, officially adopted at the 42nd AMM in Phuket in July 2009, contained only one significant difference from the draft and that was the inclusion of a five-year review date. The ToR was desperately disappointing for the CSOs that had sought to help create an AHRB independent of government interference
Human rights 97 and one capable of protecting human rights. SEANF specifically noted that since AICHR is ‘an institution which falls outside the Paris Principles, it would be difficult for it to secure from international human rights bodies and agencies capacity building, resources, training, and funding for thematic issues. It may also not have the locus standi before treaty bodies and United Nations fora’ (SEANF 2009b). That is, AICHR fails to meet international standards for a body mandated to protect human rights. Indeed, far from being independent of government the ToR detailed how the Representatives were dependent on government support to remain in office. Article 5.2 states that the Representative ‘shall be accountable to the appointing Government’, and in Article 5.6 that ‘the appointing Government may decide, at its discretion, to replace its Representative’. While CSOs had stipulated that the Representative should have expertise in the field of human rights, this qualification was watered down in Article 5.3 to member states giving ‘due consideration to … integrity and competence in the field of human rights’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009c). The lack of independence for the Representatives was one of two significant criticisms directed against the ToR; the other was the failure to provide a protect mandate. Despite Article 1.1 stating that the purpose of AICHR was to ‘promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of the peoples of ASEAN’, Article 4, detailing AICHR’s mandate and functions, is solely concerned with how to promote human rights. It therefore does not include the following provisions promoted by CSOs: (1) conduct country visits; (2) receive complaints, both from individuals and groups and initiate investigations; and (3) conduct periodic reviews of the human rights situation in all member states. The lack of a protect mandate was given tangible recognition by the Thai Prime Minister, and the then ASEAN Chair, Abhisit Vejjajiva, when at the inauguration of AICHR he stated that ‘the HLP was of the view that the ASEAN human rights body should focus mainly on the promotion of human rights’ (quoted from Drummond 2010: 22). Ultimately AICHR’s ToR codified the three constitutive norms. Noninterference, along with the associated notions of respect for the independence and sovereignty of member states, and their right to lead their own ‘national existence free from external interference’, are the first principles noted in the ToR to guide AICHR (see ASEAN Secretariat 2009c; Article 2.1a–c). The cultural relativist position to deflect criticism of human rights abuse is enshrined in Article 1.4: ‘To promote human rights within the regional context, bearing in mind national and regional particularities and mutual respect for different historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.’ While the need to treat all human rights as equally significant and not politicise the matter is captured in Article 2.2: ‘Respect for international human rights principles, including universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as impartiality, objectivity, non-selectivity, non-discrimination, and avoidance of double standards and politicisation’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009c). Consensus is explicitly noted in Article 6.1 as AICHR’s decision-making modality, and implicitly underscores Principle 2.4, which states that the pursuance of enhancing the promotion and protection of human rights should be done in a
98 Human rights ‘constructive and non-confrontational’ manner. The informality norm underpins the nature of AICHR. It is not an independent body but, as noted above with the Representatives and made explicit in its name, AICHR is a governmental body. This control is further extended in the lack of resources devoted to AICHR. Article 7.2 curtails thoughts of a separate institutional base for AICHR, with the ASEAN Secretariat given the task of supporting its operation. In addition, AICHR’s funds are only partly provided by member states, it is also required to establish its own endowment fund. The lack of resources, as will be noted below, is a serious hindrance to what AICHR can achieve, and although a separate endowment fund might appear to give AICHR an independent source of funding Article 8.6 explicitly notes that funding ‘and other resources from non-ASEAN Member States shall be solely used for human rights promotion, capacity building and education’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009c). While the HLP experience reveals that CSOs were able to engage with the process of creating the ToR, and that the organisational platforms were used to submit complementary proposals and thus are good examples of coalitional capital, it also reveals the dispersal of the critical mass and confirms the failure to achieve a normative cascade. The ToR’s affirmation of ASEAN constitutive norms thus revealed that the member states were not prepared to establish a body that was independent and able to hold them accountable for breaches of their own peoples’ human rights. Only one member – Indonesia – fought for a protection mandate, and this reveals that it was not only those HLTF members that had resisted the AHRB that had concerns about AICHR, but also the so-called more liberal members. In this regard it is worth noting that neither Thailand nor the Philippines backed Indonesia (Suryodiningrat 2009). Indonesia, long regarded as the primus inter pares of ASEAN, has resumed this mantle and consequently represents the most critical of key states, but even so it is not going to be able on its own to achieve a cascade; it needs a critical mass to do this. Rachmat Budiman, the Indonesian HLP member, had been pressing for a protection mandate that had three elements to it: allow AICHR to meet and discuss human rights with other institutions; observe situations and give recommendations to members; and conduct periodic reviews of member’s human rights’ practices (Drummond 2010: 19). For months TFAHR had been supporting Budiman and given him encouragement to withstand the pressure to back down. Finally, with little time left before the ToR was supposed to be adopted and realising that there was no support from supposedly likeminded states, the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Hasan Wirayudha, finally withdrew the proposals. The lack of support from Thailand and the Philippines can be explained by their own domestic situations. In the Philippines the levels of extra-judiciary killings were on the rise, and as indicated in Chapter 3, the Arroyo administration was implicated in these events. Indeed, the 2007 report by Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions in the Philippines, ‘reported that extrajudicial executions were widespread, and included government sanctioned killings of members of civil society groups,
Human rights 99 and vigilante killings of suspected criminals by a death squad in Davao’ (United Nations General Assembly 2009: para. 6). In Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra’s declared war on drugs led to extra-judicial killings reported as more than 2500 people between February and April 2003 (Emmers 2010: 147). The deteriorating security situation in the South has also accounted for more than 4400 people killed since 2004 (International Crisis Group 2010), in 2009 the Thai military was accused of casting adrift Rohingya refugees fleeing the Burma–Bangladesh border (Buncombe 2009), and the 2010 killing of 91 Red Shirts in Bangkok as noted in Chapter 2. These events no doubt help explain these member states’ reluctance to embrace an AHRB with a protect mandate. Left isolated, Indonesia in the end was forced to deflect and resist pressure to further amend and dilute the ToR. Yuyun Wahyuningrum, a prominent figure in Forum-Asia and the TFAHR at the time, has revealed that as late as the 19 July 2009 the other nine HLP members met separately from Indonesia as they sought to erase the wording noted below in italics from the ToR; this is what Indonesia was able to resist (Wahyuningrum 2009). • •
•
The AICHR is the overarching human rights institution in ASEAN with overall responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights in ASEAN. The AICHR shall work with all ASEAN sectoral bodies dealing with human rights to expeditiously determine the modalities for their ultimate alignment with the AICHR. To this end, the AICHR shall closely consult, coordinate and collaborate with such ASEAN bodies in order to promote synergy and coherence in ASEAN’s promotion and protection of human rights. This TOR shall be initially reviewed five years after its entry into force. This review and subsequent reviews shall be undertaken by the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting, with the view to further enhancing the promotion and protection of human rights within ASEAN.
In addition to resisting pressure to change it is also worth noting the Political Declaration issued at the time of AICHR’s inauguration. It is reported that Indonesia’s disappointment with the ToR underpinned the need for the Political Declaration and it contains a number of references, albeit sufficiently ambiguous to achieve consensual agreement, that indicates the ToR are but a starting point and that AICHR should evolve; hence the interpretation of AICHR as an expression of ‘ASEAN’s commitment to pursue forward-looking strategies to strengthen regional cooperation on human rights’, and an acknowledgement of stakeholders contribution so far and ‘their continuing engagement and dialogue with the AICHR’. It concludes with expressing ‘confidence that ASEAN cooperation on human rights will continue to evolve and develop’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009d). Ultimately though Indonesia stood alone, and for CSOs this represented an unfortunate coincidence of events. Yuyun claims that TFAHR were responsible for
100 Human rights the italicised texts above and that their role in influencing the text of the ToR has been acknowledged by the HLP members, Foreign Ministers, ASEAN Secretariat as well as by the ASEAN leaders. She claims SAPA were recognised as ‘disturbing’ HLP members and claim they received ‘threat emails’ as a consequence of their advocacy efforts (Wahyuningrum 2009). If we take these claims at face value they indicate that while Indonesia was receptive to NGO influence, and enjoyed the moral support for a protection mandate they espoused, like-minded states in ASEAN had grown suspicious of CSO activity – the Philippines appointed Ambassador Rosario Manalo as their AICHR Representative for example, rather than appoint a non-governmental representative as both Indonesia and Thailand did – or were so troubled by violent domestic crises that an AHRB with a monitoring function was, at this moment in time, inconceivable. In true, timehonoured ASEAN fashion, Thailand and the Philippines adopted the position that AICHR would gradually evolve into a protectionist body at some indeterminate time in the future. No cascade therefore at this point because no critical mass was accomplished, indeed it had disbursed, and the commitment to an AHRB from other members reflected instrumental adaptation. We now turn to the final chronological period to determine whether in its first few years of operation AICHR’s progress confirms the consolidation of ASEAN’s constitutive norms or whether we can discern another challenge. AICHR: a norm consolidator? At the time of writing the first two years of AICHR’s existence has passed and in this time the representatives have established their rules of procedure, which have been called Guidelines of Operation (GO); with ‘guidelines’ instead of ‘rules’ presumably reflecting member states’ preference for something more advisory and informal than legalistic and deterministic. They have also agreed AICHR’s first five-year work plan, they have identified thematic studies to be undertaken and established a drafting team to produce the ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights. AICHR Representatives are required to meet at least twice a year but they have met more frequently than this with their sixth meeting taking place at Vientiane on 1 July 2011; at this meeting AICHR also meet with the Working Group, which was their second engagement. The Representatives and their Principal Assistants have travelled to Europe and the United States to draw from their experience of human rights bodies. While this may appear to be a flurry of activity it has confirmed the consolidation of ASEAN’s constitutive norms. Non-interference can be seen to underpin AICHR in two distinct ways. Firstly, with the exception of Indonesia and Thailand the Representatives are all government appointees and although the ToR stipulates that governments can consult appropriate stakeholders, the other eight representatives were appointed behind closed doors. Few of them have human rights experience and many have not resigned from their government posts. Their affiliation with their appointing elite thus ensures that ASEAN’s intergovernmental human rights body is not going to be a source of interference in member states’ internal affairs. Secondly,
Human rights 101 AICHR’s engagement with bodies outside of Southeast Asia stands in marked contrast to its refusal to engage with regional bodies. It is only the Working Group that it has met; it has not met with TFAHR or with the NHRIs that constitute SEANF, despite repeated requests. While the official explanation is that AICHR cannot engage until its GO are approved this did not stop it engaging the Working Group. AICHR’s reluctance, especially with regard to SEANF, may instead be because of the NHRIs’ greater investigative powers and independence contrasting starkly with AICHR, thus making it appear weak and potentially ineffective. Entering into dialogue with SEANF might therefore expose AICHR’s limitations partly caused by the incongruity of noninterference underpinning a body mandated to promote and protect the region’s peoples’ human rights. AICHR’s consensus decision-making process is revealed in two distinct fashions. Firstly, the need to meet as often as they have is both an indication of how much AICHR’s founding Representatives have had to do but it also reveals how difficult it has been for them to reach consensus. A good example of this is the rules of procedures since these were supposed to be ready for approval by the 43rd AMM at Hanoi in July 2010 (Human Rights Herald 2010) but were not agreed until February 2011. Since these have not been made public it remains unclear what caused the difficulties in reaching agreement; however, it has been indicated that some representatives argued that rules of procedure would not be needed and AICHR could simply operate according to its ToR (TFAHR 2010: 8). The lack of public documentation and indeed general information is the second manifestation of consensus decision making. Agreement by consensus has traditionally ensured that ASEAN appears united and no member state is exposed publically as the obstacle to whatever the other members are seeking. The dearth of information about AICHR stands in mark contrast to Article 6.7 of its ToR that notes that AICHR ‘shall keep the public periodically informed of its work and activities’. This is presumably the function of the sparse ASEAN press releases that accompany AICHR meetings but omit the details of the meetings or an account of the decisions and agreements reached.6 This lack of transparency is manifest, for example, over the failure to publicise AICHR’s fiveyear work plan; approved in July 2010 it remains publically unavailable over a year later. Likewise, the Vietnamese decision to replace their commissioner after one year’s service for health reasons was not publicly acknowledged.7 The secrecy of AICHR’s operation and the confidential nature of its documentation make analysis of its decision making impenetrable, which is precisely one of the functions of consensus decision making. The informality norm is reflected in the under resourcing of AICHR. It does not have its own separate secretariat but is instead supported by the DirectorGeneral of the Political Security Community within the ASEAN Secretariat. This team though has other responsibilities than AICHR; these extend to the range of issues within this pillar and this includes the post of Assistant Director for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights created in 2010. It does not therefore have a dedicated staff. The lack of support given to the Representatives means
102 Human rights that the two non-governmental appointees, Rafendi Djamin and Dr Sriprapha Petcharamesree, rely on bureaucratic support from their NGO and academic institutes respectively to help fulfil their obligations. The limited resources do of course impact on the efficacy of AICHR. One of its functions is to provide advice to ASEAN sectoral bodies and the first example of this occurred in 2010 when AICHR’s opinion was requested by the ASEAN Ministers of Health on the mandatory testing of HIV/AIDS for migrant workers. The lack of transparency means that what modalities have developed to enable AICHR to respond is unknown. TFAHR in conjunction with Coordination of Action Research on Aids and Mobility in Asia (CARAM-ASIA) did submit a proposal when the representatives met in September 2010 but at the time of writing no official advisory has been made. The activities that have been embarked upon appear to have happened more as a consequence of individual representatives’ initiatives than ASEAN directives. Thus, in Thailand Sriprapha has been conducting roadshows introducing and explaining the commission’s role and how it will differ from the Thai NHRI, and she has received information from NGOs about the Xayaburi dam in Laos and the Hatgyi dam in Burma, as well as the impact of Thai investments in Cambodia (Bangkok Post 2011). This stands in marked contrast to AICHR’s reluctance to meet with regional CSOs and receive complaints.
A human rights mechanism for a people-oriented community? In many respects a human rights mechanism in accordance with international standards, which promotes and protects the human rights of the people of ASEAN, should be the clearest manifestation of the Association’s transformation from an elitist gentlemen’s club to one that is people-oriented. It is though one of the most sensitive topics for ASEAN members, since an effective human rights mechanism with a protection mandate will have the authority to criticise how the governing elite are behaving towards their own people. It might even have the power to penalise those states found guilty of human rights abuses. It is not therefore surprising that given that such a human rights mechanism would be at such odds with the constitutive norms that underpin ASEAN that its embodiment – AICHR – falls pitifully short of such a description. There is though hope among those that seek an effective protection body that such an outcome is not lost. From within the Secretariat and member states, as well as academic advisors, there is support for a fledging body that represents a start in a process. For others, especially amongst track-III CSOs, another ASEAN creation might represent a better protection body and one that could drive, or at least cajole and shepherd, AICHR in that direction: the ACWC. The response to the criticism that heralded AICHR’s inauguration was typically ASEAN. It amounted to stating that, at least at this moment in time, AICHR was never intended to be an independent body that could criticise member states. Using SAPA’s byline in their advocacy material of wanting an AHRB with ‘teeth’, Termsak Chalermpalanupap responded:
Human rights 103 the AHRB is never intended to be any ‘independent watchdog’. To moan on the AHRB’s ‘lack of teeth’ is to bark up the wrong tree … No ‘biting’ is ever required. ASEAN would not have come this far if its Member States want to bite one another with sharp teeth just to get things done their own way. (2009) We should instead recognise that promotion is the starting point and protection can come later, when more members are sufficiently supportive of this evolution. This notion that we are at the start of a process underpins Thailand’s alternate HLP member and professor of law at Chulalongkorn University, Vitit Muntarbhorn’s comment, that what the ToR ‘does not prohibit is not forbidden’ (Working Group 2009a). Although it remains not for public consumption the draft of AICHR’s five-year plan certainly has evolution in-built but it remains limited with activities scheduled before 2015 including ‘friendly’ country visits, the gathering of information on the human rights situation in each member state, and an open forum, every now and then as required by the situation, for victims of human rights violations. Exactly what format these would take and what outcome could be accomplished are unknown, but presumably it would be in accordance with the ASEAN Charter in general and the ToR in particular. We should though be cautious about identifying AICHR as a starting point. The history of establishing an AHRB has shown that socialisation via AICHOR and the Working Group only secured a commitment to an AHRB, and when the discussions began in earnest in the HLTF and HLP it quickly became apparent that only Indonesia supported a version that would manifest a people-oriented community. ASEAN’s constitutive norms held firm with ultimately nine members unwilling to countenance the type of adjustment sought by CSO norm entrepreneurs. Indeed, given the level of hostility noted in the HLTF exchanges for some conservative members even a commitment to any sort of AHRB remained contentious. The disappointment felt towards AICHR from track-III CSOs has led them to look at an alternative body: the ACWC. The ACWC is also a recent creation, inaugurated on the 7 April 2010 in Hanoi in the lead-up to the 16th ASEAN Summit. Unlike AICHR its ToR had been previously agreed and was adopted prior to the 15th ASEAN Summit in 2009. Although the ACWC ToR contains the same confirmation of ASEAN’s constitutive norms as AICHR’s ToR, the hope that this might be a more protectionist body emanates from two sources. First, all ten ASEAN members are signatories to the two international conventions that underpin ACWC: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It should though be noted that many ASEAN members that have ratified CEDAW have done so with reservations. This amounts to opt-outs of particular provisions with most opting out of Article 29(1), which states that should a dispute arise, and negotiation has failed to resolve the dispute, one party can submit the dispute to arbitration by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Opting out of this provision prevents the state from being unilaterally brought
104 Human rights before the ICJ. Nevertheless since member states have ratified these conventions it is hoped that the ACWC can monitor state compliance, thus giving it a watchdog role beyond that prescribed for AICHR. The second source of optimism stems from ASEAN bureaucracy. Whereas AICHR is formally established by the ASEAN Charter and can function across all three ASEAN communities, the ACWC is part of the ASEAN SocioCultural Community and thus operates within this community. For example, whereas AICHR reports directly to the ASEAN Foreign Ministers, the ACWC reports to the ASEAN Ministers Meeting on Social Welfare and Development (AMMSWD), with copy to the ASEAN Committee on Women (ACW). The hope is that by operating at a lower level within the bureaucracy, colloquially referred to as ‘below the radar’, the ACWC might be able achieve more than AICHR, which simply attracts too much attention. While there maybe something to this, one matter that addresses the extent to which the ACWC can cajole and shepherd AICHR forward is how they interact and this is referred to as alignment. AICHR’s ToR identifies AICHR as ‘the overarching human rights institution in ASEAN with overall responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights in ASEAN’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2009c: Article 6.8). This would appear to place AICHR at the top of a hierarchy of human rights bodies, which in addition to ACWC should at some point include an equivalent for migrant workers via the ACMW. CSOs have though sought to interpret alignment to be less hierarchical than the ToR implies. They argue that according to the 1993 Vienna Declaration, all human rights must be treated ‘globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis’. Consequently, alignment should be premised on the principle of equality among human rights bodies regardless of the nature of their mandates being general or specific to particular rights or groups. Equality in status implies, and affirms, that there is no hierarchy among the rights… It also signals that there is no room for privileging particular human rights bodies over another. (Indonesian Representatives 2010: 16) Consequently they posit that by basing the relationship between AICHR and the ACWC on the principle of equality, AICHR’s overarching role should be interpreted as ‘a leader among equals’ (Indonesian Representatives 2010: 31). In practice this would mean having open and continuous dialogue among the human rights bodies. Whether ASEAN members will interpret ‘overarching’ and ‘overall responsibility’ in this way is yet to be determined, but given their evident unease with establishing a human rights body it is to be expected that any directives from an ASEAN human rights body will need some form of authorisation by AICHR. The two bodies met for the first time in December 2011 and initiated discussion over how they could collaborate and coordinate their activities according to their mandates (ASEAN Secretariat 2011h).
Human rights 105
Conclusion The reflection of ASEAN’s constitutive norms in such a sensitive topic as human rights is not of course surprising. However, the significance and importance of this case study is that it reveals, firstly, the extent of activity amongst non-state norm entrepreneurs, and secondly, the degree of support they garnered among key states. In doing so it reveals how close ASEAN member states are to a tipping point where norm alteration could cascade. The first point concerns coalitional capital: CSO engagement since the mid1990s, via AICHOR and the Working Group, represented a concerted track-II effort to make human rights a topic of ASEAN discussion and pave the way for a human rights mechanism. These organisational platforms provided NGOs with an opportunity to engage with ASEAN officials and reflect what was possible. In the aftermath of the fall of Suharto and the liberalisation of Indonesian politics in the 2000s, the experience NGOs had of operating within AICHOR and the Working Group ensured they were able to seize the opportunity to play a role in helping ASEAN embark upon establishing an AHRB. There is widespread acknowledgement that, via AICOHR and the Working Group, discussions about human rights in general, and a human rights mechanism in particular, enabled ASEAN members to become more comfortable discussing the topic and more amenable to the creation of an AHRB. The sometimes heated discussions within the HLTF though revealed that much still remained to be done to achieve a consensus of all ASEAN members over the desirability of such a body. The bargain struck over retaining consensus decision making, instead of a form of majority voting, in return for a commitment to the AHRB enabled the Foreign Ministers to break the deadlock. While the political expediency of this bargain reveals a lack of a consensus it equally indicates a strong acceptance by some ASEAN members of the need to have an AHRB. The AICHOR and the Working Group rightly warrant praise for their role in this achievement, although Marzuki Darusman, the then Chair of the Working Group, is somewhat disingenuous when he refers to the process as sixteen ‘short’ years (Darusman 2010: 12). The overall experience for CSOs though suggests that their ability to influence has declined. It was noted that the proposals from the Working Group became less ambitious in order to retain engagement with state elite and while SEANF and TFAHR were able to submit proposals to HLTF and HLP their efforts to engage AICHR have been rebuffed. The second point relates to the number of states, persuaded by this engagement, desiring an AHRB, and whether a sufficient number of key states were so persuaded that a critical mass ensued. While the HLTF experience suggests that some key ASEAN states were persuaded, and indeed this does explain the presence of the AHRB commitment in the ASEAN Charter, the HLP experience is a sobering one. Once the discussion turned to what type of AHRB was to be established and the mandate it would have, the support for a protectionist body all but dissipated leaving Indonesia fighting a lone battle. This suggests that for many ASEAN members their socialisation within AICHOR and the Working
106 Human rights Group amounted to little more than instrumental adaptation and this explains the criticism that AICHR is a window-dressing exercise. Finally, although it is right to acknowledge that the promotion of human rights is a step forward and the creation of AICHR is a significant achievement, the affirmation of ASEAN’s constitutive norms reveals that there is nothing automatic about AICHR adopting a protection mandate. If we are to find evidence that ASEAN is moving towards a people-oriented security community then we need to look elsewhere than the highly sensitive subject of human rights.
5 HIV/AIDS
The previous chapter confirmed those suspicions that adopting the rhetoric of being people-oriented, and establishing for the first time an ASEAN human rights body to publicly encapsulate that rhetorical transformation of the Association, actually amounted to little more than a window-dressing exercise with ASEAN’s constitutive norms very much in evidence. This is perhaps not surprising given the sensitive nature of the topic and it might be better to seek evidence of transformative norms in a subject matter that attracts less public attention but nevertheless touches upon a range of topics and thus one suited to a functional approach to community building. This chapter is focused on health since, as with human rights, this embodies the notion that ASEAN is people-oriented; putting peoples’ health in terms of access to affordable health care and safety from communicable diseases is a strategic objective of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint (ASCC). In terms of communicable diseases Southeast Asia has certainly had its fair share, indeed the WHO classified the Asia-Pacific region as the potential epicentre of emerging diseases (Coker and Mounier-Jack 2006: 886). The 2002–2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the 2004 spread of a sub-type H5N1 influenza virus, more commonly called avian influenza or ‘bird flu’, and its reported resurgence by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in August 2011, certainly appeared to confirm the WHO’s prognosis. While these diseases clearly fit the type of communicable diseases ASEAN has presented itself as preventing and/or controlling, hence the creation in December 2004 of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) Task Force, this chapter will focus on a communicable disease that ASEAN has been responding to for much longer since this enables an examination of whether transformative norms are in evidence over a lengthy period of time. The communicable disease in question is actually a virus, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which results in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) that leaves the patient fatally vulnerable to otherwise treatable diseases. It is estimated that that there are 1.5 million people living with HIV in the ASEAN region, which represents an improvement from the 1.6 million reported in 2006 (ASEAN Secretariat 2011f). While this is encouraging, the epidemic varies considerably among the member states and indeed within them. In Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam while new
108 HIV/AIDS infections are stable or declining, the number of people living with HIV and the number of AIDS-related deaths are increasing, while in Lao and the Philippines new infections and the number of people living with HIV are increasing (UNAIDS 2011a: 111). Although incidence rates might be stable in Indonesia, the province of Papua has infection levels fifteen times higher than the national average thus indicating that prevention remains a matter of utmost national concern (UNAIDS 2010: 34).
Why is HIV/AIDS a good case study? There are two reasons why HIV/AIDS can be considered a good case study of functional cooperation. The first is HIV/AIDS’ designation as a security threat, which highlighted as a positive for functional cooperation might seem a contradiction given that in the introduction it was noted that functional cooperation evolves over matters of low politics rather than sensitive subjects, such as security. Ideally therefore the topic should not have obvious security implications since this might hinder cooperation because of fear of defection. The relationship between HIV/AIDS and security has received considerable comment in the literature since it poses a dilemma for HIV activists. While stressing the dire consequences that the virus can cause helps to raise its profile, and ultimately has led to HIV being securitised as epitomised by the UN Security Council designating it a threat to international peace and security in January 2000, the label security also constrains responses because it invokes a discourse of threat (Elbe 2006). The virus is something to defend against, and painted in this light unilateral solutions based on their narrow self-interest is more likely to be a state response than a cooperative, multifaceted response that entails transparent activities. Susan Peterson warns that herein lies the potential for state action provoking suspicion in others and generating security dilemmas. She warns, ‘the world must face AIDS for what it is and will be for the foreseeable future – a health tragedy of unprecedented and staggering proportions that cries out for international and transnational humanitarian assistance, not for the garrisoning of states behind national boundaries and national security rhetoric’ (2002/3: 81). Framed therefore as a national security threat could undercut functional cooperation since it would circumscribe what topics were areas for cooperation and thus hinder the degree of cooperative spillover that could occur. While disease, and HIV is a pandemic, pose obvious security threats to humans – because of the virus, ‘people living in … Thailand, Cambodia and Burma have lost three years of life expectancy’ (Barnett and Whiteside 2006: 25) – it remains questionable how far it poses a threat to national security. This ambiguity arises because unlike most viruses those vulnerable to HIV are not the very young and infirm but rather the state’s working population (ages 15–50). The initial fear was that because it is the working population that is vulnerable, rising prevalence rates of HIV could have a direct bearing on a state’s capacity to fulfil its functions. However, such an outcome has not occurred and those countries that are most at risk are not in Southeast Asia but sub-Saharan Africa (Youde 2007). Therefore HIV
HIV/AIDS 109 is unlikely in Southeast Asia to be viewed as a national security issue; nevertheless since it presents a clear danger to individuals HIV/AIDS can be conceived in human security terms. This enables a discourse of ‘threat’ and ‘urgency’, after all it is still security and thus a matter of significance, but because it is at the level of the individual rather than the state it does not, as is often the case with matters of national security, restrict which actors are part of the response, but enables an opening for the expertise of multiple actors to operate. In the case of HIV/AIDS this means a three-pronged response based around prevention, treatment and care. Therefore state cooperation is likely to be seen not in national security terms but rather as a matter of low politics (public health for example) with the benefit this accrues in lowering the fear of defection, coupled to state willingness to take action because of the significance and urgency of the issue. Designating HIV/AIDS as a security threat therefore not only does not hinder the prospect of functional cooperation occurring, but can actually give cooperative endeavours political encouragement as the elite promote sustained efforts to respond to the threat. It is though the notion that such a response should be holistic that captures why functional cooperation can so readily occur as multiple endeavours are needed. This directs us to the second reason why HIV/AIDS is a good case study for functional cooperation: the response is multi-sectoral. Multi-sectoral is a rather awkward description of the various methods adopted to halt/manage its spread; what could be called multifaceted but in common parlance is referred to as multi-sectoral. It is then precisely the breadth of issue areas that HIV/AIDS appears in, and also the breadth of actors engaged in responding to the disease, that makes it a good candidate for assessing functional cooperation and provides an opening for non-state actors to participate in the response. A comprehensive (or holistic) response must entail cooperation over a range of issues that are often categorised as: prevention, treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA). All three aspects reveal that HIV/AIDS is more than just a medical problem and that fighting it requires, among other things, protecting human rights, addressing gender inequalities, providing access to medicines and ending discrimination against PLHA. With such a breadth of issues connected by HIV/AIDS the prospect for spillover is enhanced. It would though be erroneous to assume that engaging multiple actors in cooperative endeavours to respond to HIV/AIDS is unproblematic. Before though examining this restriction another exists: this concerns the nature of the virus since this poses its own problems, which to fully appreciate, requires a brief explanation of how the virus is spread. HIV is not a very robust virus. Unlike influenza it cannot by transmitted through the air (via sneezing, coughing etc.) and neither can it survive on a surface (doorknobs, currency) waiting to be picked up by passers-by or inadvertently passed on. The ‘A’ in AIDS stands for acquired, which means infection occurs via a specific act that leaves the recipient exposed to the virus. The virus can only be transmitted via human fluids (primarily semen and blood) and can only infect if it can gain entry to the bloodstream. Unlike influenza that can survive for weeks outside the human body, HIV cannot. It cannot survive outside human fluids and
110 HIV/AIDS it cannot reproduce outside its living host. Although the virus is not very effective with regard to transmission, once contracted it cannot be removed and is, more often than not, fatal; there is no vaccine or cure. The availability of antiretroviral therapies (ART) has had a significant effect on life expectancy in developed countries, but the cost of ART means its availability and thus effectiveness varies. For example, while in 1991 HIV was the leading cause of death among adults in the USA aged 25 to 44 and by 1995 the figure was 40 deaths per 100,000, once ART were introduced in 1996 this fell to 10 deaths per 100,000 in 2000 (Whiteside 2008: 31). In contrast, in Botswana the death rate in 2002 was estimated at 28.6 per 1,000; without AIDS it would have been 4.8 (Whiteside 2008: 60). The uneven availability of ART means life expectancy can vary enormously, and since people die because AIDS has lessened their immune system it follows that people that live in poorer regions are more exposed due to prevalence of diseases and lower levels of nutrition; Barnett and Whiteside conclude, ‘it defines the excluded of the world – the wretched of the earth’ (2006: 6, also see 17–18). It is worth at this point clarifying the connection between underdevelopment, and for that matter gender inequality, and the spread of AIDS. The statement in the WHO’s Global Health Sector Strategy on HIV/AIDS 2011–2015 states that ‘Women now account for almost 52% of global adult prevalence…, with gender inequity and harmful social norms helping drive transmission’ (WHO 2011: 4). The WHO report captures the breadth of factors that help spread the virus by noting that although ‘the health sector is central to the HIV response, it must collaborate with other sectors in order to tackle the social, economic, cultural and environmental issues that shape the epidemic and access to health services’ (WHO 2011: 5). In her AIDS exposé Elizabeth Pisani refers to the connection between the virus and underdevelopment and gender inequality as a ‘smokescreen’ (2008: 125) and argues that if these were the reasons why the virus spreads, how come countries that have plenty of both, such as Bangladesh, have virtually no HIV? How come South Africa and Botswana, which have the highest female literacy and per capita incomes in Africa, are awash in HIV, while countries that score low on both – such as Guinea, Somali, Mali and Sierra Leone – have epidemics that are negligible by comparison? How come in country after country across Africa itself, from Cameroon to Uganda to Zimbabwe and in a dozen other countries as well, HIV is lowest in the poorest households, and highest in the richest households? And how is it that in many countries, more educated women are more likely to be infected with HIV than women with no schooling? (Pisani 2008: 127–128) When it comes to the spread of HIV there are four main activities that allow the virus to transmit between humans: sexual transmission and especially anal intercourse; mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) during birth but also breastfeeding; infectious blood products (such as blood transfusion for haemophiliacs); and finally intravenous drug use (IDU) where needles are being shared. Effective
HIV/AIDS 111 blood screening and use of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) can nullify or significantly reduce transmission via blood transfusion or MTCT. Two ASEAN countries, Thailand and Malaysia, have been cited as ‘Global Superstars’ in preventing mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), while Brunei and Singapore have also reached 100 per cent coverage of PMTCT (ASEAN Secretariat 2011i). It is sex and the sharing of dirty needles among IDUs that are the predominant means of transmitting HIV; within ASEAN they account for 75 per cent of HIV transmissions (ASEAN Secretariat 2011i). Since the injecting of heroin directly into the bloodstream with a needle contaminated with blood from previous users (hence the term dirty) essentially provides the virus with a transmission route approximating a highway, it is the most efficient or deadly means of acquiring the virus. The high-risk groups engaged in sexual activity are men who have sex with men (MSM) and commercial sex workers (CSWs), which are primarily female sex workers (FSWs). Sexual intercourse is not as efficient in transmitting the virus as injecting drugs via dirty needles, but MSM and CSWs are more vulnerable because skin abrasions, cuts and ulcers are ‘open doors’ to the bloodstream, and the nature of anal intercourse and the frequency of sexual activity by CSWs, coupled to the increased potential for other sexually transmitted diseases to be present, such as syphilis and herpes that cause ulcers, explains their high-risk status. HIV becomes a national pandemic because ultimately it will spread via sexual activity among heterosexual partners where one of them is infected. Development and gender inequality are not therefore direct explanations for why the virus spreads but rather partial explanations for why people engage in high-risk activity. Although simplistic the following scenario describes the linkage. Living in a developing part of the world where education is limited and the youth are expected to earn a living at a young age, a woman in her teens may find her opportunities to earn a decent wage limited because of gender inequality. Prostitution offers an opportunity to feed herself and with the prevalence of disease and malnutrition reducing life expectancy to, for example, forty, AIDS is just one of a number of means of dying, including hunger, and thus is not regarded as anything exceptional. If working in the commercial sex industry does not afflict her with HIV then, given her short lifespan, there will also be pressure to breed so that her lineage continues. This naturally negates the use of a condom with her husband/partner thus increasing her chances of infection from him (Barnett and Whiteside 2006: 22–24). An alternative scenario is one where the woman has secured a place at university but in order to pay the fees she has sex with a ‘sugar daddy’, a teacher to ensure good marks, as well as her boyfriend. The more sexual partners she has the more likely the chances of infection and transmitting the infection on to her other partners (Barnett and Whiteside 2006: 89). Thus while Pisani is right that the virus is not spread by underdevelopment or gender inequality these are important contextual factors, and specifically for us they reveal why prevention, treatment and caring for PLHA link into a wide variety of policy areas to do with human development; in essence, empowering people both in terms of freeing them from poverty and discrimination. This helps to explain such initiatives as the Positive Partnership Program in Thailand where
112 HIV/AIDS microcredit loans are made available to HIV-positive people who otherwise would not have access to conventional sources of funding. The loans are intended for the setting up of new businesses with the twin goals of lifting them out of poverty and, because it entails collaboration with a HIV-negative partner, reducing the stigma and discrimination attached to the virus (UNAIDS 2007). Empowering was also a key message from the first Asia and the Pacific Regional Consultation on HIV and Sex Work held at Pattaya, Thailand in October 2010. This called for a ‘holistic empowerment-led approach’, that ensures the rights of sex workers are upheld and that their issues of concern – for example eliminating violence against sex workers, providing reproductive and maternal health and rights for sex workers, education for sex workers and their children – are addressed in a broader health and development context’ (APNSW 2011). The impact the virus has beyond the infected individual can be appreciated by projects aimed at alleviating the problems facing AIDS’ orphans; it is estimated that over 16 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. The breadth of the challenges can be appreciated in this description from USAID: Although the overwhelming majority of orphans and vulnerable children are living with surviving parents or extended family, many of them are being cared for by a remaining parent who is sick or dying, elderly grandparents who themselves are often in need of care and support, or impoverished relatives struggling to meet the needs of their own children. Children living in these situations are at increased risk of losing opportunities for school, health care, growth, development, nutrition, and shelter; in short, their rights to a decent and fulfilling human existence. Moreover, with the death of a parent, children experience profound loss and a heavy burden falls to the surviving parent. If the second parent also dies, all aspects of that child’s world are threatened. Studies in many countries find that families and communities will absorb orphaned and affected children as long as their resources are sufficient. When the family and community capacity to absorb children has been reached, increasing numbers of children must look after themselves. Often the eldest child takes responsibility as the head of the household. Some of these children are left with no other option than to live on the streets, exposing them to even greater medical, social, and psychological difficulties. In the absence of support there will be long-term developmental impacts on children and the future of these countries. Failure to support children to overcome this trauma will have a very negative impact on society and might cause dysfunctional societies, jeopardizing years of investment in national development. (USAID 2001: 2) This helps to explain such projects as the Nyemo counselling centre for vulnerable women and their children living with HIV/AIDS in Cambodia, the BaanGerda organisation in Thailand for HIV-infected and affected orphans, and the Mai Hoa Center in Vietnam; the latter’s experience of the fear and ignorance
HIV/AIDS 113 displayed by parents when the Center tried to enrol orphans in a local primary school reveals the continuing prevalence of the stigma and discrimination attached to the virus (Ann Overland 2009). While the multi-sectoral approach requires coordination and harmonisation of policies across a range of issues in order to be effective, accomplishing this encounters two specific obstacles. One is the usual problem that arises when multiple actors become involved and the differing approaches they take. This is looked into below when examining the development of international norms guiding the HIV/AIDS response. The other obstacle is specific to how HIV is transmitted and the stigma attached to the virus. When people began to die of AIDS-related illnesses for the first time in the USA – although not specifically identified as AIDS the first reported case was 5 June 1981 (Whiteside 2008: 1) – the response from the authorities was a mixture of inaction and condemnation. AIDS was portrayed as punishment for the ‘perversions’ of homosexuality; a gay disease where there are only villains not victims. Five years would pass in the USA before the government and public health institutions would mobilise to respond to the threat. Brett Stockdill writes: ‘The AIDS movement developed in response to massive death fuelled by government, media, and corporate inaction and bigotry in the 1980s… A virulent and deadly homophobia, in particular, prompted the earliest negligent and punitive institutional responses (2003: 3). Faced with condemnation and inaction it was the gay community that responded (for details see Shilts 2000). The first wave of AIDS activism was conducted by gay and lesbian social networks that took on the tasks of educating each other about the virus and providing care, including coping with stigma, isolation and discrimination. It was their campaigning that ultimately galvanised governmental response and began altering the image of AIDS as a solely gay disease. It is this experience of government inaction and societal bigotry that lays behind the prevailing belief that PLHA and non-governmental actors are critical elements in responding to HIV/AIDS. The nature of HIV transmission (homosexuality, prostitution, injecting heroin) coupled to societal norms that exist in ASEAN members, as indeed they do in many other parts of the world (illegality/immorality of buggery, prostitution, safe sex, drug use), remain significant obstacles in pursuing a comprehensive response. These societal norms are referred to by the WHO as ‘structural barriers’, which they define as ‘systemic barriers (social, cultural and legal) to access faced by key populations that deter them from accessing HIV services and reduce the effectiveness of services. Examples of such structural barriers are police harassment and violence towards certain populations, and discriminatory policies, practices and attitudes in health services’ (WHO 2011: 5n6). It is possible to identify three broad impediments within these structural barriers. The first concerns the criminalised nature of the high-risk behaviours and thus the involvement in the HIV/AIDS response of those agencies that will arrest individuals for engaging in high-risk behaviour. This has the unfortunate consequence of driving such behaviour further underground and making it
114 HIV/AIDS safe (sterilized needles, condoms) less likely. It has, at the international level, pitted those UN agencies seeking to eradicate narcotics (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) against those championing a harm reduction approach to heroin addiction (UNAIDS). The second obstacle is the issue of morality. The prevent part of the response entails educating a populace about how the virus spreads and what can be done to lower the level of risk. Campaigns aimed at prevention of sexually transmitted disease include having knowledge, changing attitudes, and finally altering practices and behaviour (KAPB). In some instances this was translated into ABC (abstain, be faithful, condom if necessary). However, what constitutes appropriate KAPB, and how much emphasis is placed on abstinence over condoms, varies widely depending on who is doing the teaching and who is funding the education. As will be noted below with the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), not all are singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to what is appropriate, or moral, behaviour.1 The third concerns the ‘seedy’ nature of these high-risk activities. Governments, especially democracies where politicians are conscious of the need to have voters’ support when utilising public expenditure, prefer to portray HIV as a threat to all, or those easily discernible as victims, rather than focus on the high-risk groups. Quite simply, focusing on orphaned-AIDS children is going to attract public sympathy in a manner that prostitutes or heroin junkies will not; hence the preference in national campaigns to treat HIV as a threat to the wider community. In the UK the 1980s national campaign had the tag line ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance!’. Yet, for the majority of people who live in a monogamous relationship and are not injecting heroin, or if they are they are not sharing dirty needles with others, ignorance of HIV is not a threat to them. This reluctance to concentrate on those engaged in high-risk behaviour explains the WHO’s Global Health Sector Strategy on HIV/AIDS 2011–2015 report’s conclusion: ‘National HIV responses are too often poorly targeted to the national epidemiological situation, and the HIV interventions delivered in many settings are of poor quality and do not adequately focus on vulnerable and most-at-risk populations’ (WHO 2011: 4–5; also see Pisani 2008: 271–272). While these structural barriers do hamper an effective HIV/AIDS response, and for our purposes impede the spillover in cooperation that could underpin an emerging ASEAN security community, they also reveal the need for non-state actors. Those CSOs that work with CSWs and those that advocate harm reduction strategies for IDUs may have better access to those groups involved in criminalised activity than government authorities. As was noted in the initial response in the USA the involvement of CSOs in the response was deemed necessary because of government inaction. This requirement for CSO involvement in responding to HIV/AIDS has become an international norm. Thus while the stigma attached to AIDS and the criminalised nature of the high-risk behaviours that enable the virus to spread can restrain cooperative endeavours by state elite, they also provide CSOs with an opening to become involved in the response and they in turn encourage the type of comprehensive response that encourages spillover of cooperation in multiple areas.
HIV/AIDS 115 The response to HIV/AIDS can be seen as a good case study for functional cooperation therefore because, firstly, its security designation gives the response government support and a sense of urgency. There is then significant impetus behind the response but not, as is often the case with national security, a restriction on the number of actors involved in the response. The need for non-state actors, for the reasons noted above, not only reveals the multifaceted nature of the problem but it also ensures that there remains a degree of transparency in the actions being taken. The designation of HIV/AIDS as a security threat therefore need not result in the garrisoning of states that Peterson feared. The second reason why it is a good case study for functional cooperation refers to the response needing to be multi-sectoral; it is essential to coordinate action across a range of policy areas. While Pisani is right to caution against simply linking HIV with any problem there is clear evidence that an effective response must go beyond seeing the virus as just a public health issue. Of course appreciating that a multi-sectoral response is needed does not mean that harmonisation of policies is straightforward. As noted, the nature of the virus, as well as competing interests from the various stakeholders involved, complicates matters. In order to overcome these problems there have emerged international norms to guide state practice and it is to these we now turn.
The international norms It was noted in the previous chapter that the impetus for a human rights body came from outside the region and the norms advocated by CSOs were likewise drawn from external sources. In the case of HIV/AIDS the guidelines for how to respond to an epidemic also have external origins and, as will be shown, unlike with the human rights mechanism ASEAN has adopted them. In order to determine whether this indicates these international guidelines represent norms that can challenge ASEAN’s constitutive norms requires, firstly, identifying the international actors that are central to the fight against HIV/AIDS and what norms they espouse. The international response to address HIV/AIDS began in the mid-1980s when the WHO formed the Global Program on AIDS (GPA). From the outset the GPA married the need to provide a scientific diagnosis over how to test for the virus, improve information about infection and mortality, and conduct surveillance studies, what might be referred to as the public health response, with an appreciation of the stigma, discrimination and gender inequalities the virus revealed. This led the GPA to incorporate into its decision-making apparatus not just WHO officials but also NGOs that had direct experience of working with those infected and the complexities this created in their daily lives. It was not an easy marriage, as Amy Patterson notes when she writes, many WHO officials were leery of getting embroiled in the social and cultural issues that must be addressed to combat AIDS. Moreover, it became increasingly obvious that AIDS was not like other infectious diseases; because
116 HIV/AIDS it flourished in and contributed to conditions of poverty, AIDS required more than biomedical solution. (2007: 206) Nevertheless, the GPA ensured that HIV/AIDS was understood to be more than a public health issue. However, the consequence of adopting a holistic approach towards HIV, and thus treating it as more than just a public health problem, was that responding to the virus meant working in areas that fell outside WHO’s remit and into those of other UN agencies. Once HIV had been tied to development the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) became involved, and indeed it was the UNDP that introduced the term multi-sectorality to the discourse (Harman 2009: 166), and soon after other UN bodies became involved as they saw the HIV response encroach on their ‘turf’. The uneasy marriage within the GPA was now manifesting amongst UN bodies with the consequence that little progress was being made; by the mid-1990s the states that fund the UN dissolved the GPA. In its place came the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS); the only UN body established to fight a disease. Formed in January 1996 UNAIDS was to supposed to coordinate the responses to HIV of five UN actors; the number of co-sponsors has since risen to ten.2 The GPA experience, and the formation of UNAIDS, reveals three international norms that have emerged as central to the fight against HIV/AIDS. These are: firstly, the response must be multi-sectoral because unlike other diseases effective HIV prevention requires more than just a public health response; secondly, the response must include non-state actors representing PLHA; and thirdly, because multiple actors are involved, coordination – which in time is renamed leadership – is needed. Multi-sectorality The three-pronged approach of prevention, care and treatment underpins the holistic approach that demands a multi-sectoral response. This norm can be seen to underpin a range of internationally guided and funded HIV strategies. For example, George W. Bush’s AIDS initiative, PEPFAR, distributes funding as following: 55 per cent to treatment; 20 per cent for prevention; 15 per cent for PLHA and 10 per cent for orphans and vulnerable children (Amy Patterson 2007: 214). The other key international funder is The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM), sometimes simply known as The Global Fund it was established in 2002. Unlike PEPFAR it is a public–private partnership international financing institution that had by the end of 2010 approved funding of US$21.7 billion for more than 600 programmes in 150 countries.3 These programmes reflect the GFATM’s comprehensive approach of funding ‘interventions for the prevention of infection and the treatment, care and support of persons infected and directly affected by HIV/AIDS’ (GFATM 2011a). Recognising that an effective response is based on this multi-sectoral approach is the mission of UNAIDS, and it has since 2006 been captured in their
HIV/AIDS 117 advocacy of ‘universal access’, which is ‘a call for more equitable, affordable and comprehensive HIV services’ (UNAIDS 2011b: 1). Multi-sectorality does not though simply mean that many diverse activities are needed but that the response requires multiple actors: state, non-state, domestic and international. For example, the World Bank’s flagship Multi-Country AIDS Programme (MAP), launched in 2000, provides funding to countries in SubSaharan Africa whose strategic plans ensure the distribution of 40–60 per cent of funds to non-state actors. These NGOs operate at both the national and local level in a decision-making capacity and delivering services (Harman 2009). To apply for funding from the GFATM a country must create a Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM), which is composed of representatives from government, NGOs, multilateral and bilateral donors and the private sector; in other words, multiple actors bringing multiple skills and expertise to bear on a multifaceted problem. Ensuring that countries’ HIV/AIDS response included engagement with civil society was one of UNAIDS’ five original focus areas (Amy Patterson 2007: 207–208). It has though come to mean more than just engaging with CSOs, it has meant involving them in the decision-making process. This involvement is not simply within recipient countries but also in the international bodies themselves. For example, five CSOs are members of the twenty-strong GFATM governing board, where they hold equal voting rights alongside private sector, donor and recipient governments. Of these five CSOs one is a representative of an NGO who is a person living with HIV/AIDS or from a community living with tuberculosis or malaria (GFATM 2011b). It is this requirement to involve PLHA that is a second international norm. Greater involvement of people with AIDS The origin of this norm has less to do with the insights that a PLHA has with the disease and how their experiences can shape the response, than it does with the initial US government’s response to the disease as described above. The involvement of CSOs in general therefore reflects not just their ability to engage better than state authorities with those partaking in criminalised behaviour, but also the need to ensure that the government response is transparent and the government is accountable for its actions. It is therefore this watchdog role on the state elite that underpins the prevailing belief that the response must include non-state actors, and specifically because of the activism of the US gay community, PLHA. Given this norm’s origins it is not surprising that it has long history in the AIDS response, beginning at the second annual AIDS Forum in Denver, Colorado in 1983; this has subsequently become known as the Greater Involvement of People with AIDS (GIPA) initiative (Amy Patterson 2007: 208). GIPA became formalised at the 1994 Paris AIDS summit, and the GIPA principles are regarded as the enduring legacy of that summit. While GIPA includes such principles as strengthening the capacity and coordination of networks of PLHA, and promoting the rights of those living with or those most vulnerable to HIV/ AIDS, its key principle is to fully involve PLHA in decision making, formulating
118 HIV/AIDS and implementing HIV/AIDS policies. Not something therefore to be left to the governing elite alone. This was given its strongest expression and support in the 2001 UNGASS Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, which acknowledges: the particular role and significant contribution of people living with HIV/ AIDS, young people and civil society actors in addressing the problem of HIV/AIDS in all its aspects and recognizing that their full involvement and participation in design, planning, implementation and evaluation of programs is crucial to the development of effective responses to the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. (United Nations 2001: para. 33) This declaration is signed by nearly all UN member states and the GIPA principles were reaffirmed in the 2006 and 2011 UNGASS political declarations. Putting PLHA at the centre of the response is a clarion call that Pisani rightly notes, ‘Everyone, but everyone, now pays lip service to’ (2008: 183). However, the extent to which PLHA are involved in decision making, as opposed to the other GIPA principles, varies. PLHA are not represented on the boards that make decisions in PEPFAR or the Gates Foundation, but the bodies they fund do consult with CSOs representing PLHA to help determine priorities for their operational plans. UNAIDS has, however, promoted the participation of PLHA on national and international boards making decisions about funding and strategies. Thus on the UNAIDS’ Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) there are twenty-two government representatives, the UNAIDS co-sponsors and five representatives (and five alternates) of NGOs, including associations of people living with HIV. UNAIDS was the first UN programme to have formal civil society representation on its governing body, although they do not have the right to vote on the PCB. Their participation in GFATM, including in this instance voting rights, is noted above, while in order to be eligible to receive MAP funding from the World Bank the recipient’s coordinating body must include PLHA. GIPA is also supported by the ten UN bodies that co-sponsor UNAIDS. Thus while it is not a norm that guides all responses, as will be noted below, because of UNAIDS support for GIPA it is a norm that has been adopted by ASEAN. Leadership The establishment of UNAIDS reflected the need to coordinate the actions of the multiple UN bodies taking initiatives to respond to HIV/AIDS. The extent to which this was welcomed is debatable, but nevertheless the principle that coordination was needed to minimise efforts being duplicated or activities contradicting one another is sound, and this in turn has evolved into the norm of leadership. It is captured in the UNAIDS ‘Three Ones’ principle: (a) one agreed HIV/AIDS Action Framework that provides the basis for coordinating the work of all partners; (b) one National AIDS Coordinating Authority, with a broadbased multi-sectoral mandate; and (c) one agreed country-level Monitoring and
HIV/AIDS 119 Evaluation System. Leadership also underpins the World Bank’s requirement of national AIDS councils and GFATM’s CCM. In this context leadership means that national activities are coordinated by a central, national, body. It does not mean that leadership is exercised by international bodies, although inevitably those that control the purse strings determine the parameters in which the AIDS response can take place. These parameters can vary from one international body to another. For example, UNAIDS and GFATM support the use of condoms as a means of preventing the spread of HIV; by the end of 2010 GFATM had financed the procurement of 2.7 billion condoms (GFATM 2011c). PEPFAR, however, has championed the alternative message of abstinence as a solution. Consequently, in the initial 2003 PEPFAR initiative, it was a requirement that 33 per cent of all funding for prevention activities was spent on abstinence-until-marriage and faithfulness programmes. This was removed in the 2008 renewal of PEPFAR but was replaced ‘with a requirement that the Global AIDS Coordinator report to Congress if less than 50 per cent of funding to prevent sexual transmission of HIV is spent on abstinence and fidelity programs in countries with generalized epidemics’ (PEPFARWATCH 2011a). This clearly establishes directives over what the funding can, and cannot, be spent on and who the likely recipients of the funding are going to be. It is not therefore surprising to discover that faith-based organisations (FBOs) that share the US government’s preference for abstinence were the main recipients of PEPFAR funding; about 25 per cent of PEPFAR funding goes through FBOs (Bartsch and Kohlmorgen 2007: 110). Consequently, as Sonja Bartsch and Lars Kohlmorgen write: ‘This strengthening of FBOs, together with the general policy of PEPFAR to strengthen abstinence as the main prevention method, yields considerable influence on the HIV/AIDS policies at country level’ (2007: 111). It also means that international donors are at odds with one another over how best to prevent HIV transmission. Such differences are not confined to sexual transmission. Differences over IDUs and the role of harm reduction has also pitted UNAIDS against one of its co-sponsors: the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC). In 2009 the UNAIDS’ PCB called on the UNODC to embrace harm reduction as a means of countering the spread of HIV (International Drug Policy Consortium 2009). The UNODC’s opposition to harm reduction policies has softened but there remains wariness to fully engaging with its approach to stymieing the spread of HIV. Differences also exist about engaging with those partaking in risky behaviour. Such differences over how to respond to the virus were evident with the PEPFAR approach to working with CSWs, which requires those organisations receiving funding to agree to an Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath (APLO). Although revisions in the second five-year PEPFAR strategy include working with marginalised communities, including prostitutes, the anti-prostitution pledge remains in place and thus ambiguity exists over how far PEPFAR beneficiaries can engage with one of the key groups engaged in high risk behaviour (PEPFARWATCH 2011b). Needless to say such a pledge does not direct UNAIDS strategy. Leadership is thus not about international bodies leading the national response, although they certainly do establish the parameters of that response,
120 HIV/AIDS rather it is about establishing a national body that is constituted by the diverse range of actors formulating strategy, and coordinating the activities of those agencies implementing the strategy. Whether this actually works in practice is questionable. Elizabeth Pisani notes that despite the Three Ones championing one national monitoring and evaluating system, all funders, quite naturally, want to account for how effective their input is and this leads to NGOs spending more time monitoring what is happening than actually using their resources to respond to what is happening. Pisani writes, ‘everyone wants to be able to account for what was done with their one dollar’s worth of programming… It is a massive waste of time and energy to measure and report the same things over and over again … yet you can see why it happens’ (2008: 289–290; emphasis in original). With reference to the Three Ones, she writes, ‘Everyone prays to this Holy Trinity in public, but most honour different gods in private’ (2008: 289). For our purpose if the reality on the ground is that little leadership is evident then this norm is not guiding practice. However, while Pisani is undoubtedly right that multiple surveillance systems are in operation it is also the case that centralised national bodies do lead the response, whether they are national AIDS councils or CCMs.
ASEAN’s response ASEAN first recognised the threat posed by HIV/AIDS at its 4th Summit held in Singapore in 1992. Here ASEAN agreed to coordinate regional efforts in curbing the spread of the disease and established a regional task force to accomplish this objective. The task force, known as the ASEAN Task Force on AIDS (ATFOA), has implemented three work programmes and in 2011 its fourth programme was adopted by ASEAN Health Ministers. ATFOA is comprised of members’ health ministers or members of their national AIDS commissions. The ASEAN Work Programmes (AWP) on HIV and AIDS constitute the Association’s response to the disease and reveal the diffusion of the norms in this area of concern. In addition to the AWPs the fight against HIV and AIDS has required periodic impetus, and this push has occurred on three occasions with the convening of two special sessions at ASEAN summits. The first, and more prominent, was the 7th ASEAN Summit Declaration on HIV/AIDS, adopted in Brunei Darussalam on 5 November 2001. It was here that ASEAN Heads of State declared their intention to ‘lead and guide’ national responses to HIV/AIDS (ASEAN Secretariat 2001). The second special session was held during the 12th ASEAN Summit in January 2007 in Cebu, the Philippines, while at the 19th ASEAN Summit held at Bali in November 2011 ASEAN commemorated the 10th anniversary of its 2001 declaration, by adopting the ASEAN Declaration of Commitment: Getting To Zero New HIV Infections, Zero Discrimination, Zero AIDS-Related Deaths (ASEAN Secretariat 2011f). In addition to these declarations, combating HIV/AIDS also appears in the December 2004 VAP and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint adopted at the 13th ASEAN Summit held in Singapore in November 2007.
HIV/AIDS 121 One of the most striking features of the first three AWPs has been the explicit involvement of non-ASEAN members in helping to create them. In AWP I (1995–2000), the programme proposed by ATFOA involved assistance from the WHO and a Medium Term Work Programme within the AWP I time frame was developed with UNAIDS assistance.4 The recognition that combating HIV and AIDS requires a multi-sectoral response informed AWP II (2002–2005), with the process of producing AWP II involving not just UN bodies but NGOs and the business sector. NGOs established a regional network in 2001, called the Seven Sisters, and it is one of these NGOs (APN+) that currently holds a position on ATFOA.5 In AWP III (2006–2010), where UNAIDS acted as a consultant in designing the programme, this close collaboration with non-ASEAN members is noted both in (a) that partners are implementing the programme; and (b) that the programme is designed to complement partner programmes (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: 10–11). It is this collaboration that reveals the external origins of the norms guiding ASEAN’s HIV/AIDS response. In light of the external actors involved in the production of the AWPs it is not surprising that the three international norms are prevalent in the AWPs. This final section examines each of these norms against one of ASEAN’s constitutive norms to determine if it has altered the constitutive norm. Multi-sectorality will be examined as a challenge to informality, GIPA as a challenge to consensus decision making and we begin by examining leadership as a challenge to noninterference. Non-interference The leadership norm is a direct consequence of the need to involve multiple actors in the prevention, treatment and care response to HIV; it is capsulated in UNAIDS’ Three Ones principles. It is a norm that is prominent in ASEAN’s documentation and is to be found in both the AWPs and in its 2001 and 2007 declarations. The 2001 Declaration interpreted ASEAN leadership to mean: Leading and guiding national responses to the AIDS epidemic, including integration of HIV into national development planning, poverty eradication plans and sectoral planning; Creating positive environments to confront stigma, silence and denial of HIV and AIDS; Intensify and strengthen multisectoral collaboration including all development ministries and civil society; Intensify inter-ministerial collaboration at the national and international levels; and finally to mobilize technical, financial and human resources. (ASEAN Secretariat 2001) The AWP III makes specific reference to the challenges implementing the Three Ones will pose members and how they will need to work together to ‘ensure that The Three Ones are developed in ways that are appropriate to the region’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: 15–16). The caveat, ‘appropriate to the region’,
122 HIV/AIDS immediately presents the opt-out from international standards on the premise of exceptionalism, but nonetheless AWP III does interpret leadership in particular ways that, if implemented, would constitute a challenge to non-interference. In order to provide this leadership role, and assist in the implementation of the Three Ones, the AWP III notes the central role of legislation. According to the AWP III ASEAN will work with ‘Labour and Justice officials … the ASEAN inter-parliamentary organisation, Law Ministers and Attorneys-General, and other government leaders’ to develop member states laws and regulations. The bringing together of these officials will enable the sharing of ‘lessons learned about what sorts of laws, policies and regulations are most useful, and how best to develop community understanding of these legislative frameworks’. AWP III proposes that ‘a minimum set of policies, laws and regulations’ could be achieved on matters of: ‘confidentiality of medical results and records; provision of adequate information before HIV testing; and discrimination on the basis of HIV status’. Success in these areas could then develop enough confidence to enable over-spill with the reviewing of ‘legislation affecting more difficult issues such as sex work, drug use, the vulnerability of unregistered migrants and their access to health services, and the impact of laws and policies on human trafficking’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: 16). This clearly fits with the logic of functional cooperation as success in less sensitive areas breeds sufficient confidence that cooperation can occur on more difficult issues. Such coordination of legislation, led and guided by ASEAN to ensure an integrated regional HIV/AIDS response, would also be strong evidence of the non-interference norm being replaced, or supplemented, by mutual accountability. It is important to note that the AWP III adds the caveat that such new laws and regulations must be ‘appropriate to their own contexts’, which means the legislation can be different in each member state but they clearly need to be harmonious (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: 16). No such coordination has occurred. No progress has been achieved on ASEAN taking a leadership role. This reflects the disjunction between regulative norms that require members to coordinate domestic policies and a constitutive norm that reinforces national sovereignty. This is not to suggest that national action has not taken place, and indeed the international focus on one national strategic plan has been adopted; rather, it is to note that at a regional level ASEAN has not implemented a leadership function and this reflects the continuing vitality of the non-interference norm. The primacy of non-interference can also be witnessed in the area of monitoring and evaluation. Monitoring and evaluating equates to analysing and reporting how effective the measures are that have been put into place; in effect, are incidence rates climbing or falling within specific high-risk groups. Sharing such information entails a degree of transparency, which while especially helpful in coordinating neighbouring states’ activities so that a regional response is accomplished, is at odds with guarding against neighbouring interference in domestic affairs. After all reporting a rising incidence rate of an infectious disease that crosses international borders invites neighbouring states to comment on the deficiencies of one’s domestic policies. This aspect of ‘leading and guiding’
HIV/AIDS 123 has therefore borne little fruit. The failure to disclose to ASEAN monitoring and evaluation results during AWP II is reported in AWP III as, only ‘minimal information was collated centrally by the ASEAN Secretariat’, and despite the hope that within AWP III, ‘monitoring and evaluation will become a more central objective of the ASEAN Secretariat’, the AWP III period proved to be no more forthcoming in detail. The leadership norm is too central in the fight against HIV/AIDS for it to be dismissed by ASEAN, although its prominence is diluted in AWP IV. However, since this norm clashes with the constitutive norm of non-interference in the domestic affairs of member states it has yet to guide member states actions visà-vis ASEAN and HIV/AIDS. In terms of functional cooperation this regulative norm requires action over matters that are too sensitive. Whereas sensitivity would traditionally be classed in terms of national security here it relates to what it means to be an ASEAN member. To give the Secretariat a leading and guiding function would be to place ASEAN at the centre of member states’ national HIV/AIDS actions and policies. Since the association was created to protect members from outside interference in their domestic affairs this challenges the very foundations of the association and would require very un-ASEAN like behaviour from member states. Member states can also argue that responding to the leadership norm strengthens the validity of a national, rather than regional, response because of the emphasis placed on one national framework, authority and evaluation system trumpeted by UNAIDS. Since leadership is too sensitive perhaps change can be found in the other two categories: the response should be multi-sectoral and PLHA must be involved. Informality This constitutive norm captures not only the lack of capacity within the ASEAN Secretariat but also the lack of an enforcement mechanism to ensure member states’ compliance with ASEAN agreed directives. The former is reflected in the staffing levels within the Health and Communicable Diseases Division. Four people work in this division and one is responsible for HIV. The ATFOA meets once every year, with its 19th meeting held in November 2011, while the body that it ultimately reports to, the ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting (AHMM), meets biennially and their last meeting, its tenth, was held in Singapore in July 2010.6 It is not therefore due to meet again until 2012. The informality of ASEAN’s declarations can be clearly discerned by examining how it has responded to the virus over the intervening years. This also reveals the adoption of multi-sectorality since in conceiving of HIV responses as multifaceted ASEAN has responded to the virus by seeing it as part of a broader concern to do with development. This is most marked with one vulnerable group to HIV that ties into development, and because they are engaged in transnational movement a regional rather than national response maybe preferable, and that is migrant labour. Migrants are vulnerable to HIV because they are primarily men who are spending time away from home earning a living. This means they are
124 HIV/AIDS both away from their home environment amongst family and friends and have a disposable income. Migrant labourers are consequently a significant client base for CSWs. This explains the presence of brothels near army bases and high HIV incidence rates among fishermen. In general therefore in a region where there is a high demand for migrant labourers the risk of HIV infection increases and it will spread throughout the region as the migrants return home. In Southeast Asia migrant labour is a growing phenomenon as a consequence of infrastructure development and closer economic cooperation among the ASEAN members. It is, for example, estimated that there are over two million documented foreign workers in Malaysia, which constitutes one in five of the workforce, and the same number again are undocumented (Amnesty International 2010: 6). Migrants were recognised as a vulnerable group in the 2007 ASEAN declaration on HIV and AIDS (ASEAN Secretariat 2007a). On this issue ASEAN works closely with the United Nations Regional Task Force on Mobility and HIV Vulnerability Reduction (UNRTF), which has been renamed the Joint United Nations Initiative on Mobility and HIV/AIDS in Southeast Asia (JUNIMA).7 This close relationship is manifest in the membership of JUNIMA’s Steering Committee including the ASEAN Secretariat as well as past Chair and current Chairs of ATFOA and the ACMW. In addition to its connection with JUNIMA, the ASEAN Secretariat in 2003 collaborated with the UNDP South East Asia HIV and Development Programme (UNDP-SEAHIV) in organising a workshop concerned with the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and the infrastructural developments connecting the GMS countries together; this was called the ASEAN Highway Network. More recently the ASEAN Secretariat has convened a meeting of ASEAN health and transport ministries at a High Level Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue on HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support for Migrants, which was held in February 2009 at Bangkok. In its cooperation with JUNIMA, ASEAN has established the following regulative norms that should operate with regard to migrants: raising awareness among migrants of HIV both pre-departure and/or on arrival; non-discriminatory health screening; and access to health services in the host country. No ASEAN member implements all of these norms. Most of the national AIDS programmes do not make provisions for migrants’ access to HIV prevention, care and treatment services, and undocumented migrants have no access to health services or programmes within the host country. The pre-departure services, which exist in some but not all member states, are generally ineffective with the HIV sessions short in duration, not comprehensive and occurring too late in the process for migrants to pay much attention a few days before moving abroad. Mandatory testing for HIV is required by the majority of ASEAN members (Thailand is the exception) with a positive test result meaning repatriation in some cases. Finally, subsidized ARV treatment is not available to migrants in any ASEAN member making it unaffordable (UNRTF et al. 2008: 11). Thus, while all ASEAN members’ national HIV/AIDS Strategic Plans identify migrants as a vulnerable group, their actions are not coordinated and are not comprehensive. Thus, in their 2008 Rapid Assessment document, the ASEAN
HIV/AIDS 125 Secretariat, UNDP and JUNIMA found the ‘operationalization of national HIV strategic plans has yet to include comprehensive and coordinated national and regional responses that meet the needs of migrant and mobile populations’, and, reflecting on the lack of progress in implementing bilateral and regional work plans, such as AWP III, they conclude, if ‘envisioned results are to be achieved, regional coordination of the implementation of national plans and cross-border interventions in support of signed agreements is essential’ (UNRTF et al. 2008: 10–11, 8). An example of the lack of progress is captured in the failure to develop a Joint Action Programme to implement a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by all ASEAN GMS countries and China in May 2005; this was a specific goal sought in AWP III but the parties have relied upon the MoU, a much vaguer document than an action programme, to guide their cooperation (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: 22–23). This reaffirms ASEAN’s inability to ‘lead and guide’ but this is less an issue to do with non-interference than it is member states’ unwillingness to be directed by the regional organisation, since we have ASEAN agreed regulative norms in place. This is the informality norm that captures ASEAN’s directives having an advisory status because ASEAN is not a supra-national body. Indeed, Secretariat staff have likened their function to one of advocacy. In this sense ASEAN cajoles the member states by encouraging dialogue among them and with external bodies, such as UNAIDS and CSOs. Once conceived in terms of advocacy, however, there is a temptation to view the convening of meetings as an indication of ASEAN action; the more the better. While this is a measure of ASEAN’s capacity to bring member states and HIV/AIDS agents (governmental and non-governmental) together, if these dialogues simply replicate the same message then the cajoling is not working; member states simply refuse to act on those agreed ASEAN initiatives they do not like. While ASEAN has certainly been successful in convening meetings, and these meetings do reflect the multi-sectoral nature of the response, the lack of progress can be discerned by the repetition in documents that arise from these meetings. For example, the 2003 ASEAN Highway Network workshop, which brought together thirty-seven participants from transport, construction, public works, national AIDS authorities and NGOs from six GMS countries, was designed to devise collaborative actions among the GMS countries and thus build HIV resilience within and between the communities along the ASEAN Highway Network (UNDP 2004).8 Six years later the ASEAN Secretariat convenes the High Level Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue on Support for Migrants with the objectives of: (1) sensitizing influential ministry officials and other high-level governmental officials from member states on the issues of migrants and HIV; (2) developing regional and national consensus on actions that need to be taken regionally and at a country level; and (3) providing a space for key line ministries in the member states to meet, discuss and agree on how to move forward on country-level responses to meet the ASEAN declarations/commitments. There is nothing new here other than a disappointing reflection on the need in 2009 to still ‘sensitize’ officials about HIV and migrants. The need to create ‘space’ for members to
126 HIV/AIDS discuss implementation of ASEAN commitments also raises questions about the effectiveness of ASEAN’s convening capacity. In addition to migration, connecting HIV/AIDS to development also includes other vulnerable groups, most notably the young and IDUs. In AWP III education policies for the young are encouraged to both educate about the dangers of highrisk sexual or drug using behaviour and to raise their education level so that they can achieve better employment opportunities. This clarion call replicates a focus on the young that has been present in the previous AWPs and in February 2010 at Vientiane, Laos, an ASEAN Regional Conference on Youth Who are at Risk of HIV Infection was held. Capturing the multifaceted nature of the problem – referred to as cross-cutting issues – this conference brought together member states’ ministries responsible for youth affairs and ministries for health together with youth networks and representatives from partner organisations, such as UNAIDS and CSOs. The goal? To ‘dissolve any barriers and stigma and discrimination against young people who are most at risk of HIV infection’, and to, ‘identifying key regional priorities and activities related to youth and HIV’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2010g). While laudable in their own right they simply replicate objectives sought previously: in AWP I HIV/AIDS education and awareness among the youth was a specific objective, as it was in AWP II, where it was also stated that strengthening regional coordination among agencies working with ASEAN’s youth was a goal (ASEAN Secretariat 2002: 47, 59–61). Similar replication can be found with IDUs. Creating a drug-free ASEAN helps to prevent the transmission of HIV because of IDUs sharing dirty needles, so AWP III reasserts the guidance that clean needles and syringes should be made available and that to assist people to stop injecting drugs, rehabilitation programmes and/or drug substitution therapy that treat drug addiction as a social and medical problem are needed (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: 32). This is a continuation of the approach adopted in AWP II, which recognised the need to adopt a harm reduction approach in order to minimise the spread of HIV among IDUs (ASEAN Secretariat 2002: 57–59). The need on this issue for collaboration between public health and law enforcement agencies is recognised in AWP III and that while this occurs within some member states it does not in all. The recognition that combating HIV, and providing support for victims of AIDS, should be considered in such diverse topics indicates the multi-sectoral norm has taken root. This does not mean that adopting regionally coordinated responses has been agreed though, as is indicated by the replication of objectives in the AWPs. Indeed, AWP II contained more topics, identified which member states were to take the lead in pursuing the objectives, and was more ambitious in its criteria for judging success. The failure of ASEAN to fulfil its objectives in AWP II, which was a substantially larger document than either AWP I or AWP III, was reflected in AWP III’s avoidance of ‘over-specifying exactly what will need to occur during … its implementation’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: viii). A telling sign of member states’ willingness to discuss, but not be beholden to adopt, regionally inspired solutions.
HIV/AIDS 127 Consensus decision making It was noted in the previous chapter that this constitutive norm ensures that not only do member states have a veto, but also that ASEAN decisions reveal a united membership from which they espouse a common position. The importance of a common stand harks back to the notion of regional resilience, in which their strength to resist external pressures comes from being seen to be united. Of course reaching a common position entails much bargaining but to ensure that the common position reached is publicly seen to be supported by all members, this process of decision making is opaque. Consensus decision making therefore, in the ASEAN context, ensures that how decisions are reached remains closed to public scrutiny. The international norm of GIPA, with its emphasis on PLHAs being part of the decision-making process in order to create transparency and make governing elite accountable, certainly appears at odds with this constitutive norm. AWP III does support the involvement of PLHA in national and regional policy development, with NGOs representing PLHA attending ATFOA open sessions. In ASEAN’s Task Force PLHA are primarily represented by APN+, an organisation in which its representatives must be HIV positive thus indicating ASEAN has embraced GIPA (ASEAN Secretariat 2006b: 17, 27). In addition to APN+ other Seven Sister members, APCASO and CARAM Asia, also attend the open sessions. For the APN+ representative this is a role that works well and he found that AFTOA membership gave the NGO a heighten degree of credibility that helped with external funding bodies and other regionally based CSOs. Of course the purpose of having a NGO as part of the decision-making apparatus reflects the scepticism that governments can be left to respond to HIV/AIDS on their own. Since ATFOA is comprised of governmental officials and its mandate is essentially to cajole member states, and not to criticise their failure to follow through on recommendations, the critical perspective a NGO participant can make is somewhat curtailed. This can be more fully appreciated when it is understood that when ATFOA meets once each year it has open and closed sessions; there are no PLHA NGOs at the closed sessions where the decisions are made. ASEAN, as was reinforced in an interview with the author, is an intergovernmental body. Thus while the presence of APN+ in ATFOA indicates some support for GIPA the existence of closed sessions undercuts any capacity for APN+ to hold ASEAN members accountable for their failure to implement the work programmes.
Conclusion In the previous chapter it was noted that AICHR falls short of the international standards, as epitomised in the Paris Principles, which establish what type of mandates and modus operandi a human rights body should have if it is to be recognised by the UN and be eligible to receive UN support. In this chapter it has been shown that when it comes to responding to HIV/AIDS, ASEAN has
128 HIV/AIDS rhetorically embraced international standards but its constitutive norms have nullified their implementation. It must be noted that since its recognition of the threat in 1992, ASEAN has not shied away from issuing declarations and establishing work plans to respond to HIV/AIDS. In its latest declaration ASEAN members are committed to reducing HIV infection via sexual transmission and transmission via injecting drugs by 50 per cent by 2015 and scaling up antiretroviral treatment, care and support to achieve 80 per cent coverage for PLHAs (ASEAN Secretariat 2011f). Given the nature of HIV transmission (homosexuality, prostitution, injecting heroin) and societal norms in some member states (illegality/immorality of buggery, prostitution, safe sex, drug use) ASEAN’s willingness to address HIV so publicly is praiseworthy. However, despite the Association’s recognition of the threat posed by HIV/AIDS there is repetitiveness in its statements; they amount to espousing what constitutes good practice. This increasingly reveals that action, at least at a regional level, is not forthcoming. Although some of this can be explained by a lack of resources the key hindrance is the type of norms in operation. The good practice that ATFOA espouses through its AWPs, while created with member states’ consent, ultimately had their origins outside the region. This is not unique, indeed ASEAN norms having their origins outside Southeast Asia is one reason critics of ASEAN lambast the notion that the ASEAN Way is unique. However, in the case of the AWPs the adoption of international norms is so comprehensive that a stark disjunction is revealed when they are not acted upon. The explanation lies in their regulative nature clashing with the constitutive norms of non-interference, consensus decision making and informality. To accept the leadership role implied in AWP II and III would entail willingness to defer to neighbouring countries’ needs and adjust domestic policies. In essence, this would mean accepting interference and becoming mutually accountable. This is though at odds with the cardinal principal of non-interference, which is routinely asserted along with the primacy of respect for member states’ independence and sovereignty in ASEAN documents. To fully embrace GIPA would place a non-state actor at the heart of ASEAN decision making. While this would be an excellent example of how CSOs interpret ASEAN becoming people-oriented, it is evident from APN+ experience that ASEAN’s adoption of GIPA is limited. Finally, the failure to implement AWP directives reveals the informal nature of these directives; they are treated as advisory notices to be acted upon only when deemed necessary, not legally binding agreements to implement. Consequently what transpires at the regional level on HIV and AIDS are nonbinding agreements, or what David Patterson refers to as ‘soft law’; a willingness to accept policy reform in accordance with international guidance and best practice but a lack of willingness to either implement it at all or to implement it in a coordinated manner (David Patterson 2007). The result is that despite the obvious benefits in responding to a transnational threat with a regional solution, the ASEAN members prefer national remedies. When the limitations of national solutions is exposed, as it is with migrant workers, the result is the warnings
HIV/AIDS 129 noted above in such documents as the Rapid Assessment; gaps exist in the measures to limit the spread of HIV with the obvious consequence that HIV will remain a transnational problem, and the increasing HIV incidence rates in some members – ‘Prevalence rates overall are decreasing, but two ASEAN countries have experienced an increase of over 25% in new cases since 2001’ – indicate one that will remain prevalent (ASEAN Secretariat 2011i).
6 Disaster management
If we are to interpret the notion of people-oriented as ASEAN becoming a provider of services to, and thus meaningful to, the people, then there are fewer more striking and expressive measures than responding to natural disasters. Being seen to respond to the devastation and disruption that these bring to communities would certainly raise ASEAN’s profile and make it appear meaningful to the peoples of Southeast Asia. In this chapter ASEAN’s role in the disaster management response to Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma in 2008, is the case study used to evaluate ASEAN’s capability in this functional area. In the previous chapter the length of time that ASEAN had been responding to HIV/AIDS meant that it was a good case study for determining whether a functional approach, with its spillover in cooperation, was in evidence and whether this provided the most likely basis for a security community to form. In our last example of ASEAN cooperation we are also examining a matter that has been on the ASEAN agenda for sometime, although, as will be discovered, despite its longevity as an ASEAN issue it is only in the post-Cold War era, and specifically the first decade of the twenty-first century, that ASEAN has actively embarked upon disaster management.
Natural disasters The frequency of natural disasters in Southeast Asia certainly makes it an appropriate subject matter for ASEAN. Between 2005 and 2010, eight of the ten ASEAN member states experienced major natural disasters. In this five-year period almost 500,000 people died or are missing and reconstruction is estimated to have affected more than 17 million people and cost more than US$10 billion. Natural disasters have included typhoons, flooding, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, landslides and tsunamis. While the world’s attention was quite understandably focused on the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in early March 2011, at the same time severe flooding across the south of Thailand inundated ten provinces, affecting 2 million people and forcing more than 40,000 to flee their homes. Loss of life bore no comparison with the devastation wrought in Japan of course (fifty-three people died from the March flooding in Thailand) but when it comes to natural disasters and security it is not so much the extraordinary
Disaster management 131 that is chilling, though of course it can be as Southeast Asia can testify for it too has witnessed the catastrophic consequences of a tsunami (approximately 230,000 people were killed by the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh in 2004/5) and cyclones (approx 140,000 by Cyclone Nargis), but actually what is chilling is the habitual loss of life and disruption that arises from natural disasters. This is revealing because it means that while it is the extraordinary events that capture our attention, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, disaster management is also about the familiar, the routine, the ordinary impact of natural disasters that causes persistent insecurity for peoples, communities and states. For example, severe flooding in Thailand also occurred in late 2010 in the south of the country leaving more than 200 people dead, and in October 2011 the floods returned on an even greater scale inundating thirty of Thailand’s seventy-seven provinces and killing more than 300 people. The October 2011 floods also hit neighbouring Cambodia, effecting seventeen out of twenty-three provinces with the loss of almost 250 people. Flooding in Jakarta, especially in February, is so commonplace that it has become an annual event, which the authorities appear unable to prevent. The worst flood in recent times occurred in 2007; about 70 per cent of city was inundated, fifty-seven people died and approximately 450,000 were forced to leave their homes. The following February the floods caused the main highway to the international airport to be closed and nearly 1,000 flights were delayed or diverted and 259 flights were cancelled. In 2009 the disruption the floods caused was lessened by improved drainage but in February 2010 the floods again brought fatalities and displaced more than 1,700 inhabitants. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, head of disaster flood mitigation at the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, warned ‘Jakarta will never be completely free from floods’ (Primanita 2010). In 2011 a Master Plan was unveiled utilising Dutch knowledge and expertise to build a 36-kilometre-long dike to protect Jakarta; the Master Plan, which includes reclaiming land for urban development, is expected to take fifteen years to complete (States News Service 2011). Whether it will work remains to be seen but in the meantime Jakarta’s residents will continue to suffer insecurity resulting from increased risk to waterborne diseases as well as loss of life, livelihoods and income. As well as a direct effect on people’s lives these frequent floods impose a heavy financial burden on the state as a consequence of both, a loss of income as the city is brought to a standstill, and infrastructure needing to be repaired or replaced. For example, the floods of 2007 are estimated to have cost Indonesia US$879 million (IBT 2011), while estimates for the October 2011 floods in Thailand are US$3 billion (BBC 2011). Disaster management is thus not simply about responding to natural disasters when they occur, but also making communities more resilient to future incidents, thus minimising the disruption and financial loss they cause.
What has ASEAN been doing? The topic of natural disasters is not new for ASEAN. Indeed, it represented one of the first areas of ASEAN cooperation with the establishment of the ASEAN
132 Disaster management Expert Group on Disaster Management (AEGDM), which met for the first time in 1971. This early recognition of the importance of disaster management reflected an appreciation of the detrimental effect natural disasters can have on member states’ national development. By 1976 member states issued the ASEAN Declaration on Mutual Assistance on Natural Disasters, which highlighted cooperation on issues of early warning of impeding disasters, as well as the exchange of experts, information and training. The Declaration also called for the establishment of an agency to coordinate national disaster cooperation. Although ASEAN’s interest in responding to natural disasters can be traced back to its earliest initiatives the corresponding activities indicate that it was not a priority. The AEGDM met once every two years and it is only in the last couple of years that momentum to establish an agency to coordinate national disaster cooperation has gathered pace; the ASEAN Co-ordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA Centre) was officially launched at the 19th ASEAN Summit on 17 November 2011. In the post-Cold War era there has been a greater international interest in natural disaster cooperation and in particular linking it to broader notions of development. This reflected the rising concern that climate change was producing more extreme weather, and human activity, such as urbanization, was creating more vulnerable communities. These concerns led to the 1994 World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction, which produced the Yokohama Strategy, a plan of action for ten years (Yokohama 1994). One aspect of the Yokohama Strategy was to strengthen regional responses to natural disasters and this led the ASEAN Secretariat in 1996 to propose that the AEGDM examine the prospect of a Regional Programme on Disaster Management; this was to be done in coordination with the Thai-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC). Five years later in October 2001 the first workshop was held in Bangkok and this agreed the process for producing the first draft of the ASEAN Regional Programme on Disaster Management (ARPDM). The second workshop, also held in Bangkok, in March 2002 produced a framework for the ARPDM. Between the first and second workshops ASEAN members were asked to comment on what role they perceived for the AEGDM in regional, sub-regional and national level disaster management. Eight members responded and five areas for bilateral and multilateral cooperation were prominent. They were: training; disaster information sharing; inventory of capacities and resources for disaster response; conducting of a joint simulation exercise; and flood mitigation and prevention. The impetus for establishing the ARPDM led to the decision to replace the biennial AEGDM with the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM); this assisted in creating and operationalising the ARPDM since the ACDM reported directly to the ASEAN Standing Committee and it meets annually. The ACDM was created in 2003 and this year also saw input from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the workshop entitled Operationalising ARPDM in October. Finally, the ACDM launches the ARPDM at Bali in May 2004. The establishment of the ACDM indicates greater institutionalisation of disaster management within the ASEAN Secretariat and this is certainly an important starting place for challenging the informality norm
Disaster management 133 as it gives the Association a more prominent role in the issue because it reports directly to the ASEAN Standing Committee and it meets more often than the body it replaced. The involvement of the UNHCR reflects the practice noted in the previous chapters; ASEAN is more than willing to engage with non-state actors, such as UN agencies, to draw upon their expertise. Non-interference is not about refusing to engage with external actors but to engage on ASEAN’s terms. ARPDM The ARPDM identified five programmes: establishment of the ASEAN Regional Disaster Management Framework; capacity building; sharing of information and resources; promoting collaboration and strengthening partnerships; and finally, public education, awareness and advocacy. In order to accomplish these ARPDM consisted of two types of activities: regional activities covering trans-boundary issues and involving interstate collaboration; and regional activities in support of national activities. In essence, the ARPDM supports the need for greater national capacity and develops multistakeholder cooperation to accomplish this in three areas: preventing disasters; providing emergency relief after a disaster; and engaging in rehabilitation in the aftermath. This comprehensive approach is captured by the phrase ‘building back better’. It reflects both the general principles and specific objectives contained in the Yokohama strategy. Most explicitly it adopts the holistic approach to disaster management, which the Yokohama strategy advocates. It states: ‘Disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness are better than disaster response in achieving the goals and objectives of the Decade. Disaster response alone is not sufficient, as it yields only temporary results at a very high cost. We have followed this limited approach for too long’ (Yokohama Strategy 1994). The means to achieve what is often referred to as communities’ resilience in the face of natural disasters has five attributes or norms that are replicated in the ARPDM. They are: strengthen regional coordination through the establishment of a regional agency; enhance capacity for responding to a crisis (this covers a range of activities from pooling of equipment, provision of training, to raising funds); improve communication and share information between states, NGOs and international organisations (this often entails an early warning mechanism); improve awareness among the people of what to do when a natural disaster occurs (activities range from specific events to changing the school curriculum to include disaster risk reduction); and finally, embed, or mainstream, sustainability in urban and rural planning to better mitigate the effects of natural disasters. The ARPDM was therefore ASEAN’s first roadmap for implementing what can be classed as global natural disaster management norms, norms that envisage a response to a natural disaster being comprehensive. The Yokohama Strategy notes that each ‘country bears the primary responsibility for protecting its people, infrastructure, and other national assets from the impact of natural disasters’ (1994: I.10), and that in order to do this each state expresses ‘the political commitment to reduce their vulnerability, through declaration,
134 Disaster management legislation, policy decisions and action at the highest level, which would require the progressive implementation of disaster assessment and reduction plans at the national and community levels’ (1994: II.1). In other words, while recognising states’ national sovereignty gives them primary responsibility in this area, the Yokohama Strategy also clarifies how they fulfil that responsibility should be in accordance with international norms. This element of expectation is missing in the ARPDM. While there is the expressed hope that members will implement the provisions with ‘vigour and vitality’ in order to ‘plan and build a safer future’, it is nevertheless recognised that members ‘must look at the programme from their respective national interests, distinctive competency and focus on their particular needs. Its implementation strategy will be based on recognition of where each country wants to move individually and collectively’. Finally, and somewhat wistfully, it is stated that ‘the regional programme is mainly an elaboration of what ought to be done’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2004e: 13). This echoes the nullifying of the leadership norm in the previous chapter and indicates the continuing vitality of non-interference. The ARPDM was a six-year programme (2004–2010) that established twenty-nine activities to be undertaken and prioritised five of them; one for each programme.1 For example, under the fifth programme – public awareness – there is now an ASEAN Day for Disaster Management.2 The process of implementing these priorities led to the 2005 ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Responses (AADMER). AADMER The AADMER, although adopted in 2005, only entered into force at the end of 2009 after it had been ratified by all member states. It holds particular significance because it proposes the establishment of an AHA Centre. The role and function envisaged for the AHA Centre is to facilitate cooperation and coordination among member states as they operate in accordance with the norms contained in the ARPDM. Hence the AHA Centre is partly concerned with disseminating information among the ASEAN members about hazards, thus improving communication and sharing information among the member states. AADMER contains guidance on how ASEAN members should enhance their capacity to respond to a natural disaster. This entails, among other things, preparing standard operating procedures for the utilisation of military and civilian personnel and their equipment, earmarking military and civilian assets that could be used, and establishing stockpiles of emergency disaster relief items. The AHA Centre has the responsibility to review the standard operating procedures, disseminate data on the earmarked assets and undertake periodical reviews of regional standby arrangements for disaster relief and emergency response. The AHA Centre also can facilitate a joint emergency response. Finally, in addition to facilitating cooperation and coordination among the membership it can also do this with international organisations (ASEAN Secretariat 2005a). The proposed establishment of the AHA Centre is significant because it is the Yokohama Strategy that calls for the strengthening of regional
Disaster management 135 coordination through the establishment of a regional agency. This indicates that ASEAN members have been influenced by the international norms guiding state behaviour. Of course, to what extent this challenges the informality norm by creating a separate organisational base that can steer member states will depend on how it operates. Two points are worth noting. The first is that in the event of a natural disaster the member seeking help, known as the Requesting Party, is not obliged to use the AHA Centre and can therefore bypass it and seek help directly from others, known in the AADMER as Assisting Entities. While of course it should not be the function of the AHA Centre to delay an emergency response, since almost all its functions can be pursued bilaterally by members this rather negates its role. The second point is that its actions are almost entirely concerned with the emergency response and very little with the broader notion of disaster management. This is a general issue with the AADMER; while it makes a passing reference to sustainability and contains some provisions for raising public awareness and rehabilitation, these receive considerably less attention than capacity building and disaster relief. Although in its preamble the AADMER specifically highlights the follow-up to the Yokohama Strategy – the 2005 Hyogo Framework for Action – and indeed the Secretariat is proud to claim the AADMER is ‘the one and only legally-binding instrument in the world relating to the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA)’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2010a), it is not a true reflection of the HFA. The HFA builds upon and extends the comprehensive approach to disaster management contained in the Yokohama Strategy. It contains three objectives: the integration of disaster risk reduction (DRR) into sustainable development policies at all levels; the development and strengthening of institutions, mechanisms and capacities at all levels; and the systemic incorporation of risk reduction approaches into the design and implementation of emergency preparedness, response and recovery programmes (HFA 2005: para. 12). In order to achieve these objectives the HFA adopted five priority areas for the period 2005–2015, which correspond to the five norms previously identified. They are: ensure that DRR is a national and local priority with strong institutional basis for implementation;3 identify, assess and monitor disaster risks and enhance early warning; use knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels; reduce the underlying risk factors; and strengthen disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels (HFA 2005: para. 14). The HFA provides clear guidance on how these can be accomplished, and it further strengthens the role of regional and international bodies in disaster management. Thus while it reiterates the position adopted in the Yokohama Strategy that states have the primary responsibility for disaster management, including the responsibility to protecting their own people, in the HFA states are ‘required’ to acknowledge the indispensable role that international bodies can play in enabling the state to fulfil these responsibilities. It does not quite amount to requiring states to allow international/regional actors to assist but clearly the expectation is that states will enable such outside involvement, and given the lengthy nature of the reconstruction and rehabilitation phase of disaster management this could be quite extensive involvement in a state’s domestic
136 Disaster management affairs. The HFA also emphasizes the significance local communities can play in disaster management and the need to ‘empower’ them so that they can mitigate their susceptibility to disaster risk. The HFA thus reinforces the position that the disaster management norms in operation concern the long-term rehabilitation of a disaster struck region, and that this needs the involvement of outside actors and local communities in the response so that the country is more resilient to future disasters thus lessening the devastation wrought. With its emphasis on making rebuilt communities more resilient to future hazards, and empowering local actors to be part of the decision-making and implementation process of the reconstruction and rehabilitation, the HFA is certainly people-oriented. However, AADMER only pays lip service to the long-term nature of disaster management. The mainstreaming of DRR efforts in sustainable development policies receives one mention and no specific details are provided. Likewise the empowering of non-state actors receives one mention but no mechanism is provided to empower them. Article 6 on prevention and mitigation provides no details on how this is to be achieved and the same can be said for Article 17 on rehabilitation. This stands in mark contrast to the HFA and even more so the AADMER’s details on emergency response, which includes who should be in charge of the deployed assets and the Assisting Entities exemption from taxation, duties and other charges on the importation and use of the emergency equipment. In short, the AADMER is more ‘ER’ than it is ‘DM’ and thus concerned more with how to respond to an emergency and less about ‘building back better’. The emergency response (ER) element has progressed with the creation of the Standard Operating Procedure for Regional Standby Arrangements and Coordination of Joint Disaster Relief and Emergency Response Operations (SASOP), and ASEAN members do hold emergency response exercises known as ASEAN Regional Disaster Emergency Response Simulation Exercises (ARDEX). The ARDEX though tend to be small scale reflecting the member states’ limited capacity. To enhance capacity in the ER phase ASEAN member states have drawn upon the capacities offered by other states. This has entailed a disaster management function for the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). The ARF General Guidelines on Disaster Relief Cooperation were adopted at the 14th ARF Meeting in 2007 and since then the ARF Inter-Sessional Meetings on Disaster Relief (ISMDR) have been held regularly. In May 2008 in Indonesia the ARF held a Disaster Relief Exercise Table Top Exercise, in 2009 in the Philippines there was the ASEAN Regional Forum Voluntary Demonstration of Response (ARF-VDR) on Disaster Relief, and in March 2011 the ARF staged the Disaster Relief Exercise (DiREx). DiREx involved over 3000 participants from twentythree nations (ASEAN Secretariat 2011b). The East Asian Summit in 2009 also prioritised disaster management. If the AADMER is disappointing in both failing to truly capture the breadth of disaster management, and only partly strengthening a regional response in times of emergency, ASEAN did issue a more comprehensive document in the aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that hit Sri Lanka, Thailand and specifically
Disaster management 137 Aceh in Indonesia. Given the rather unwieldy title, Declaration on Action to Strengthen Emergency Relief, Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Prevention on the Aftermath of Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster of 26 December 2004, it was issued at a special ASEAN leaders meeting held in Jakarta on 6 January 2005. It captures the need for a long-term comprehensive approach entailing external help in its opening preamble; it states, ‘efforts in emergency relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction … may take five to ten years, with resources that cannot be borne by any individual country’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2005b). In particular it recognizes the UN as significant in coordinating international assistance during the emergency phase and international financial organizations plus states in providing assistance during the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase; albeit ‘upon the request and leadership of the country concerned’. ASEAN, and specifically the AHA Centre, receives a mention under prevention and mitigation but the functions envisaged for it are those that were to be detailed in the AADMER when it was issued six months later. Before dismissing ASEAN’s efforts in the disaster management field as another example of the Association adopting, but not fully implementing, the international norms that should direct state action because they clash with its constitutive norms, we need to address two significant developments. The first concerns ASEAN’s response to Cyclone Nargis and the second is the AADMER Work Programme 2010–2015 that replaces the ARPDM. The response to Cyclone Nargis is significant because, as noted in the introduction chapter, there was the thought that successful cooperation in the realm of humanitarian assistance/intervention might act as precursor for enhanced cooperation over other transnational issues with one of ASEANs more obstinate members. Did functional cooperation in the realm of disaster management therefore lead to a watering down of the noninterference norm, or did the Burmese regime reject outside help and/or determine what intervention occurred? In addition, what does ASEAN’s response tell us about the organisational capacity of the Secretariat? Given the lack of authority entrusted to the Association its ability to coordinate a regional, perhaps even international, response, would certainly indicate an ascendancy over member states that challenges the informality norm. The second significant development – the AADMER Work Programme 2010–2015 – constitutes ASEAN’s current position and, as will be discovered, it is far more comprehensive than the AADMER declaration and thus represents a challenge to ASEAN’s constitutive norms.
Cyclone Nargis Cyclone Nargis hit the southern part of Burma on 2 May 2008, unleashing wind speeds that reached 200 kilometres per hour and a 3.5 metre tidal surge. The badly hit areas were the Irrawaddy Delta, Mon state, Karen state, Bago division and Yangon division. The cyclone struck Burma’s main rice-producing areas and since the harvest had just been reaped many food stocks were washed away leaving the people in a situation of food insecurity.4 The official death toll estimated at
138 Disaster management the time was 84,537 killed, 19,359 injured and 53,836 people missing; since the missing have largely remained unaccounted for the death toll is often considered to be approximately 140,000 (PNPR-I 2008: 1). The damage to housing left as many as 800,000 people displaced and in the initial days after the cyclone some 260,000 people were living in camps or settlements (PONJA 2008: 1). More than 2.4 million people were affected and the economic cost was estimated at US$4.13 billion (Kun and Qingrun 2010: 96). The following day the State, Peace and Development Council (SPDC) established the Natural Disaster Preparedness Central Committee (NDPCC), which was convened and chaired by Prime Minister General Thein Sein.5 Overall coordination of the relief effort was the responsibility of the Ministry for Social Welfare. While the SPDC did respond quickly to the disaster the manner in which it did so, coupled to its decision to press on with its constitutional referendum, drew international criticism. International assistance began to gather almost immediately. On 4–5 May Singapore and the Philippines sent experts to join the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team that was assembling in Bangkok. Aid began to arrive via plane on 6 May (a Thai military transport plane carrying food and medical supplies) and on 7 May two Indian naval vessels were sent transporting more than 100 tonnes of relief material. So long as the aid did not include personnel it was accepted; when search and rescue plus media accompanied the aid, while the provisions were accepted their presence was not. This happened to aid from Qatar when the search and rescue plus media people were turned away. Western naval forces from the USA, France and UK arrived off the coast loaded with aid but they were refused permission to land. On 12 May the first US military transport plane carrying USAID landed at Yangon but while a further 185 flights carrying USAID/OFDA assistance were allowed no flights were allowed directly from the naval ships anchored off the Burmese coast. The Western naval forces eventually left in early June having failed to get permission to unload any of their aid supplies. Although the junta would relent on personnel from international aid organisations entering the country, no military forces were given permission to partake in the rescue effort beyond delivering the aid for the Burmese military to deliver. The helicopters that were used to ferry aid to the disaster-hit areas were from the World Food Programme. The Burmese government recognised very quickly that it was unable to cope with the enormity of the destruction. Their lack of capacity was not surprising, this was the worst natural disaster to hit Burma and most countries would have struggled to cope. The government therefore issued a cry for help early on, but this was for finance and aid to be delivered and then distributed by government agencies and agencies already in Burma and vetted by the government. The refusal to allow people into the country to distribute the aid and assist in the relief effort delayed the international response. This scenario arises almost entirely because of the international, and specifically Western, perceptions of Burma’s junta regime, and the junta’s perception of international, and again specifically Western, objectives. In short there was concern in the international community that finance
Disaster management 139 and aid would not be given to the most in need but rather those constituencies that supported the regime, while for the regime the fear was foreigners could possibly conspire with local anti-government forces to promote anti-government campaigns, or even that the aid would be a pretext for an invasion (Selth 2008: 391–394). With the Burmese regime refusing to allow foreigners access to the country the French raised the prospect of invoking the United Nations’ Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle, and the public floating of the idea of international aid being delivered without the approval of the government.6 The regime was faced with a dilemma. Since it lacked the capacity to respond on its own it would be criticised by its own people if it refused outside help. Having only recently, during the Saffron Revolution, responded to domestic criticism over its handling of economic reform by crushing demonstrators, the regime may have reasoned that such a response to criticism of its handling of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis would enhance the prospect of external intervention by giving the international interest expressed in R2P more fuel, and lessened public enthusiasm within the country for their constitutional referendum.7 Consequently the regime was in need of international assistance, the question was how to manage it. Before the cyclone struck, the interim UN Resident and Humanitarian Coord inator based in Yangon had offered assistance to the authorities, underlining that there would be a need for immediate access to any affected areas in order to undertake an assessment of needs. The SPDC indicated informally as early as 4 May that they would be open to international assistance, and this position was formalized in a briefing to the UN and diplomats on 5 May by U Nyan Win, the Foreign Minister; this was the first request for international aid. The emphasis at this point was that the government was seeking bilateral support for its national response, and not any form of international relief operation. Consequently no steps were taken by the ‘authorities to facilitate the issuing of visas for international humanitarian staff, or to relax the cumbersome procedures governing travel by internationals outside of Yangon’ (Belanger and Horsey 2008: 2). This position was clarified and reinforced on 9 May when the Foreign Ministry issued a statement welcoming cash and emergency aid but the country was ‘not ready to receive search and rescue teams as well as media teams from foreign countries’ (Chachavalpongpun and Thuzar 2009: 48). This control over the entry and movement of international staff in UN or INGO bodies reflects a tightening on their movement introduced in the government’s January 2006 publication of Guidelines for UN Agencies, International Organizations and NGO/INGOs on Cooperation Program in Myanmar (McCarthy 2008: 929n37). These guidelines required all UN/INGO/NGOs active in Burma to be approved by the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development (MNPED), with their activities restricted to those specified in their proposals and MoUs. In addition, the consent of the MNPED was needed on all international staff appointed and all internal travel was coordinated and approved by the MNPED. UN/NGO/INGO personnel undertaking internal travel had to be accompanied by government officials and UN/NGO/INGO agencies had to provide monthly and quarterly reports of their activities to the MNPED. Stephen McCarthy writes, the
140 Disaster management ‘purpose of the new guidelines appeared to be near total control by the SPDC of all UN/NGO/INGO activities in the country’ (2008: 929). Burma’s public call for help on 5 May was immediately taken up by the ASEAN Secretary-General, Surin Pitsuwan, and on the same day he called on member states to provide relief assistance through the AADMER framework. He was later to refer to ASEAN’s response as indicative of its community aspirations. He said: By linking hands with the UN, the international NGOs, and the rest of the world, ASEAN has shown how international humanitarian cooperation can work to help bring relief and assistance to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. At the same time, ASEAN is putting into action its pledge to build a caring and sharing community. (ASEAN Secretariat 2008c) What did ASEAN do, and for our purposes how far did this indicate that by challenging its constitutive norms it was evidence of a caring and sharing community emerging? It is perhaps worth juxtaposing Surin’s positivity with Alain Guilloux’s more sobering reflection when he writes, as different Southeast Asian states were dispatching coalitions of state agencies and civil society organisations to the disaster sites, the body charged with ensuring ‘active cooperation and mutual assistance’ for stability and prosperity was effectively sidelined… This implies a repeated failure of governance at the regional level, implying that the region is less institutionally cohesive and its actors instead behave more as a coalition of like-minded states rather than as a nascent community. (Guilloux 2009: 284)
What did ASEAN do? On 8 May the SPDC agreed to work with the ASEAN Secretariat and the ACDM to assemble and deploy an ASEAN Emergency Rapid Assessment Team (ERAT), made up of government officials from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and the ASEAN Secretariat, disaster management experts and three representatives from United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In the first-ever such mission for ASEAN, ERAT was deployed to Burma from 9–18 May. The initial operations of ERAT were housed in the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) office in Yangon, and according to Chachavalpongpun and Thuzar, throughout ‘May, informal consultations between ASEAN and the UN helped provide an assessment of how partnerships could possibly be brokered, and how delicately ASEAN needed to tread’(2009: 52). ERAT’s report ‘noted that assessments would have been more reflective of the realities on the ground had the team been permitted to conduct assessments in
Disaster management 141 disaster-affected areas that ASEAN-ERAT selected’ and it strongly recommended giving international expertise access to the disaster zone (ASEAN Secretariat 2008a). The lack of unfettered access to the disaster zone was to remain a bugbear for international actors and indicative of the regime’s control over outside intervention. ERAT’s report was submitted to a Special ASEAN Ministerial Meeting held in Singapore on 19 May. At the 19 May ASEAN meeting, ministers agreed to establish an ASEANled coordinating mechanism to ‘facilitate the effective distribution and utilization of assistance from the international community, including the expeditious and effective deployment of relief workers, especially health and medical personnel’. Achieving this concession from Burma required the following caveat, ‘International assistance to Myanmar, given through ASEAN, should not be politicised. On that basis, Myanmar will accept international assistance’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2008b). Perhaps conscious of the criticism ASEAN had directed at the junta’s crackdown of protestors eight months previously, Surin Pitsuwan reiterated the non-politicised nature of the assistance on many occasions. For many of the ASEAN foreign ministers the discussions on 19 May were ‘ASEAN’s defining moment’ (Chachavalpongpun and Thuzar 2009: 50). The Burmese junta were presented with three options: (1) a UN-led mechanism for reconstruction and relief effort; (2) an ASEAN-led mechanism for reconstruction and relief effort; or (3) the government would have to bear the ‘responsibility to protect’ its own citizens (Chachavalpongpun and Thuzar 2009: 74). Essentially it was one option. The Burmese would not accept an UN-led mechanism, and the choice of language in the third option was clearly designed to remind the regime that Western powers were mooting their own solution to Burmese intransigence. Shortly before lunch U Nyan Win picked the second choice. What do these three ‘choices’ tell us about non-interference? It confirms the point made in Chapter 2 that non-interference, with specific regard to Burma, has been adjusted but not abandoned. One aspect of noninterference is about controlling the intervention of external states to Southeast Asia and doing so by providing regional solutions; hence the notion of regional resilience. Non-interference is a means of helping each other. The request for assistance by Burma thus received a positive response from ASEAN, but the 19 May meeting revealed that ASEAN’s offer of help was coupled to the warning that if it was refused then outside bodies would intervene. Here is the adjustment to non-interference. Burma was expected to uphold the principle by receiving ASEAN help – in this instance an ASEAN-led mechanism – and thus enable ASEAN to control the involvement of the outside agencies. However, because Burma is an awkward, recalcitrant, member this offer of help is made as bluntly and plainly as is diplomatically possible. Hence the abrupt language in ASEAN’s communication with Burma that, as was seen in Chapter 2, has been interpreted by some as weakening the non-interference principle. However, non-interference would only be weakened if ASEAN members, or even the Secretariat, took control of the disaster response against Yangon’s wishes; it is in this respect that we should understand Pitsuwan’s emphasis on the non-politicised nature of ASEAN’s action.
142 Disaster management After all another aspect of non-interference is that ASEAN member states do not intervene in another member’s internal affairs. If, however, the response remains an essentially Burmese one under ASEAN’s auspices, which is done in order to assuage international and Burmese concerns about one another’s intentions, then non-interference is alive and well and simply adjusted to reflect a world environment in which domestic tragedies engender an international response that must be managed. In addition, it is also worth pondering that while Burma’s leaders were suspicious about Western intervention, its ASEAN neighbours were equally suspicious of Beijing being able to use Burma’s need for external assistance as a means of leveraging even more influence over Yangon. Thus while ASEAN’s other two options played on Burma’s concern with Western intervention, it was China’s growing influence over Burma that was uppermost in ASEAN wanting to take a lead role. The 19 May meeting was also important for ASEAN because the members wanted to avoid a repeat of the Gambari debacle when, having agreed to allow Ibrahim Gambari, the UN Special Envoy to Burma, to attend the East Asian Summit in November 2007 and debrief members on political developments in the country, including the suppression of protestors during the Saffron Revolution, Burma’s government changed its mind. The unpredictable nature of the Burmese regime therefore meant ASEAN wanted to avoid a situation where history repeated itself. Securing Burma’s agreement for an ASEAN role at a specially convened meeting confirmed ASEAN’s central position in the relief effort. Entrusted with establishing a mechanism ASEAN proceeded to work with the UN and the World Bank on a plan that would be circulated at the Pledging Conference to be held in Yangon on 25 May. In the meantime two developments were critical in explaining the Burmese government’s evolving attitude to how to respond to the disaster; in both cases the Burmese were learning from the Chinese. Ten days after Cyclone Nargis the Sichuan province in China was struck by an earthquake killing 68,000 people.8 Soon after the earthquake Chinese leaders visited the disaster zone and took personal charge of the response. On 18 May, some sixteen days after Cyclone Nargis struck, but only six days after the Chinese leaders visit to Sichuan, Burma’s leader, Senior General Than Shwe, visited the areas effected by the cyclone. In another example of following good Chinese practice Burma announced national days of mourning. The State Council for China announced that 19–21 May would be their national days of mourning and Burma followed suit and announced 20–22 May would be their equivalent (Kun and Qingrun 2010). Perhaps most significantly the Chinese were willing to allow humanitarian agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the FAO and the WHO to enter the country, but they were opposed in principle to the entry of Western armed forces. This may help to explain the second significant development, which followed a meeting between Than Shwe and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Naypyitaw on 23 May. It was after this meeting that Burma lifted restrictions on aid workers of all nationalities entering the country and accessing the disaster area. When seeking to determine why and how the Burmese regime adjusted its response to Cyclone Nargis it would be
Disaster management 143 wise to look north to Beijing rather than closer to home to its neighbouring states’ efforts via ASEAN. This should give some pause for thought about cooperation in one area of activity (disaster management) spilling over into other ASEAN areas of cooperation. At the Pledging Conference on 25 May ASEAN revealed its mechanism for coordinating the relief work. A two-tiered structure was presented that consisted of a diplomatic body, the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force (AHTF), and a Yangonbased Tripartite Core Group (TCG). The AHTF had twenty-two members, two from the ASEAN Secretariat, including the ASEAN Secretary-General as chair, and two officials (one senior diplomat and one technical expert) from each of the ten ASEAN countries. The main function of the AHTF was to supervise and advise the TCG. The TCG oversaw the coordination of resources, operations, monitoring and reporting, it met once or twice a week and very importantly it had access to the Burmese leadership at the highest level. Its membership included three officials each from ASEAN, the UN and the Burmese government; the latter included U Kyaw Thu, Burma’s deputy foreign minister who also acted the TCG’s chairman. Due to inadequate staffing levels in the ASEAN Secretariat, partners, such as UNDP, World Bank and the ADPC, provided additional experts and staff to help strengthen the operations of the AHTF’s Coordinating Office. This lack of ASEAN capacity is further noted below. At the International Pledging Conference donors made two major demands: (1) the provision of full and unfettered access for relief workers; and (2) the preparation of an objective and credible needs assessment. Than Shwe’s meeting with Ban Ki‑moon facilitated the first requirement and the second became the responsibility of the TCG, which responded by commissioning the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA). PONJA was launched on 8 June; Yves-Kim Creac’h and Lilianne Fan refer to it as ‘a massive multi-stakeholder joint assessment effort involving the Myanmar government, ASEAN, the UN, international financial institutions and INGOs’ (2008: 6). Approximately 350 people were involved and they spent ten days in the cyclone-affected area detailing, and thus prioritising, what needed to be done. The relief and recovery component of the PONJA was analysed through a Village Tract Assessment (VTA), while the long-term recovery component was reviewed through a Damage and Loss Assessment (DaLA). The division into VTA and DaLA reflected the different means of assessment that the UN and the World Bank sought. Initially the World Bank wanted to subsume the UN reliefassessment report under its scheme, but ultimately the compromise solution of running both was agreed. The role of international organizations was significant and reflected the lack of disaster relief expertise that ASEAN was able to bring to the operation. For example, the World Bank seconded twenty experts to ASEAN while technical experts were also brought in from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Operational UN agencies and INGOs contributed significantly to the PONJA, both through the assessment teams (the VTA teams were coordinated by Merlin – an INGO that specializes in health provision both generally and in times of
144 Disaster management emergency) and through the analysis and writing of various components of the report (Oxfam lent two technical coordinators to the PONJA writing teams for the water and sanitation and early recovery sections) (Creac’h and Fan 2008: 7). The government officials were responsible for coordinating the teams’ travel and communication (Chachavalpongpun and Thuzar 2009: 60), thus ensuring the Burmese regime remained fully in control of the assessment teams. While it is right to note that it is lack of capacity that explains why ASEAN was reliant on the secondment of staff from external agencies to fulfil its obligations, the reason why the Secretariat in 2008, some thirty-seven years after the establishment of the AEGDM, were incapable of conducting the assessment themselves is because of the informality norm. For the member states to invest such capacity in the Secretariat would give it the technical expertise to assume a primacy over how to implement the holistic disaster management approach advocated at Yokohama and Hyogo. Although this might not officially amount to instructing member states how to build resilient communities, with all the interference that entails from embedding DRR strategies in school circular, city planning and building regulations etc., the elite would leave themselves open to criticism of culpability if they ignored such expertise and their people consequently suffered from a major natural disaster. Increasing capacity in the Secretariat amounts to empowering the Association and that is not what ASEAN members have wanted to do. The preliminary findings of the PONJA were presented at an ASEAN Roundtable in Yangon on 24 June, and a month later on 21 July at the 41st ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Singapore, ASEAN and the UN jointly launched the final PONJA report (PONJA 2008). According to UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sir John Holmes, ‘Nargis showed us a new model of humanitarian partnership, adding the special position and capabilities of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to those of the United Nations in working effectively with the government’. ASEAN leadership, Holmes went on, was ‘vital in building trust with the government and saving lives’ (Creac’h and Fan 2008: 7). Holmes’ reference to ASEAN’s ‘special position and capabilities’ is presumably a reference to the 19 May meeting and the three options ASEAN presented to the Burmese junta. It was ASEAN’s official position as the body responsible for the coordinating mechanism that meant the international intervention was acceptable to the Burmese regime as it occurred under ASEAN’s auspices. Yet, as has been detailed, the actual response was not conducted by ASEAN members but various UN and INGOs. Nevertheless, if as a consequence of this involvement Burma adopted and implemented international norms then at least one member state, and a recalcitrant one at that, would appear to be amenable to outside intervention, albeit a nonpoliticised one. The findings are not though encouraging. The TCG’s mandate expired in July 2010 and after two years ASEAN’s involvement in responding to the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis ended. During this time the TCG produced three Post-Nargis Periodic Reviews, three Post-Nargis Social Impacts Monitoring (SIM) reports, and a Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan
Disaster management 145 (PONREPP). The PONREPP was published in December 2008 and it represents a comprehensive, HFA-inspired, framework for Burma; the time frame was set as three years from January 2009 through to December 2011. It contains the buzzwords of building back better and empowering local communities to manage and reduce disaster-related risks. It is not though a plan for action. It is merely indicative of what should guide actors’ responses. The actual plan is the government’s recovery plan. This too contained the appropriate buzz words but specific details on how communities would become more resilient were vague and the TCG’s subsequent reports indicate little progress has been made. The findings from the final review published in January 2010, the Post-Nargis Periodic Review III (PR III), and SIM 3 detailing the socio-economic impact of the cyclone up to April 2010, reflect the limited progress in rehabilitation. PR III reported that while food security was much improved and nutrition levels had correspondingly risen, ‘ensuring longer term sustainable food security requires addressing livelihood needs. Without efforts to strengthen livelihoods, improvements made since PR I, a year ago, could be lost’ (PNPR-III 2010: xi). In particular it was noted that boat ownership, critical for transportation in the delta as well as for fishing, was below pre-Nargis levels. Lack of cattle is similarly hampering recovery in farming and there is a lack of credit facilities. PR III reveals that the people of the affected areas are therefore witnessing a decline in sources of income and it is this inability to fund their own recovery that explains the concern that what recovery has been achieved could be lost. This concern with strengthening livelihoods is intrinsically part of empowering local communities but with limited success in the former so progress in the latter is stymied. Hence SIM 3 reports that it is ‘Aid providers [that] continue to be the main decision makers when it comes to determining both the type of project and the process of implementation’; meanwhile, ‘accountability between aid providers and the villagers are limited, and there is little evidence of transparency measures working effectively at the community level’ (SIM 3 2010: viii). Finally, PONREPP notes that disaster risk reduction, which includes ‘wide community engagement, developing and strengthening early warning systems, ensuring locally adapted mitigation measures in affected and vulnerable areas’, is essential to achieve a sustainable recovery (PONREPP 2008: 11). According to SIM 3 however, ‘researchers found that the number of disaster risk reduction activities has decreased’ (SIM 3 2010: vii). The rather sobering conclusion in PR III is that ‘On virtually every point where more detailed PR III analysis has been conducted, unresolved challenges are evident, whether in specific economic subsectors, geographic areas or demographic groups’ (PNRP-III 2010: xviii). Clearly much still remains to be done for the victims of Nargis, but for our purpose the response to the cyclone reveals the prevalence of ASEAN’s constitutive norms. The sense that ASEAN had freed itself from the accusation of inaction by leading the humanitarian response and transforming itself into a people-oriented body is captured perfectly in Pitsuwan’s reference to Nargis ‘baptising’ ASEAN (Coates 2008). ASEAN’s action though remained compliant with its constitutive norms. Non-interference was upheld, both in respect to the
146 Disaster management region leading the response and Burma controlling the response. While ASEAN appeared to be central to the assessment, actually it was seconding staff from other bodies because its member states have chosen not to equip it with the capacity to act. While this is true of its response to Cyclone Nargis, we now turn to our last ASEAN development in the field of disaster management because this indicates that the informality and consensus decision-making norms could be challenged.
AADMER Work Programme 2010–2015 Although it took some four years for the AADMER declaration to be ratified, once done its work programme was drafted and agreed within seven months; drafting began in August 2009 and second draft was adopted by the ACDM as a rolling plan in March 2010. The speed with which the Work Programme (WP) was agreed and adopted reflected both prior consultation before ratification, and the convening of a number of meetings that were held over two days with people often working late into the night. It also, significantly, revealed the secondment of staff from outside ASEAN. Within the Secretariat four people worked in disaster management and this capacity was doubled with four consultants added to the staff; at least one came from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), and a consortium of international CSOs, known as the ASEAN Partnership Group (APG), provided technical support in the drafting of the WP.9 This additional capacity not only explains the speed with which the WP was produced but, as with the AWP III, with staff from international bodies helping to draft the AADMER WP it is not surprising that it strongly reflects international norms. The five-year AADMER WP has a phased implementation. The first phase is 2010–2012 and fourteen flagship projects have been identified as priority activities to be implemented in this phase, while the second is 2013–2015. The WP identifies four strategic components that encapsulate the holistic or comprehensive approach to disaster management. These are: (1) risk assessment, early warning and monitoring, which is self-explanatory and is essentially about the identification of hazards and risks prior to impacts and increasing warning time. (2) Prevention and mitigation, which captures the focus of disaster management moving away from solely being concerned about disaster relief to DRR. It includes mainstreaming DRR into national development plans and increasing people’s awareness of what to do when a disaster strikes by, for example, integrating DRR into school curricula. (3) Preparedness and response, which covers the coordination of action in response to a natural disaster and has been where much of the focus has traditionally lay. It dominates the AADMER declaration (articles 8–16) and includes emergency response mechanisms and tools, such as the SASOP, ARDEX, Inventory of Earmarked Assets and Capacities, and ASEAN ERATs. (4) Recovery, which replaces rehabilitation from the AADMER declaration. It covers reconstruction and it is the international term used for this aspect of disaster management. The steer here is that planning for recovery should occur before the disaster strikes so that communities can ‘build back better’ and do so as expeditiously as possible.
Disaster management 147 In order to achieve this comprehensive disaster management approach there are six building blocks, and these operate in each of the four strategic components: (1) Institutionalisation of AADMER. This is not a reference to the establishment of an institution, although there is provision for one: the AHA Centre to be based in Jakarta. Institutionalisation refers to the programmes developed at the regional level being implemented at the national level because national structures and national policies are in compliance with AADMER. (2) Partnership strategies. This is both outward partnerships with other international disaster management actors, and inward partnerships with national/regional civil society actors, epistemic communities and businesses. (3) Resource mobilisation. This includes the establishment of the ASEAN Disaster Management and Emergency Relief (ADMER) Fund. (4) Outreach and mainstreaming. This is about raising awareness amongst government authorities (local as well as central) and the general public about AADMER provisions. (5) Training and knowledge management. (6) Information management and communication technology, which is concerned with the need for interoperability, common information exchange protocols, data compatibility, reliability and redundancy, scalability, and security of the networks used to disseminate data. Although it is disingenuous to refer to the AADMER declaration as a HFAinspired document the same cannot be said for its WP. The AADMER WP captures the international norms that guide how states should, in a comprehensive manner, enhance their resilience to natural disasters. In doing so it epitomises the type of transformation of ASEAN that the Charter and its people-oriented rhetoric could foretell; however, precisely because it could be transformative it represents a challenge to ASEAN’s constitutive norms. Informality What is striking about how the Secretariat has presented the WP is its reference to it being legally binding; AADMER WP ‘is the first legally-binding HFArelated instrument in the world’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2010b: 4). This sense of obligation on the part of member states to implement its provisions is based upon the notion that the ASEAN Charter is a legally binding document but, as we know from Chapter 3, this is not the case. There is, nevertheless, an expectation that member states will implement its provisions and this can be discerned in the forthright language to be found in AADMER (ASEAN Secretariat 2005a). For example, member states ‘shall take legislative, administrative and other measures as necessary to implement their AADMER obligations’ (Article 4.d). Member states ‘shall, as appropriate, prepare Standard Operating Procedures for regional cooperation…’ (Article 8.2). Not withstanding the subclause, as appropriate in the latter example, the notion that member states ‘shall’ do these things certainly gives AADMER a formality that challenges its informality norm. This is captured in the institutionalisation building block, where the expectation is that national DRR strategies will be formulated in compliance with AADMER. The AADMER WP is quite explicit:
148 Disaster management The Member States shall … re-examine their national action plans or develop action plans as required to ensure timely implementation of their commitments under the AADMER. In view of this, strengthening of national government organisations within Member States is thus necessary in order to institutionalise AADMER and ensure not only mere compliance to its provisions but also active engagement of Member States in the implementation of AADMER as well as the execution of the Work Programme on the ground. (ASEAN Secretariat 2010b: 74) This strengthening of national capacity to fulfil AADMER obligations includes a National Focal Point to ‘ensure actual enforcement of the Agreement’ and ‘the creation of an enabling environment, such as supportive policy and legal frameworks that will promote and expedite the implementation of AADMER’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2010b: 74). In essence, the regionally adopted AADMER WP will become embedded in national DRRs, thus leading to a position where the member states are adjusting their present domestic plans to adhere to a regional plan. This certainly appears to give an ASEAN directive considerable, formal, authority; member states, as it is repeatedly stated, are expected to comply with this legally binding WP. It is perhaps pertinent at this stage to note the noninterference norm. While this might appear to also challenge non-interference it is worth recalling that this is not a case of member states developing domestic policy in compliance with ASEAN directives against their wishes. AADMER is not therefore challenging non-interference but is actually an example of the norm’s vitality once non-interference is understood as a support mechanism as explained in Chapter 2. In addition, it is also stipulated in Article 3.1 of AADMER, that the ‘primary responsibility to respond to disasters occurring within its territory’ lies with the state ‘and external assistance … shall only be provided upon the request or with the consent of the affected Party’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2005a). It is also worth noting that for all the claims of its legally binding nature, there are no provisions within the declaration or WP for imposing sanctions on recalcitrant members. While it is too early to provide a comprehensive assessment of member states willingness to embed the AADMER provisions into their DRR strategies there are some encouraging signs. Brunei and Lao have held forums to support the integration of AADMER WP priorities into their national action plans, while the Philippines, since the passing of their Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) Act of 2010, are planning priority activities with references to AADMER. However, the benchmark for determining the extent to which a formal approach is emerging will be the establishment and activities of the AHA Centre, since this is the ‘operational engine in executing the activities in the Work Programme’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2010b: 4). Even just a cursory glance through the activities planned in the WP highlights the centrality of the AHA Centre. The establishment of a separate centre would indicate a significant investment in resources and provide enhanced capacity for implementing the AADMER WP. It would encapsulate the move from the informality that characterises ASEAN declarations to a formal
Disaster management 149 authority tasked, amongst other things, with the monitoring and evaluating member states’ compliance. A cautionary note though needs to be made: while the AHA Centre performs the operational coordination and technical functions under the AADMER and operates on a 24/7 basis, [it is] the ASEAN Secretariat [that] will provide policy coordination support, conduct monitoring and evaluation of the AADMER, and serve as the custodian of ADMER Fund… [The] ASEAN Secretariat will also sit in the Governing Board of AHA Centre, and provide direct support to the Secretary-General of ASEAN in performing his/her duties as the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Coordinator. (ASEAN Secretariat 2010b: 102) Not then a separate base and certainly not one that performs the monitoring and evaluation task, but nevertheless in performing its tasks the AHA Centre is helping the Secretariat establish a monitoring and evaluation framework and, by producing data, empowering the Secretariat in this function. If the initial signs of embedding AADMER are encouraging the faltering start for the AHA Centre is not. The AHA Centre got off to a ‘soft launch’ on 27 January 2011 with its full operation to be accomplished as expediently as possible (ASEAN Secretariat 2011a). The target date for its establishment and operationalisation was earmarked for June 2011 but this date passed with no AHA Centre. However, at the 19th ASEAN Summit in November 2011 it was, eventually, launched. Funding would appear to have been an issue with ASEAN publicly acknowledging support from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the USA, and incoming support from the European Union. Member states, as well as Dialogue Partners, were also encouraged to maintain commitment and contributions towards the AHA Centre to ensure its full operationalisation. In the first instance such a commitment would be signified through the convening of the Conference of the Parties to AADMER. To what extent the AHA Centre will challenge informality can of course not yet be known, but since it is presented as ASEAN’s mechanism to help member states work together so they can respond better to natural disasters, this would indicate it has the potential to direct member states’ activities (ASEAN Secretariat 2011c). Consensus decision making It was noted in the previous chapter that this constitutive norm ensures that the member states’ decision making remains opaque and inhibits involvement in ASEAN decision making that CSOs consider a truly people-oriented association should allow. The concentration of decision making in the hands of the state elite is certainly challenged in the AADMER WP, with its implementation being a partnership among multiple stakeholders. This certainly captures the broadening of participation in decision making that a transformative interpretation of peopleoriented implies. The role of non-state actors in the WP’s drafting, and the roles assigned to them, is potentially transformative for ASEAN. The APG not only provided technical support for the drafting of the WP but they are also direct
150 Disaster management participants in supporting the implementation of AADMER, which includes attending meetings of the ACDM. To support AADMER’s implementation two technical advisors were seconded from the APG to the ASEAN Secretariat. They worked with the ACDM and Secretariat staff at the regional level and with national disaster management organisations and civil society stakeholders at the country level. According to Lilian Mercado Carreon, who was one of the advisors seconded from Oxfam: The APG has succeeded in raising awareness of the AADMER amongst various stakeholders, including CSOs and national government agencies in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam. At the policy level, the APG has helped to ensure that the language of the AADMER Work Programme reflects inclusive approaches and downward accountability. The APG also sees value in its role as a catalyst for dialogue between disaster management and risk reduction authorities and civil society, and will try to facilitate agreements on specific partnership projects at various levels. Finally, the APG plans to help further increase civil society’s capacity to engage in the implementation of AADMER flagship projects, including monitoring and evaluation. (2011) According to other representatives of APG there is acceptance, at least in the field of disaster management, of civil society in ASEAN’s formal processes and recognition of the potential for ‘more dynamic and coordinated civil society participation’ in AADMER implementation (APG 2010). It has also been proposed that there be an APG governance and advisory group at the regional level. This certainly goes beyond the function performed by CSOs representing PLHA in ATFOA. The role and function of the APG is thus the benchmark for assessing the challenge to the consensus decision-making norm. An institutionalized governance role giving the APG a formalized role within ASEAN’s disaster management decision-making apparatus would be transformative. It would also encapsulate CSOs interpretation of people-oriented. Whether such transformation will occur is yet to be seen, but we have two benchmarks – the APG and the AHA Centre – with which to evaluate adjustments and changes to ASEAN’s constitutive norms.
Conclusion In contrast to either human rights or HIV/AIDS the field of disaster management has the real possibility of challenging two of ASEAN’s constitutive norms. By 2015 it should be possible to evaluate the AADMER WP to discern whether, via the AHA Centre and the APG, member states have (a) responded to the authority entrusted in the AHA Centre; and (b) created space for the APG to be not only active participants in decision making but also establish a governance function. If these developments emerge then it might become possible for a regional
Disaster management 151 body, whether that is the AHA Centre, the Secretariat or the APG, or indeed a combination of all three, to require state compliance; at that stage non-interference becomes challenged. A cautionary note though needs to be made. We are at an early stage and while a holistic approach to disaster management is sensible it also entails the coordination of multiple agencies (national and international) and this can prove very challenging. Indeed, a recent report on disaster response in Southeast Asia characterised state action as one of ‘inertia’ (Caballero-Anthony and Jamil 2011). It is certainly the case that whatever progress is being made in DRR when it comes to responding to natural disasters ASEAN’s presence is negligible. Far from being an active agent in the emergency response, and thus raising ASEAN’s profile and making it more meaningful for the people, it has been a bystander in recent years as member states have respond to, for example, typhoons (Ketsana that struck the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam in 2009) and flooding (Thailand and Cambodia in 2011).10 Of course the exception to this was Cyclone Nargis and here ASEAN was not a bystander. While it is impossible to know whether the Burmese military junta would have opened their country to outside assistance without ASEAN’s prompting, or if they had would it have occurred later?, it is right to agree with Sir John Holmes that ASEAN did save lives. If this is to be Surin Pitsuwan’s legacy, for it was him more than anyone else that drove ASEAN’s response to Nargis, then it is one he has every right to be proud of. To what extent this ‘baptism’ represents a defining moment is though less clear. In August 2008 Sir John Holmes noted four disaster lessons from the response to Nargis. The fourth was that the devastation reinforced the importance of communities’ disaster preparedness. He wrote: Simple, low-cost measures – local evacuation plans, shelters, community early-warning systems – have saved tens of thousands of lives in neighbouring Bangladesh when it has been faced with similarly devastating cyclones. We need to help the people of Myanmar strengthen their resilience and reduce their vulnerability. Building back better, to minimize future disaster risks, is a top priority. (quoted from Chachavalpongpun and Thuzar 2009: 105) For the local communities and the international agencies on the ground it is no doubt a top priority. The final Post-Nargis Periodic Review, however, indicates that it was not a priority for the then Burmese leadership, and despite the claimed “legally-binding” nature of AADMER it is the equally often heard “nonpoliticised” nature of ASEAN’s Nargis intervention, which should give us pause to consider that through humanitarian intervention ASEAN members will be able to interfere in each other’s domestic affairs, and consequently, whether ASEAN will be able to achieve its community building ambitions.
7 Conclusion
Since 2003 ASEAN has explicitly embarked upon building a community among its member states, and one of the most intriguing aspects of this is the prominence attached to the people of ASEAN. Originally conceived in terms of peoplecentred, by the 13th ASEAN Summit, held at Singapore in November 2007, the ASEAN Charter officially marked a change from ASEAN’s original statecentric focus to a people-oriented one. Given ASEAN’s historical proclivity to not address injustices committed by the state elite against their own people, such a rhetorical claim indicates something is changing in Southeast Asia. This book has been concerned with examining these changes in order to assess the extent to which ASEAN is on the path to becoming a security community. In so doing it has been concerned with explaining why past ASEAN practice has hindered forming a security community and promoting the notion that the security-inducing quality of a security community entails multiple interactions among the community’s members beyond the elite level. In this respect the notion of ASEAN becoming people-oriented is significant, although just how significant depends upon what ASEAN actually means by people-oriented. The community building project is still in its infancy and this study thus amounts to a snapshot of how it is progressing, and whether signs can be discerned that the Deutschian variant of a security community that ASEAN’s rhetoric encapsulates is emerging.
Why norms matter Is ASEAN building a Deutschian security community? After all, it would be churlish to critique the Association for not achieving this if it was not its goal. The simple answer is that ASEAN is building a Southeast Asian community that will reflect its own specific needs, values and interests, but the reason why we can consider it an example of Deutsch et al.’s security community is because it shares the latter’s significant features. This is in no small part because of Amitav Acharya’s work, the close relationship between the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the Indonesian foreign ministry (Katsumata 2011: 572) and, specifically, the central role Rizal Sukma enjoyed in helping to formulate Indonesia’s Deplu Paper. While ASEAN’s APSC blueprint does embrace the language of a security community – such as the renunciation of aggression and
Conclusion 153 the use of force – it is how it seeks to achieve this that resonates with Deutsch et al.’s concept. The most significant congruence is the importance of shared values, norms and identity. This is prominent in the APSC blueprint as noted in the Introduction but the ASCC blueprint also contains such Deutschian phrases as creating ‘a sense of belonging’ among the peoples of ASEAN member states (ASEAN Secretariat 2009b: para. 43). The importance of establishing a common identity was prominent at the 19th Summit held in November 2011 where ASEAN adopted the Declaration on ASEAN Unity in Cultural Diversity: Towards Strengthening ASEAN Community. This declaration recalled that the primary goal of the ASCC is to ‘achieve enduring solidarity and unity among the nations and peoples of ASEAN by forging a common identity’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2011k). It is though the prominence within the APSC of shaping and sharing norms that is particularly significant, because it indicates that community building is based on achieving a common normative outlook. Norms matter in a security community because they underpin why behaviour is predictable. More specifically, constitutive norms matter for a security community because they encapsulate the criteria for membership. It is these norms, which have become so embedded that members abide by them out of habit or practice, that make behaviour predictable because it is simply inappropriate to act otherwise. Not all norms are though constitutive, some are regulative, and thus it is important to distinguish between them. In Chapter 1 the differences between regulative and constitutive norms was explained according to their operation in security regimes, where the level of uncertainty marking state relations within an anarchic environment is reduced because they abide by norms that guide their interaction. While regimes can therefore dampen the dynamics of a security dilemma, because it is the logic of consequence that explains state norm abidance they do not establish the degree of predictability in behaviour that a security community can, where it is the logic of appropriateness that guides (consciously or unconsciously) behaviour. In Chapter 3 Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm life cycle is noted as explaining how norms that are initially regulative in nature can become constitutive and this helps to clarify how security regimes, which are indistinguishable from Adler and Barnett’s nascent security community, can be first steps towards forming a security community. This though is dependent upon the types of norms, and as indicated in Chapter 2 those that have come to constitute what it means to be an ASEAN member have hindered the development of a community. Dependable expectations of how states will act and react to others in the community are not in themselves indicators of why security communities are peaceful. Here the designator ‘community’ is of significance. The three characteristics Adler and Barnett identify – shared identity, frequent interaction, obligation and responsibility – reveal that at the heart of a community is a sense of loyalty toward each other that can be expressed in the acceptance of a common destiny because members’ fates are intertwined. Security and prosperity are thus conceived as common or mutual to be achieved together and not at each other’s expense. In Chapter 1 it was noted, however, that not just any common identity
154 Conclusion is sufficient since violent criminal gangs have a common identity. Although the preference in the literature for liberalism as the explanation for why the common identity is peaceful has diminished, by containing values such as tolerance and respect it is actually well suited to explaining the peacefulness of member interaction within a security community. Nevertheless, the security community literature has instead focused on the practice of self-restraint. The problem with self-restraint is that it leads us away from the importance of calling a security community a community. Self-restraint, since it tells us nothing about obligation and responsibility towards others because they share an identity based on common values, could just as easily reveal indifference. Indifference towards others is the antithesis of a community. It is also worth noting that self-restraint is present in a regime, which by its nature is not a community. The peacefulness of a security community can be better understood as a product of pluralism. The values of liberalism are important but equally so are the multiplicity of interactions by a variety of elites representing different aspects of society, from commercial enterprises that provide a material connection to welfare organisations that indicate mutual sympathies. It is these that establish the collective sense of ‘us’. Charles Kupchan explicitly captures this when he writes the, ‘pluralism inherent in liberal democracy facilitates … ideational convergence’, and it does this by enabling the exchange of ideas among elites ‘across national boundaries, providing a ready vehicle for cooperation and flows of information. In contrast’, he writes, ‘authoritarian rule often inhibits pluralism and makes ideational convergence more fragile, generally limiting partnerships among non-democratic states to temporary marriages of convenience’ (2010: 58). ASEAN, as a security regime, is more than a marriage of convenience but it is not a coincidence that ASEAN’s embrace of community rhetoric occurred after the liberalisation of its primus inter pares. When conceiving of peacefulness in terms of the avoidance of war then the significance of pluralism can be appreciated in Hans Mouritzen’s claim that the ‘genesis and maintenance of a security community are due to the fact that top decisionmakers find themselves deprived of the option of mutual war. They are simply locked by the opinions of their publics and by the transnational affiliations between them… However, transnational relations can only exist where both (or all) societies are reasonably pluralist and consequently have civil societies’ (2003: 331). The prioritising of pluralism, as indicating multiple interactions across national boundaries by a variety of elites, also restores the importance of non-state elites in the community’s governance structure. While this could deprive state leaders the option of war, more significantly it also reveals the multitude of issues that cause insecurity for the people of the community. Identifying change in security communities as peaceful naturally leads us to think in terms of insecurity equating to violence. Certainly when Deutsch and his associates were writing the dominant concern was with nuclear war. However, the sources of insecurity for the people will be far more extensive than warfare and are captured in the multitude of threats labelled non-traditional security (Collins 2011). If we do not do this then we run the danger, as Laurie Nathan (2006) asserts, of classifying regions where insecurity
Conclusion 155 for the people is severe, but interstate warfare is inconceivable, as security communities. It is necessary therefore to conceive of peacefulness in broader terms. This can be done by interpreting peaceful change to also include overcoming what Johan Galtung designated as structural violence: the condition of peace requires not just the absence of overt violence but the absence of structural violence such as economic and social exploitation. The significance of calling a security community a community is thus apparent; its characteristics negate the egoist impulses to exploit others because one’s own security is dependent upon other community members being secure. Security is common, mutual, indivisible for community members. Once security is conceived in much broader terms then the function of non-state elite in community building becomes apparent. They are significant stakeholders because of their expertise and ability to acts as conduits for norms to diffuse across national boundaries via social learning. The Indonesian President, Yudhoyono, captured this latter aspect in his address to CSOs at the 18th ASEAN Summit in May 2011, when said: ‘Participation of CSO’s are important in building an ASEAN Community based on sound values and justice. CSO’s are not only responsible [for] highlighting issues, but also responsible for socializing good and sound values to the community’ (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology 2011). The extent to which CSOs are doing this at the regional level is not the primary focus of this study, as explained in Chapter 3, but there are signs that regional CSOs, such as the People’s Empowerment Foundation, are initiating people-to-people contacts. The expertise that CSOs have also enables them to be norm entrepreneurs; they can be the source of new norms that will come to constitute what is appropriate behaviour for community members. In the case studies this is most marked in the field of disaster management. In ASEAN’s response to Cyclone Nargis staff from non-state actors, including CSOs, played a significant role in ASEAN’s ERATs and the publication of its PONJA reports. It is also evident that the APG consortium of NGOs played a significant role in the formulation of the AADMER WP and there is the potential for them to have a monitoring function as well, which is a manifestation of the watchdog role described in Chapter 3. Indeed the APG, as with SAPA, is a good example of Meredith Weiss’ coalitional capital; this coalition of seven NGOs were able to seize the opportunity made available by ASEAN’s interest in responding to natural disasters to influence the AADMER WP. Of course whether this will amount to community building more generally is not just dependent on whether non-state actors have political space to engage state elite, but also ASEAN members’ willingness to adjust the constitutive norms already in place; as Finnemore and Sikkink attest, new norms do not appear out of thin air in an environment devoid of norms.
ASEAN’s constitutive norms and regional resilience Chapter 2 was concerned with identifying and explaining why three ASEAN constitutive norms have hindered community building. In essence regional resilience, the strengthening of the region so that it was able to control the intervention of external powers, is built on strong states with a weak regional
156 Conclusion organisation acting as a forum for dialogue amongst the political elite. It is a soft form of regionalism. Three norms are identified that underpin this soft regionalism: non-interference, consensus decision making and informality, the latter encapsulating that lack of authority at the regional level and hence capacity within the ASEAN Secretariat. Consensus decision making not only ensures that autonomy is safeguarded at the state level but also that decision making is impenetrable both from analysis and input from non-state actors. Finally, non-interference, ensuring that neighbouring involvement in domestic affairs occurs only when invited; while this has undergone adjustment vis-à-vis Burma, ASEAN’s forceful engagement was designed to support regional resilience. These constitutive norms hinder community building because while it is possible to recognise that elite interaction has led to a shared understanding of the problems they face, the response has been national solutions (with assistance from external powers) rather than regional solutions. There is a lack of Tobias Nischalke’s (2002) mutual identification and this has occurred because the form of soft regionalism has not encouraged the type of intensive interaction that Adler and Barnett foresee as establishing conduits through which social learning can lead to a ‘redefinition or reinterpretation of reality on the basis of new causal and normative knowledge’ (1998: 422). Indeed, quite the opposite. ASEAN’s constitutive norms have been designed to minimise elite exposure to pressure from neighbours and have stymied non-state elite interactions that could have created an alternative form of regionalism. It is against this backdrop that it is possible to appreciate why the change in ASEAN’s rhetoric, as it embraced the notion of a people-oriented community, could be significant. Chapter 3 revealed the extent to which this rhetorical change had sparked an interest in ASEAN from regional CSOs and whether it amounted to empowering CSOs to be active members in the evolution of ASEAN’s peopleoriented transformation. While the ASEAN Charter essentially indicated the salience of the Association’s constitutive norms the ‘unsettling period’, from Bali II through the formation of the community blueprints and the Eminent Persons Group’s report for the HLTF, revealed that norm entrepreneurs from track-III and track-II had exploited the political space created by the liberalisation of some members, notably Indonesia, to challenge these constitutive norms. This was reflected in principles enshrined in the Charter, such as adherence to the rule of law and good governance, as well as respect for fundamental freedoms and the promotion and protection of human rights. It was also manifest in the attempt to institutionalise the CSO interface at the ASEAN Heads of State summits. What became evident during this unsettling period was the division between the member states. While often described as a division between the original ASEAN-6 and the newer CMLV members,1 the debates over the Charter, and specifically the human rights body, revealed Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines (although at times only Indonesia) were competing against the CMLV members with Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei ‘floating’ between the groups depending on the specific topic. It is this division in the membership that explains the thoughts that a two-speed ASEAN exists, with the CMLV members in the
Conclusion 157 slow lane holding back the others. The frustration felt in ASEAN’s primus inter pares over the difficulties of achieving a more progressive outcome in the Charter were reflected by concerns that Indonesia might withdraw from ASEAN (Desker 2010). Although such an outcome is unlikely, at least in the near future, the voicing of such concerns is revealing because it indicates that Jakarta may increasingly no longer consider ASEAN a reflection of its own identity and herein lies the path to community disintegration. It is captured neatly in Barry Desker’s opinion that: ‘Critics such as Jusuf Wanandi and Rizal Sukma feel that ASEAN has failed to adjust to the new global environment and is stuck in an authoritarian mind-set. Such critics see Indonesia as an outlier within ASEAN…’ (2010). On the specific point about becoming people-oriented the difference among members is captured in the following comment made by Djauhari Oratmangun, the Director-General of ASEAN Cooperation in Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry, during the 19th ASEAN Summit. He said, ‘We want ASEAN to be a people-centred, people-oriented and people-driven organisation’ (Nurhayati 2011). While this reflects the Indonesian position that one of the biggest challenges for ASEAN is how to involve people in the core processes of ASEAN, it is not clear that such a view is shared by other ASEAN members. Rizal Sukma’s clarion call for a sanctions mechanism – ‘Member states must change the ASEAN Charter to include a sanctions mechanism. Then and only then will ASEAN progress. Currently it is voluntary to implement ASEAN agreements’ – is certainly not going to find favour amongst many of the other members (Nurhayati 2011). It is precisely this division within the membership that has led to thoughts that progress can be achieved in less sensitive matters. However, progress in the form of ASEAN members implementing their declarations can only be ascertained when conceived through the prism of ASEAN’s constitutive norms; in essence, in evaluating and analysing ASEAN one cannot look beyond non-interference or consensus decision making etc. Although such norms are subject to change because identity evolves, it is precisely because such alteration is usually slow that such norms underpin the community’s ‘dependable expectation’. Although ASEAN’s constitutive norms have adjusted to the prevailing world time they remain constant in their underpinning of what it means to be an ASEAN member. Informality While this norm has certainly evolved in terms of the number of official meetings held annually, the soft institutionalism that it reflects has altered only slightly; authority remains in the hands of the state elite. The Secretariat is hamstrung by its limited capacity, and while it has recently been donated an extension to its premises its staffing levels remain debilitatingly small (ASEAN Secretariat 2011g). With limited capacity the member states have precluded the Secretariat from being a source of new norms. This is starkly revealed in the workings of the AICHR where those representatives that have shown initiative, such as conducting roadshows, have done so from a sense of individual professionalism rather than as a consequence of an ASEAN directive. In the case of HIV/AIDS the Secretariat
158 Conclusion staffs’ acknowledgement that their function is one of advocacy speaks volumes for how they conceive of the relationship between the Secretariat and the member states; with no formal authority to make ASEAN decisions enforceable they are left cajoling member states to do what they say they are going to do. One way of trying to do this is setting targets for member states to achieve, and this has been done in the latest ASEAN Work Programme on HIV/AIDS (AWP IV), which commits ASEAN members, amongst other things, to reducing HIV infection via sexual transmission and transmission via injecting drugs by 50 per cent by 2015 and scaling up antiretroviral treatment, care and support to achieve 80 per cent coverage for PLHAs (ASEAN Secretariat 2011a). The failure to achieve modest goals set in previous WPs should not only dampen optimism for these being accomplished by 2015 but it also reminds us of the lack of enforcement measures contained within these ‘declarations of commitments’. It is therefore in both the establishment of a semi-separate institutional base, and the robustness of the directives in the AADMER WP, that the AHA Centre represents a potential development of this norm. Notwithstanding its faltering launch throughout 2011, because the AHA Centre is at the heart of the implementation of AADMER, it potentially has the capacity to empower the Secretariat in its monitoring and evaluating function. Only time will tell of course, but building up technical expertise and capacity in one area (disaster management) may not only create precedents for other areas of cooperation (horizontal spillover) but also galvanise closer coordination and cooperation in its own specific area (vertical spillover); functional cooperation may therefore lead to greater integration of cooperative endeavours that requires formal authority to be held at the regional level in order to supervise and oversee such developments. The evolving relationship between the AHA Centre, the Secretariat and the member states is a useful yardstick in evaluating the informality norm. Consensus decision making Ensuring that decisions require the support, or at least acquiescence, of all members ensures that authority lies firmly with the state. It does though do more than this. The informal consultation process ensures that negotiations and disagreements are kept out of the public eye and the façade of ASEAN unity can be maintained. The reasoning is that a united ASEAN is better able to resist interference from external powers; regional resilience breeds national resilience. The privacy of ASEAN decision making is captured perfectly in the annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat; retreat from what exactly, public scrutiny? Consensus decision making establishes opaqueness to ASEAN decision making that makes it impenetrable. This is apparent with AICHR, where engagement by track-III as well as track-II CSOs has proved problematic and clarification of how it reaches decisions, such as its opinion on the human rights dimension of compulsory testing of migrants for HIV, is at best obscure. The significance of consensus decision making became apparent when Indonesia and the Philippines pushed for a commitment to a human rights body in the Charter. However unpalatable a human rights body was to some
Conclusion 159 of the membership, and testimonies from representatives of the HLTF indicate it was very unwelcome, it was nevertheless more preferable than diluting consensus decision making. Consensus decision making also makes the involvement of non-state actors in ASEAN’s decision-making apparatus problematic. It will be recalled that for many CSOs the rhetoric of people-oriented, and in 2011 Indonesia sought to rephrase this as people-centred, is to place people at the centre of ASEAN’s security community; they have a sense of belonging to the community because they are active participants in its creation. This means more than being either just consulted or co-opted as tools to implement the decisions of state elite. It means being partners in the decision-making process. Indonesian President, Yudhoyono, sums it up when he says: ‘In todays era the saying “government knows best” and “government knows it all” is over, CSO need to provide feedback for policy makers and become front liners in an act to find solutions for the community’ (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology 2011). It is an attitude that the then-Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, concurred with when commenting on Thailand’s participatory approach with CSOs on Thai health matters (ASEAN Secretariat 2011j). In this sense the involvement of NGOs representing PLHA on ATFOA is a step in the right direction since it gives a non-state actor involvement in an ASEAN body, albeit one limited to its open sessions. The role the APG envisages in ASEAN’s disaster management on the other hand is much more extensive and comprehensive. Whether its more radical proposals, such as a governance role, come to fruition is one yardstick to judge this norm’s endurance but it is also germane to note the APG’s extensive involvement in the drafting and implementing of the AADMER WP. The more participatory the approach the more transparent decision making will become and the more visible obstinate members will appear. Once the façade of unity is exposed consensus decision making will be seen by the people as a constraint holding back progress. Non-interference Of all the constitutive norms this is the best known but not always best understood. That it remains prominent is reinforced with its confirmation at the 19th ASEAN Summit in the Bali Declaration on ASEAN Community in a Global Community of Nations, which is also known as ‘Bali Concord III’ (ASEAN Secretariat 2011l), it appears, somewhat incongruously, in AICHR’s ToR and, of course, in the ASEAN Charter. It is worth recalling that non-interference, just as with the other constitutive norms, is designed to be a support mechanism for the member states in their continuing nation and state building projects. It does not mean that they never intervene but rather they do so when invited by other members. The purpose of non-interference is to curtail external criticism of domestic policies because the fear is that they might undermine the regime and/or government thus weakening national resilience and, in so doing, leave the region vulnerable to outside power interference. It is not difficult to appreciate the significance of wanting to minimise, or at least manage, external power involvement in Southeast
160 Conclusion Asia given these states’ colonial experience and the region hosting one of the Cold War confrontations between the USA and USSR. The Burmese experience reveals that ASEAN members will adjust a constitutive norm in order for it to accomplish its primary objective: enhance regional resilience in order to deflect external criticism of member states. With the Burmese junta’s poor human rights record, epitomised most blatantly with its suppression of monks during the Saffron Revolution, attracting international criticism of not only Burma but ASEAN as a whole, the membership adjusted non-interference. This adjustment entailed publicly rebuking the junta and encouraging it to engage with the opposition to promote national reconciliation. The cajoling of a member state, especially such a recalcitrant one, can entail blunt language. This was not only evident in the warning issued to the junta in November 2007, which is noted in Chapter 2, that it would now be on its own in its dealings with the UN and the international community, but also in ASEAN’s ‘options’ it presented the junta at the Special ASEAN Ministerial Meeting held in Singapore on 19 May 2008 in response to Cyclone Nargis. This is not though an abandonment of non-interference because the goal was to create, at a minimum, a political veneer of respectability and thus lessen external criticism.2 Once the junta did proceed towards the semblance of political change, ASEAN supported its member. This was evident in its refusal to condemn the 2010 election as a sham and its subsequent support for the civilian government culminating in the 2011 decision to support Burma’s chairmanship of ASEAN in 2014.
Conclusion The problem with non-interference, as indeed it is with the other constitutive norms, is that it underpins the establishment of a strong region based on strong states. This in itself does not preclude creating a community, indeed prosperous, secure states is what a security community should enable, but it does preclude it if it negates the notion that their security and prosperity is inextricably tied. Among the ASEAN states this is reflected in their preference to look for bilateral agreements with external states to enhance their security and prosperity. What these constitutive norms reveal is the form that regionalism has taken in Southeast Asia has hindered community building because it is about the state and not an integrative process that community building entails. A region imbued with resilience can though emerge from strong states that establish a governance mechanism to integrate or harmonise their activities in response to a host of transnational problems that threaten their security and prosperity. This though requires authority at the regional level to monitor and evaluate state compliance with a view to criticise members where they fail to meet their obligations – informality, consensus decision making and non-interference hinder, they do not encourage such a development. Yet it is precisely this process of integration that generates the sense of belonging and we-feeling that in turn creates a community. The building blocks for a holistic security community that embraces a comprehensive approach to security and entails drawing upon the expertise of
Conclusion 161 state and non-state actors exists in ASEAN declarations. The importance of sharing norms and establishing a common identity to harmonise activities in the pursuit of security gives this project a distinctively Deutschian feel. For Mely Caballero-Anthony, ‘it is clear that the APSC goes beyond its aspirations as a security initiative with functional utility, decidedly constituting a political project that is trying to shape a regional community – and perhaps eventually, identity – in Southeast Asia’ (2012: 36). The challenge ahead is to determine how far ASEAN’s aspirational commitments are realisable. There are two factors to consider. The first is that ASEAN has always been good on rhetoric because it serves a political purpose. Mimicry is a tried and tested ASEAN response to changing international norms so that ASEAN members appear to be acting in line with what constitutes current standards of international behaviour. Safe in the knowledge that ASEAN’s constitutive norms place authority at the national level, ASEAN members could embrace global normative change in ASEAN declarations, thus minimising external scrutiny of and potential interference in member state actions, knowing full well they would not need to be acted upon. This can be seen in ASEAN’s visible ‘embrace’ of human rights as an ASEAN topic in 1992 and its effective shelving of it subsequently; even in more recent times its manifestation – AICHR – falls pitifully short of an effective human rights body. The discourse of community, the embrace of non-state civil society actors and the recognition of non-traditional security threats, such as health pandemics and natural disasters, may therefore be designed to reflect global impulses with little prospect of anything meaningful emerging. The resistance to institutionalising a CSO interface at the Heads of State Summits and the general frustration felt by CSOs over their limited ability to engage with the creation of the ASEAN Charter and AICHR’s ToR, and the prevalence of ASEAN’s constitutive norms within these, gives weight to this reading of developments. If this is accurate then the involvement of norm entrepreneurs, within and without Southeast Asia, in the drafting of the Blueprints, the Charter’s formation, the process leading to AICHR’s creation, the writing of the HIV/AIDS and disaster management programmes, were welcome and aided by the membership because it helped portray ASEAN as a region in tune with the current global norms. If this does reflect the members’ intentions – Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink’s ‘instrumental adaptation’ – then the people of Southeast Asia are no nearer to living in a security community. A more accurate reading would though reflect the diverse nature of the ASEAN membership, and thus while this may reflect some members’ interpretation of ASEAN’s embrace of community rhetoric it may not do so for all. This reveals the second factor: for the more liberal members the embrace of such rhetoric is designed to be implemented and take cooperation on political and security matters to a ‘higher plane’. The second factor is therefore the notion of a two-speed ASEAN. Indonesia’s appropriation of the 2011 Chairmanship ahead of its scheduled time may reflect Jakarta’s disappointment with ASEAN’s slow progress in its implementation of the community blueprints. The domestic distractions that bedevilled Thailand during its eighteen-month Chairmanship, followed by a conservative Vietnamese Chair, may help explain Jakarta’s stated
162 Conclusion objective of ensuring progress in the implementation of the blueprints as one of its three aims for 2011. While the division of the membership into the old and new CMLV members is commonplace the dividing lines become blurred depending upon the issue. As functional areas of cooperation develop the divisions within the membership may become much more fluid. When discussing normative change, Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink propose that a cascade can occur when a tipping point is reached, and this tipping point occurs when approximately one third of the total membership adopts the norm. In the case of ASEAN this would be three to four members. At times Indonesia has appeared isolated in its desire to implement ASEAN directives, and this helps to explain the fear noted above that Jakarta might leave ASEAN. However, if Thailand’s domestic politics can enjoy a period of stability, if Burma’s civilian government’s incipient reforms are genuine, if Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino III’s liberal administration in Manila can prosper, then Indonesia may have the support it needs to change ASEAN’s constitutive norms, thus enabling the transformation of ASEAN as described in its people-oriented documentation. That is a lot of ‘ifs’, but what we do know is that because of its people-oriented rhetoric CSOs and other non-state actors are ready to be active agents in helping ASEAN create a Deutschian security community for the people of Southeast Asia.
Notes
1 Dependable expectations of peaceful change 1 For further discussion about mitigating and transcending the security dilemma see Booth and Wheeler 2008. 2 Diffuse reciprocity captures the willingness in a security regime to accept short-term losses for long-term gains on the understanding that others will not take advantage in the short-term and the roles will be reversed. 3 Wendt’s preference for degree rather than stages is useful since it indicates that while norm internalisation/socialisation can be long process it could also be quick depending upon the context or environment in which the learning process occurs. Wendt likens a quick internalisation to third degree burns. 4 Pouliot, while recognising the synergies of the logic of appropriateness and the logic of practice (2008: 277), and recognising that when a norm becomes internalised the motivation for action shifts, would nevertheless argue that the initial external origins of the taken-for-granted knowledge negates his logic of practice because at some point a conscious decision was taken to adopt the norm (2008: 264). Learning in the logic of practicality is tacit but while this negates an explicit mode of teaching/ learning, it does not negate an external origin for the norm – as his apprenticeship example reveals (2008: 272) – so knowledge (although not recognised as such) is still transmitted from one actor to another through engagement. 5 If an actor knew that the other could not defect then they need not trust them. Trust is built on uncertainty; Adler and Barnett write, ‘trust can best be understood as believing despite uncertainty’ (1998: 46). 6 The leadership and the challengers are likely to engage in a discourse of treachery. For the leadership it is a form of treason while for the challengers the leaderships’ failure to act in accordance to established principles is a betrayal. 7 Alexander Wendt had earlier made a connection between self-restraint and security communities but it was used by Wendt as a permissive, but not sufficient, cause of identity formation. His use of self-restraint is thus different (1999: 357–363). 8 Adler prefers to call the constraining effect of self-restraint a disposition rather than habit. He writes, ‘self-restraint is not (only) a political choice for the moment, nor is it just a habit – even though it might start out like that – it is a disposition’ (2008: 205). It is not entirely clear why this distinction is made. While Adler implies habits cannot be learned (2008: 198) elsewhere he writes ‘People learn … new habits slowly, as background conditions change’ (2005: 215). Since a habit is a settled or regular tendency or practice, and a disposition is a natural tendency or inclination, they are treated here as equally indicative of an embedded, taken-for-granted, constitutive norm.
164 Notes 2 ASEAN’s constitutive norms 1 The official ASEAN history portrays it in the following terms: ‘in early August 1967, the five Foreign Ministers spent four days in the relative isolation of a beach resort in Bang Saen, a coastal town less than a hundred kilometers southeast of Bangkok. There they negotiated … in a decidedly informal manner which they would later delight in describing as “sports-shirt diplomacy.” Yet it was by no means an easy process: each man brought into the deliberations a historical and political perspective that had no resemblance to that of any of the others. But with goodwill and good humor, as often as they huddled at the negotiating table, they finessed their way through their differences as they lined up their shots on the golf course and traded wisecracks on one another’s game, a style of deliberation which would eventually become the ASEAN ministerial tradition’ (ASEAN Secretariat 1997). 2 Support for the incumbent DK regime included thwarting a Vietnamese challenge at the UN to the credentials of the DK. Reaffirming their recognition of the DK regime, and because Western powers would not directly support the ousted Khmer Rouge regime, ASEAN backed a coalition of Cambodian resistance factions – the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) – to replace the Vietnamese installed regime. 3 Singapore initially abstained but subsequently endorsed the incorporation of East Timor by Indonesia (Leifer 1990: 42). 4 Alternative ideas were mooted such as informal meetings held in Jakarta or an equivalent to the Korean Six-Party Talks, but these were sounded out precisely because ASEAN was unable to reach an agreed position of how to encourage change in Burma. 5 For details of strained Singaporean–Malaysian relations see Acharya 2009: 151–154 and Collins 2003: 106–107; and for Singapore’s defence strategy, Huxley 2000. 6 There is an exception: the Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia (AsiaDHRRA), which is a NGO involved in advocacy on behalf of rural communities that gained accreditation in April 2004 (Ramirez 2008: 4). 3 Norm entrepreneurs, community plans of action and the ASEAN Charter 1 ASEANCats is an e-group that was created in January 2010; it is a social movement building initiative with the aim of sharing knowledge and discussing the latest developments and issues related to the regional community integration of ASEAN. 2 They met in Jakarta in February 2004, in early March the ASEAN Foreign Ministers met at a special retreat in Vietnam and senior officials met again in early May in Jakarta, mid-May in Jogjakarta and early June in Jakarta. They also met on the margins of the ASEAN–Russia and ASEAN–China bilateral meetings in May and June respectively (Acharya 2009: 265). 3 SAPA is also a member of an international network called the People’s Agenda for Alternative Regionalisms, which includes the equivalent of SAPA from Latin America, Southern Africa, South Asia and Europe. 4 The Secretary-General agreed to bring the chairman’s statement from the SIIA conference to the attention of the ASEAN Summit. 5 The biographies of those on the EPG is available from http://www.aseansec.org/ACPBio-EPG.pdf. 6 Although Thailand had been a promoter of normative change, this period (2006–2007) coincided with Thailand’s brief period of military rule following the coup against Thaksin Shinawatra and consequently Thailand was reluctant to speak out (Dosch 2008: 536).
Notes 165 4 Human rights 1 For example see KIARA 2011. 2 The NHRIs are: the Indonesian Human Rights National Commission (Komnas HAM); the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM); Commission of Human Rights of the Philippines (CHRP); the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Thailand; and the latest member is the Timor Leste Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights and Justice. 3 The decision to create a HLP was taken at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat in Singapore on 20 February 2008. 4 Thailand also appointed an alternate member: Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, an academic expert on human rights. 5 At this time the SEANF was operating under the name ASEAN NHRI Forum. 6 Sometimes, such as after the second meeting from 28 June to 2 July in Da Nang, Vietnam, even a press release is not issued. 7 Vietnam’s first commissioner was Do Ngoc Son and he remains on the AICHR website as Vietnam’s Representative but he has been replaced by Nguyen Duy Hung, also from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (US–ASEAN 2010). 5 HIV/AIDS 1 PEPFAR was launched in 2003 with a pledge of US$15 billion to fight AIDS over five years. In 2008 it was renewed until 2013 with a budget of US$48 billion. 2 The original sponsors were: the World Health Organization (WHO); United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); World Bank; United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The other five sponsors that have joined since are: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); World Food Programme (WFP); United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). 3 Donors include governments, private sector, social enterprises, philanthropic foundations and individuals. 4 The official name for AWP I is the ASEAN Regional Programme on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control (1995–2000). 5 The Seven Sister NGOs are: Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (APN+), AIDS Society of Asia Pacific (ASAP), Asian Harm Reduction Network (AHRN), Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW), Asia Pacific Network of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender, Asia Pacific Rainbow (APR), Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility (CARAM Asia) and the Asia Pacific Council of AIDS Service Organizations (APCASO). 6 ATFOA directly reports to the Senior Officials Meeting of Health and Development (SOMHD). 7 In addition to Southeast Asian countries JUNIMA also covers the southern provinces of China (Guangxi and Yunnan). 8 The recommendations from these workshops are colloquially known as the Bangkok Recommendations (David Patterson 2007: 18). 6 Disaster management 1 These are: (1) establishment of the ASEAN Response Action Plan; (2) refresher courses/expertise development; (3) ASEAN Disaster Information Sharing and Communication Network (ASEAN DISCNet), i.e. development of ACDM website and national disaster management organisation websites, and publication of ASEAN
166 Notes
2 3 4 5 6
7
8 9 10
Disaster Management Information Network (ADMIN) newsletter; (4) partnerships with relevant organisations and NGOs, and mobilising financial support and resources; and (5) ASEAN Day for Disaster Management, and enhancing disaster management public education and awareness programmes. This coincides with the International Day for Disaster Reduction that falls on the 2nd Wednesday in October. Although the institutional priority is national and local rather than regional, the HFA does call on the establishment of ‘specialized regional collaborative centers’ (HFA 2005: para 31(d)). It is estimated that more than half of the households living in the most affected townships had lost all food stocks and 55 per cent of households had one day of food stocks or less (PONJA 2008: 7). This committee is also referred to as the Central Disaster Prevention and Rescue Committee. Bernard Kouchner, the French Minister for Foreign and European Affairs, announced on 7 May that France was seeking to invoke the R2P at the UN; however, Chinese and Russian objections made it a non-starter. Kouchner on 10 May spoke of humanitarian aid being delivered without the junta’s permission and while the French government clarified these remarks support for forcible intervention was mooted by Britain, Germany, the USA and Australia. The referendum on the constitution was set for 10 May. The government announced on 6 May that it would postpone the referendum in those areas affected by the cyclone; in these areas the referendum would take place on 24 May. However, it proceeded with the referendum in the rest of country much to the dismay of the international community, which felt the government’s attention should be fully focused on the relief effort. The overwhelming election result on 10 May – 92.4 per cent approval – made the vote on 24 May meaningless. Also known as the Wenchuan earthquake, named after the location of the epicentre in Wenchuan County. The APG consists of: Oxfam GB; Save the Children-UK; Plan International; World Vision; Child Fund; Help Age; and Mercy Malaysia. Although in 2011 ASEAN issued a statement expressing their condolences to those suffering from the floods (ASEAN Secretariat 2011d) and a leaders statement at the 19th Summit noting the 2009 decision to use military assets to help in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (ASEAN Secretariat 2011e) the Association did little more.
7 Conclusion 1 Describing the ASEAN-6 as the original members is inaccurate since the sixth member (Brunei) joined in 1984. The division does exist though with CMLV – the post-Cold War members – often portrayed as the grouping resisting normative change. 2 Of course there were material considerations as well; Burma is a resource rich country and ASEAN members were keen to exploit these. Presenting Burma as a state on the path to national reconciliation thus countered arguments to ostracise the junta and, instead, encourage commercial engagement to assist its economic development.
Bibliography
Abdul Razak, Tan Sri Ahmad Fuzi bin (2009) ‘Facing Unfair Criticisms’, in Tommy Koh, Rosario G Manalo and Walter Woon (eds) The Making of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing), 17–26. Acharya, Amitav (1997) ‘Ideas, identity and institution-building: from the “ASEAN Way” to the “Asia-Pacific Way”?’, The Pacific Review, 10/3: 319–346. Acharya, Amitav (1999) ‘Southeast Asia’s democratic moment’, Asian Survey, 39/3, 418–432. Acharya, Amitav (2001) Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (London: Routledge). Acharya, Amitav (2004a) ‘How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism’, International Organization, 58 (spring): 239–275. Acharya, Amitav (2004b) ‘What is a Community?’ in Towards Realizing an ASEAN Community: A Brief Report on the ASEAN Community Roundtable (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), 27–35. Acharya, Amitav (2005) ‘Do norms and identity matter: community and power in Southeast Asia’s regional order’, The Pacific Review, 18/1: 95–118. Acharya, Amitav (2009) Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order, 2nd edition (London: Routledge). Acharya, Amitav and Richard Stubbs (2009) Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations: Emerging Debates (London: Routledge). Adler, Emanuel (1997) ‘Imagined (security) communities: cognitive regions in international relations’, Millennium, 26/2, 249–277. Adler, Emanuel (2005) Communitarian International Relations: The Epistemic Foundations of International Relations (London: Routledge). Adler, Emanuel (2008) ‘The spread of security communities: communities of practice, self-restraint, and NATO’s post-cold war transformation’, European Journal of International Relations, 14/2, 195–230. Adler, Emanuel and Michael Barnett (1998) Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Adler, Emanuel and Patricia Greve (2009) ‘When security community meets balance of power: overlapping regional mechanisms of security governance’, Review of International Studies, 35/February, 59–84. AFP (2010) ‘Malaysia abuses signal return to “Mahathir era”: watchdog’, Agence France Presse, 9 December. Alatas, Ali (2009) ‘The ASEAN Charter: towards its ratification and implementation’, in Pavin Chachavalpongpun (ed) The Road to Ratification and Implementation of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), 15–23.
168 Bibliography Amnesty International (2010) Trapped: The Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Malaysia (London: Amnesty International Publications). Ann Overland, Martha (2009) ‘HIV-positive kids shunned from Vietnam school’, Time, 24 August. Cited from: www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1918243,00.html APA (2007) ‘Report of the Chairman of the 5th ASEAN People’s Assembly to the 12th ASEAN Summit’, 13 January 2007. Cited from www.forum-asia.org/news/in_the_news/ pdfs/2007/chairman_report_5th_apa%20.pdf APG (2010) ‘The ASEAN Partnership Group (APG): civil society participation in action’, ASEAN Defense Establishments and CSO Cooperation on Non-Traditional Security (Disaster Management). Fifth Session: ‘SCHR and ASEAN partnership group’, 27–30 June 2010, Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel & Towers, Bangkok. APNSW (2011) Building Partnerships on HIV and Sex Work: Report and Recommendations From the first Asia and the Pacific Regional Consultation on HIV and Sex Work, Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW). Cited from www.nswp.org/resource/ building-partnerships-hiv-and-sex-work Areethamsirikul, Sarinna (2010) ‘The Thai political crisis and the future of ASEAN’, The Nation (Thailand), 13 June. Arukesamy, Karen and Charles Ramendran (2010) ‘Cops fire tear gas at protesters’, The Sun (Malaysia), 5th December. ASEAN Secretariat (1997) ‘The Founding of ASEAN’, accessed from www.aseansec. org/7071.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2001) ‘7th ASEAN Summit Declaration on HIV/AIDS’, 5 November, Brunei Darussalam. Available at www.aseansec.org/8582.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2002) The ASEAN Work Programme on HIV/AIDS II (2002–2005) (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). ASEAN Secretariat (2004a) ‘ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action’. Accessed from www.aseansec.org/16826.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2004b) ‘ANNEX for ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action’. Accessed from www.aseansec.org/16829.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2004c) Vientiane Action Programme. Accessed from www.aseansec. org/VAP-10th%20ASEAN%20Summit.pdf ASEAN Secretariat (2004d) ‘ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Plan of Action’. Accessed from www.aseansec.org/16833.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2004e) The ASEAN Regional Programme on Disaster Management, (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). Available at www.aseansec.org/18455.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2005a) ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response, Vientiane, 26 July. Cited from www.asean.org/17579.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2005b) Declaration on Action to Strengthen Emergency Relief, Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Prevention on the Aftermath of Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster of 26 December 2004, Special ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting on Aftermath of Earthquake and Tsunami, Jakarta, 6 January. Available at www.aseansec.org/17066.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2006a) ‘Guidelines on ASEAN’s Relations with Civil Society Organisations’. Available at www.aseansec.org/18362.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2006b) Stopping Aids, Acting Together: Strategic Framework for the Third ASEAN Work Programme on HIV and AIDS (2006–2010) (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). ASEAN Secretariat (2007a) ‘ASEAN Commitments on HIV and AIDS’, 13 January 2007, Cebu, the Philippines. Available at www.aseansec.org/19322.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2007b) ‘ASEAN Chairman Statement on Myanmar’. Available at www.aseansec.org/21057.htm
Bibliography 169 ASEAN Secretariat (2008a) The ASEAN Charter (Jakarta: The ASEAN Secretariat). ASEAN Secretariat (2008b) ‘Press Comments by the Chairman of the High Level Panel (HLP) on the Establishment of an ASEAN Human Rights Body’, Singapore, 21 July. Cited from www.aseansec.org/21782.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2008c) ‘Joint ASEAN-UN Press Release Comprehensive Assessment of Cyclone Nargis Impact Provides Clearer Picture of Relief and Recovery Needs’, Singapore 21 July. Cited from www.aseanpostnargiskm.org/events-and-news/pressstatements-release/39-ahtf-press-release/130-joint-asean-un-press-release-comprehensiveassessment-of-cyclone-nargis-impact-provides-clearer-picture-of-relief-and-recovery-needs ASEAN Secretariat (2009a) ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). ASEAN Secretariat (2009b) ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). ASEAN Secretariat (2009c) ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (Terms of Reference) (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). ASEAN Secretariat (2009d) Cha-Am Hua Hin Declaration on the Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, 23 October. Cited from www.aseansec.org/documents/ Declaration-AICHR.pdf ASEAN Secretariat (2010a) NGOs Meet, Give Recommendations on Disaster Risk Reduction for ASEAN (ASEAN Secretariat), 19 February. ASEAN Secretariat (2010b) ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response: Work Programme for 2010–2015 (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). ASEAN Secretariat (2010c) ‘Chairman’s Statement of the 17th ASEAN Summit’, Ha Noi, 28th October. Accessed from www.aseansec.org/25452.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2010d) ‘Dr Surin Engages with Civil Society Ahead of Summit’, Ha Noi, 26th October. Accessed from www.aseansec.org/25412.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2010e) ‘Press Release of the Third ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights’, Kuala Lumpur, 24 September. Cited from www.asean.org/25238.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2010f) ‘ASEAN Chairman’s Statement on the Situation in Thailand’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam, 21 May. Accessed from www.aseansec. org/24718.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2010g) ‘ASEAN Bulletin February 2010’. Available at www.asean sec.org/24276.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2011a) ‘ASEAN Community in a Global Community of Nations’, Chair’s Statement of the 18th ASEAN Summit, Jakarta, 7–8 May. ASEAN Secretariat (2011b) ‘ASEAN’s Disaster Relief Exercise More Real Than Ever with Japan’s Natural Disaster’, Jakarta, 16 March. Cited from www.asean.org/26032.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2011c) ‘ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Centre Launched’, Bali, 18 November. Cited from www.aseansec.org/26735.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2011d) ‘Statement by the Chair of ASEAN on the Floods in Southeast Asia’, 12 October. Cited from www.aseansec.org/ChairmanASEAN_FloodsinSouth eastAsia.pdf ASEAN Secretariat (2011e) ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on Cooperation in Flood Prevention, Mitigation, Relief, Recovery and Rehabilitation, 19th ASEAN Summit, Bali, 17 November. Cited from www.aseansec.org/documents/19th%20summit/Flood.pdf ASEAN Secretariat (2011f) ASEAN Declaration of Commitment: Getting to Zero New HIV Infections, Zero Discrimination, Zero AIDS-Related Deaths, 19th ASEAN Summit, Bali, Indonesia, 17 November. Available at www.aseansec.org/documents/19th%20 summit/ASEAN_Declaration_of_Commitment.pdf
170 Bibliography ASEAN Secretariat (2011g) ‘ASEAN Secretariat to Get More Space in Jakarta’, Bali, 19 November. Cited from www.aseansec.org/26738.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2011h) ‘Press Release of the Seventh Meeting of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission in Human Rights (AICHR)’, Bali, 2 December. Cited from www.aseansec.org/26752.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2011i) ‘Statement of ASEAN Task Force on AIDS (ATFOA) in the Asia Pacific Regional Consultation on Universal Access to HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support’, Bangkok, 31 March. Cited from www.aseansec.org/26122.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2011j) ‘ASEAN Governments and CSOs Set for Closer Partnership in March towards 2015’, Jakarta, 8 May. Cited from www.aseansec.org/26243.htm ASEAN Secretariat (2011k) Declaration on ASEAN Unity in Cultural Diversity: Towards Strengthening ASEAN Community, Bali, 17 November. Available at www.aseansec.org/ documents/19th%20summit/Culture.pdf ASEAN Secretariat (2011l) Bali Declaration on ASEAN Community in a Global Community of Nations, Bali, 17 November. Cited from www.aseansec.org/documents/19th%20 summit/Bali%20Concord%20III.pdf Aung Bwa (2009) ‘The Jewel in My Crown’, in Tommy Koh, Rosario G Manalo and Walter Woon (eds) The Making of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing), 27–35. Ba, Alice D. (2005) ‘On norms, rule breaking, and security communities: a constructivist response’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 5/2: 255–266. Ba, Alice D. (2009) [Re]Negotiating East and Southeast Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Baldwin, David A. (1997) ‘The concept of security’, Review of International Studies, 23, 5–26. Bangkok Post (2011) ‘Panel will start work on a rights declaration’, Bangkok Post, 24 June. Barnett, Tony and Alan Whiteside (2006) AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and Globalization, 2nd edition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Bartsch, Sonja and Lars Kohlmorgen (2007) ‘The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Global Health Governance’ in Wolfgang Hein, Sonja Bartsch and Lars Kohlmorgen (eds) Global Health Governance and the Fight Against HIV/AIDS (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 92–118. BBC (2003) ‘Burma “faces Asean expulsion”’, British Broadcasting Corporation, 20 July. Accessed from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3081557.stm BBC (2011) ‘Thai flooding: key business park Navanakorn evacuated’, British Broadcasting Corporation, 17 October. Cited from www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asiapacific-15331914 Belanger Julie, and Richard Horsey (2008) ‘Negotiating humanitarian access to cycloneaffected areas of Myanmar: a review’, Humanitarian Exchange, 41 (December), 25. Bellamy, Alex J. (2004) Security Communities and their Neighbours: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Beukel, Erik (2008) ASEAN and the ARF in East Asia’s Security Architecture: The Role of Norms and Powers, DIIS Report 2008:4, Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies. Bially Mattern, Janice (2005) Ordering International Politics: Identity, Crisis, and Representational Force (New York: Routledge). Bjola, Corneliu and Markus Kornprobst (2007) ‘Security communities and the habitus of restraint: Germany and the United States on Iraq’, Review of International Studies, 33/2 (April), 285–305.
Bibliography 171 Booth, Ken (2007) Theory of World Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Booth, Ken and Nicholas J Wheeler (2008) The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Buncombe, Andrew (2007) ‘Burma: inside the Saffron Revolution’, The Independent (UK), 27 September. Buncombe, Andrew (2009) ‘Thai military accused of “killing” refugees’, The Independent (UK), 16 January. Busse, Nicholas (1999) ‘Constructivism and Southeast Asian security’, The Pacific Review, 12/1: 39–60. Buzan, Barry (1991) People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd edition (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf). Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2004) ‘Non-state regional governance mechanism for economic security: the case of the ASEAN Peoples’ Assembly’, The Pacific Review, 17/4, 567–585. Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2005) Regional Security in Southeast Asia: Beyond the ASEAN Way (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2009) ‘Non-Traditional Security Challenges in East Asia: Pushing the Limits of Functional Cooperation in East Asia’, in See Seng Tan (ed) Collaboration Under Anarchy: Functional Regionalism and the Security of East Asia, RSIS Monograph No. 15 (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies), 35–48. Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2010) ‘Reflections on political change, democratic transitions, and regional security in Southeast Asia’, in Mely Caballero-Anthony (ed) Political Change, Democratic Transitions, and Security in Southeast Asia (London: Routledge), 138–145. Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2012) ‘Non-traditional security challenges, regional governance, and the ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC)’, in Ralf Emmers (ed) ASEAN and the Institutionalization of East Asia (London: Routledge), 27–42. Caballero-Anthony, Mely and Sofiah Jamil (2011) ‘Floods and regional disaster preparedness: too little, too late?’, RSIS Commentaries, No. 150, 17 October. Carreon, Lilian Mercado (2011) ‘Working with ASEAN on disaster risk reduction and disaster management’, Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, Issue 50 (April). Cited from www.odihpn.org/report.asp?id=3205 Case, William (2009) ‘Low-quality democracy and varied authoritarianism: elites and regimes in Southeast Asia today’, The Pacific Review, 22/3, 255–269. Chachavalpongpun, Pavin and Moe Thuzar (2009) Myanmar: Life After Nargis (Singapore: ISEAS). Chalermpalanupap, Termsak (2009) 10 Facts about ASEAN Human Rights Cooperation. Cited from www.aseansec.org/HLP-OtherDoc-1.pdf Chalmers, Malcolm (1997) ‘The debate on a regional arms register in Southeast Asia’, The Pacific Review, 10/1, 104–123. Chandra, Alexander C. and Jenina Joy Chevez (2008) ‘Civil Society Engagement with ASEAN: An Overview’, in Alexander C. Chandra and Jenina Joy Chavez (eds) Civil Society Reflections on South East Asian Regionalism: ASEAN@40 (Quezon City: South East Asia Committee for Advocacy). Checkel, Jeffrey (1999) ‘Norms, institutions, and national identity in contemporary Europe’, International Studies Quarterly, 43/1, 83–114. Checkel, Jeffrey T. (2005) ‘International institutions and socialization in Europe: introduction and framework’, International Organization, 59 (Fall), 801–826. Chongkittavorn, Kavi (2007), ‘Asean drafters meet civil society groups’, The Nation, 29 March.
172 Bibliography Chongkittavorn, Kavi (2009) ‘ASEAN plan to create interface between ASEAN and civil society organizations failing’, The Nation, 12 October. Chongkittavorn, Kavi (2010) ‘Is ASEAN biting off more than it can chew?’, The Nation, 5 April. Coates, Stephen (2008) ‘Asia’s disaster response in spotlight at security talks’, Agence France Presse, 21 July. Coker, Richard and Sandra Mounier-Jack (2006) ‘Pandemic influenza preparedness in the Asia-Pacific region’, The Lancet, 368 (2 September), 886–889. Cole, William and Erik G Jensen (2009) ‘Multilateral Institution Building in Asia and its impact on Governance and Democracy’ in Michael J. Green and Bates Gill (eds) Asia’s New Multilateralism: Cooperation, Competition, and the Search for Community (New York: Columbia University Press), 243–278. Coleman, S. James (1988) ‘Social capital in the creation of human capital’, American Journal of Sociology, 94/Supplement, S95–S120. Collins, Alan (1997) The Security Dilemma and the End of the Cold War (Edinburgh: Keele University Press). Collins, Alan (2000) The Security Dilemmas of Southeast Asia (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Collins, Alan (2003) Security and Southeast Asia: Domestic, Regional, and Global Issues (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Collins, Alan (2007) ‘Forming a security community: Lessons from ASEAN’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 7/2, 203–225. Collins, Alan (2008) ‘A people-oriented ASEAN: A door ajar or closed for civil society organizations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30/2, 313–331. Collins, Alan (2011) ‘Non-traditional security’, in Mark Beeson and Richard Stubbs (eds) Handbook of Asian Regionalism (London: Routledge), 313–324. Cox, Robert (1999) ‘Civil society at the turn of the millennium: prospects for an alternative world order’, Review of International Studies, 25/1, 3–28. Creac’h, Yves-Kim and Lilianne Fan (2008) ‘ASEAN’s role in the Cyclone Nargis response: implications, lessons and opportunities’, Humanitarian Exchange, 41 (December), 5–7. Darusman, Marzuki (2010) ‘From the chairperson’s desk’, Human Rights Herald, January. Desker, Barry (2010) ‘Is Indonesia outgrowing ASEAN?’, RSIS Commentary, No. 125/2010, 29 September. Deutsch, Karl W., Sidney A. Burrell, Robert A. Kann, Maurice Lee, Jnr, Martin Lichterman, Raymond E. Lindgren, Francis L. Loewenheim and Richard W. Van Wagenen (1957) Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organisation in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Dosch, Jörn (2008) ‘ASEAN’s reluctant liberal turn and the thorny road to democracy promotion’, The Pacific Review, 21/4, 527–545. Doyle, Michael W (1986) ‘Liberalism and world politics’, American Political Science Review, 80, 1151–1169. Doyle, Michael W (1997) Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York: W. W. Norton). Drummond, Catherine (2010) The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and the Responsibility to Protect: Development and Potential, Working Paper on ASEAN and R2P No. 1, Responsibility to Protect in Southeast Asia Program, University of Queensland, Australia. Edwards, Bob and Michael W. Foley (1998) ‘Civil society and social capital beyond Putnam’, American Behavioral Scientist, 42/1, 124–139.
Bibliography 173 Elbe, Stefan (2006) ‘Should HIV/AIDS be securitized? The ethical dilemmas of linking HIV/AIDS and security’, International Studies Quarterly, 50/1, 119–144. Eldridge, Philip (2002) ‘Emerging roles of national human rights institutions in Southeast Asia’, Pacifica Review, 14/3, 209–226. Emmers, Ralf (2010) ‘Securitization’ in Alan Collins (ed) Contemporary Security Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 136–151. EPG (2006a) ‘Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on the ASEAN Charter’, Trends in Southeast Asia Series, 8 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). EPG (2006b) ‘Report of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on the ASEAN Charter’. Available at www.aseansec.org/19247.pdf FIDH (2010a) ‘Thai authorities prevent a press conference on human rights in Vietnam’, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), 13 September, www.fidh.org/TheThai-authorities-prevent-a-press-conference FIDH (2010b) ‘Vietnam: “from ‘vision’ to facts: human rights in Vietnam under its Chairmanship of ASEAN”’, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), 13 September. www.fidh.org/IMG/article_PDF/article_a8469.pdf Finnemore, Martha and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) ‘International norm dynamics and political change’, International Organization, 52/4, 887–917. Gecker, Jocelyn (1998) ‘East Timor activists sue Malaysian police for dlrs 23 million’, Associated Press Worldstream, 9 November. GFATM (2011a) ‘Our Activities’, The Global Fund. Cited from www.theglobalfund.org/ en/activities GFATM (2011b) ‘The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis & Malaria By Laws’, Amended 2 March 2011. Cited from www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/structures/board GFATM (2011c) ‘Fighting AIDS’. Cited from www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/diseases/ hivaids/ Gonzalez-Manalo, Rosario (2009) ‘Drafting ASEAN’s Tomorrow: The Eminent Persons Group and the ASEAN Charter’, in Tommy Koh, Rosario G Manalo and Walter Woon (eds) The Making of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing), 37–46. Guilloux, Alain (2009) ‘Regional governance and disaster response’, in Nicholas Thomas (ed) Governance and Regionalism in Asia (London: Routledge), 278–300. Haacke, Jürgen (1999) ‘The concept of flexible engagement and the practice of enhanced interaction: intramural challenges to the “ASEAN way”’, The Pacific Review, 12/4, 581–611. Haacke, Jürgen (2008) ‘ASEAN and political change in Myanmar: towards a regional initiative?’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30/3, 351–378. Haas, Ernest B. (1983) ‘Words Can Hurt You; Or, Who Said What to Whom About Regimes’ in Stephen D. Krasner (ed) International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 23–59. Hammerstad, Anne (2005) ‘Domestic threats, regional solutions? The challenge of security integration in Southern Africa’, Review of International Studies, 31/1, 69–87. Harman, Sophie (2009) ‘The Causes, Contours and Consequences of the Multisectoral Response to HIV/AIDS’, in Sophie Harman and Franklyn Lisk (eds) Governance of HIV/ AIDS: Making Participation and Accountability Count (London: Routledge), 165–179. Hasenclever, Andreas, Peter Mayer and Volker Rittberger (1997) Theories of International Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hernandez, Carolina G. (2007) Institution Building through an ASEAN Charter. Available at www.kas.de/upload/auslandshomepages/singapore/Hernandez_AseanCharta.pdf
174 Bibliography Herz, John (1966) International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press). HFA (2005) Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, World Conference on Disaster Reduction, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan, 18–22 January. Available at www.unisdr.org/eng/hfa/hfa.htm Hoang Anh Tuan (1996) ‘ASEAN dispute management: implications for Vietnam and an expanded ASEAN’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 18/1, 61–80. Hong, Carolyn (2010) ‘Replay of 1998? Not quite’, The Straits Times (Singapore), 9 February. Hopf, Ted (2009) ‘The logic of habit in IR’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA’s 50th Annual Convention ‘Exploring the Past, Anticipating the Future’, New York Marriott Marquis, New York City, 15 February. Hopf, Ted (2010) ‘The logic of habit in IR theory’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Theory vs. Policy? Connecting Scholars and Practitioners, New Orleans Hilton Riverside Hotel, The Loews New Orleans Hotel, New Orleans, LA, 17 February. HRW (2010a) ‘They Own the People: The Ampatuans, State-Backed Militias, and Killings in the Southern Philippines, Human Rights Watch, 16 November. Available at www.hrw. org/en/reports/2010/11/16/they-own-people-0 HRW (2010b) ‘Cambodia: Rainsy Sentence Shatters Pretense of Democracy’, Human Rights Watch, 24 September. Available at www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/09/24/cambodiarainsy-sentence-shatters-pretense-democracy Hsien-Li, Tan (2011) ‘Persistent Engagement and Insistent Persuasion: the role of the working group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism in institutionalizing human rights in the region’, in Hitoshi Nasu and Ben Saul (ed) Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region: Towards Institution Building (London: Routledge). Human Rights Herald (2010) ‘AICHR drafts rules of procedure and five-year work plan’, Human Rights Herald, July. Huxley, Tim (2000) Defending the Lion City: The Armed Forces of Singapore (London: Allen & Unwin). IBT (2011) ‘Largest cities say climate change threatens local businesses’, International Business Times (UK), 3 June. Indonesian Representatives (2010) Outcome Document of the Expert Meeting on Effective Alignment among Human Rights Institutions and Mechanisms, convened by the Indonesian Representatives to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC) with Indonesia’s National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), Jakarta, 6–7 December. International Crisis Group (2010) Stalemate in Southern Thailand, Update Briefing No. 113, 3 November. Available from: www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-eastasia/thailand/B113%20-%20Stalemate%20in%20Southern%20Thailand.pdf International Drug Policy Consortium (2009) ‘UNAIDS Calls for UNODC to Embrace Harm Reduction’. Cited from www.idpc.net/publications/unaids-calls-for-unodc-toembrace-harm-reduction Irrawaddy (2010) ‘Asean Secretary-General hopes for free speech in election’, The Irrawaddy, 27 August. Accessed from www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=19319 Jervis, Robert (1976) Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Jervis, Robert (1978) ‘Cooperation under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, 30/1, 167–214. Jervis, Robert (1982) ‘Security regimes’, International Organization, 36/2, 357–378.
Bibliography 175 Jervis, Robert (1983) ‘Security regimes’, in Stephen D. Krasner (ed) International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 173–194. Jones, David Martin and Michael L R Smith (2002) ‘ASEAN’s imitation community’, Orbis, 46/1, 93–109. Jones, David Martin and M L R Smith (2006) ASEAN and East Asian International Relations: Regional Delusions (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). Jones, Lee (2008) ‘ASEAN’s Albatross: ASEAN’s Burma Policy, from constructive engagement to critical disengagement’, Asian Security, 4/3, 271–293. Jones, Lee (2010) ‘ASEAN’s unchanged melody? The theory and practice of “non‑interference” in Southeast Asia’, The Pacific Review, 23/4, 479–502. Kagan, Robert (2003) Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (London: Atlantic Books). Katsumata, Hiro (2011) ‘Mimetic adoption and norm diffusion: “Western” security cooperation in Southeast Asia?’, Review of International Studies, 37/2 (April), 557–576. Keck, Margaret E. and Kathryn Sikkink. (1998) Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, Cornell University Press). Keohane, Robert (1989) International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Khoo, Nicholas (2004) ‘Deconstructing the ASEAN security community: a review essay’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 4/1: 35–46. KIARA (Koalisi Rakyat untuk Keadilan Perikanan) (2011) Building People’s Sovereignty in South East Asia Region: Refuse and Oppose the Domination of Global Capitalism. Cited from www.kiara.or.id/beranda/aktifitas/item/building-people-s-sovereignty-insouth-east-asia-region-refuse-and-oppose-the-domination-of-global-capitalism Kivimäki, Timo (2001) ‘The long peace of ASEAN’, Journal of Peace Research, 38/1: 5–25. Koelble, Thomas (2003) ‘Ten years after: Robert Putnam and making democracy work in the post-colony or why mainstream political science cannot understand either democracy or culture’, Politikon, 30/2, 203–218. Koh, Tommy (2009) ‘The Negotiating Process’, in Tommy Koh, Rosario G Manalo and Walter Woon (eds) The Making of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing), 47–68. Kraft, Herman Joseph S (2006) ‘ASEAN ISIS and Human Rights Advocacy: The Colloquium on Human Rights (AICOHR), in Hadi Soesastro, Clara Joewono and Carolina G Hernandez (eds) Twenty Two Years of ASEAN ISIS: Origin, Evolution and Challenges of Track Two Diplomacy (Jakarta: Centre for Strategic and International Studies), 75–88. Krasner, Stephen D (ed) (1983) International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Kuhonta, Erik (2006) ‘Walking a tightrope: democracy versus sovereignty in ASEAN’s illiberal peace’, The Pacific Review, 19/3, 337–358. Kun, Zhai and Song Qingrun (2010) ‘Myanmar’s Cyclone Nargis and the construction of Asian Disaster Prevention System’, in Li Chenyang and Wilhelm Hofmeister (eds) Myanmar Prospect for Change (Singapore: Select Publishing), 95–107. Kupchan, Charles A (2010) How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Laitin, D. (1995) ‘The civic culture at thirty’, American Political Science Review, 89/1, 168–173. Leifer, Michael (1990) ASEAN and the Security of South-East Asia (London: Routledge).
176 Bibliography Leifer, Michael (1999) ‘The ASEAN peace process: a category mistake’, The Pacific Review, 12/1: 25–38. Leifer, Michael (2001) ‘Review of Amitav Acharya, The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia’, The Pacific Review, 14/3: 484–486. Liow, Joseph Chinyong (2005) The Politics of Indonesia–Malaysia Relations: One Kin, Two Nations (New York: RoutledgeCurzon). Macan-markar, Marwaan (2009) ‘South-East Asia: at ASEAN summit, civil society is downgraded’, Inter-Press Service, 19 October. Manea, Maria-Gabriela (2008) ‘Human rights and the interregional dialogue between Asia and Europe: ASEAN-EU relations and ASEM’, The Pacific Review, 21/3, 369–396. March, James G and Johan P Olsen (1989) Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: The Free Press). March, James G and Johan P Olsen (1998) ‘The institutional dynamics of international political orders’, International Organization, 52/4, 943–969. McCarthy, Stephen (2008) ‘Burma and ASEAN: Estranged bedfellows’, Asian Survey, 48/6, 911–935. Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (2011) ‘Leader’s Meeting with Civil Society Organization Representatives 18th ASEAN Summit, 2011: Towards a Global Community of Nations’, The 19th ASEAN Summit and Related Summits: We are One Vision, Identity and Community. Cited from www.aseansummit.org/news70leader%E2%80%99s-meeting--with-civil-society-organization-representatives-18thasean-summit,-2011-towards-a-global-community-of-nations.html Morrison, Charles E (2004) ‘Track 1/track 2 symbiosis in Asia-Pacific regionalism’, The Pacific Review, 17/4, 547–565. Mouritzen, Hans (2003) ‘Peace for the wrong reason? Towards a European security community: a rejoinder to Möller’, Security Dialogue, 34/3, 329–332. Müller, Harald (2004) ‘Arguing, bargaining and all that: communicative action, rationalist theory and the logic of appropriateness in international relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 10/3, 395–435. Nair, Deepak (2010) Do Stated Goals Matter? Regional Institutions in East Asia and the Dynamic of Unstated Goals, unpublished paper, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Nathan, Laurie (2006) ‘Domestic instability and security communities’, European Journal of International Relations, 12/2, 275–299. Nischalke, Tobias (2002) ‘Does ASEAN measure up? Post-Cold War diplomacy and the idea of regional community’, The Pacific Review, 15/1, 89–117. Nurhayati, Desy (2011) ‘ASEAN on the move’, The Jakarta Post, 17 November. Nye, Joseph S (1987) ‘Nuclear learning and US–Soviet security regimes’, International Organization, 41 (summer), 371–402. Nye, Joseph and Sean Lynn-Jones (1988) ‘International security studies: a report of a conference on the state of the field’, International Security, 12, 5–27. Oren, Ido (1995) ‘The subjectivity of the democratic peace: changing U.S. perceptions of imperial Germany’, International Security, 20, 147–184. Osman Patra, Pengiran Dato Paduka (2009) ‘Heart Labour’ in Tommy Koh, Rosario G Manalo and Walter Woon (eds) The Making of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing), 1–15. Owen, John M (1994) ‘How liberalism produces democratic peace’, International Security, 19, 87–125.
Bibliography 177 Patterson, Amy S (2007) ‘The UN and the Fight Against HIV/AIDS’, in Paul G Harris and Patricia D Siplon (eds) The Global Politics of AIDS (Boulder, CO: Lynner Rienner), 203–224. Patterson, David (2007) ‘Use of soft law to address HIV/AIDS in Southeast Asia’, HIV/AIDS Policy & Law Review, 12/2&3 (December), 18–20. PEF (2009) ‘2009 Annual Report’, People’s Empowerment Foundation. Available at www. peoplesempowerment.org/sites/peoplesempowerment.org/files/field_files/2009%20 Annual%20Report%20(PDF).pdf Peou, Sorpong (2002) ‘Realism and constructivism in Southeast Asian security studies today: a review essay’, The Pacific Review, 15/1: 119–158. Peou, Sorpong (2005) ‘Merit in security community studies’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 5/2: 267–274. PEPFARWATCH (2011a) ‘Abstinence & Fidelity’. Cited from www.pepfarwatch.org/ the_issues/abstinence_and_fidelity/ PEPFARWATCH (2011b) ‘Anti-Prostitution Pledge’. Cited from www.pepfarwatch.org/ the_issues/anti_prostitution_pledge/ Peterson, Susan (2002/3) ‘Epidemic disease and national security’, Security Studies, 12/2, 43–81. Pisani, Elizabeth (2008) The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS (London: Granta). PNPR-I (2008) Post-Nargis Periodic Review I (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). Available from www.aseansec.org/22119.pdf PNPR-III (2010) Post-Nargis Periodic Review III (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). Available from www.aseansec.org/documents/CN/TCGPeriodicReview-Report3.pdf PONJA (2008) Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). Available from www.aseansec.org/21765.pdf PONREPP (2008) Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). Available from www.aseansec.org/CN-PONREPP.pdf Pouliot, Vincent (2008) ‘The logic of practicality: a theory of practice of security communities’, International Organization, 62 (spring), 257–288. Primanita, Arientha (2010) ‘Jakarta will never be free of flooding, expert warns’, Jakarta Globe, 19 February. Putnam, Robert (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Ramage, Douglas E (1995) Politics in Indonesia: Democracy, Islam and the Ideology of Tolerance (London: Routledge). Ramirez, Marlene (2008) ‘AsiaDHRRA and ASEAN: A Case Study on the Process of Civil Society Engagement with a Regional Intergovernmental Organization’. Available at asiadhrra.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/asiadhrraaseanfim.pdf Ravenhill, John (2006) ‘Regionalism and State Capacity in East Asia’, in Ian Marsh (ed) Democratisation, Governance and Regionalism in East and Southeast Asia (London: Routledge), 177–203. Risse, Thomas (2000) ‘“Let’s argue!”: communicative action in world politics’, International Organization, 54/1, 1–39. Risse, Thomas and Kathryn Sikkink (1999) ‘The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction’, in Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink (eds) The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–38
178 Bibliography Roberts, Christopher (2010) ASEAN’s Myanmar Crisis: Challenges to the Pursuit of a Security Community (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). Rodan, Garry (2006) ‘Singapore’s founding myths vs. freedom’, Far Eastern Economic Review, October, 13–17. Ruggie, John Gerard (1998) ‘What makes the world hang together? Neo-utilitarianism and the social constructivist challenge’, International Organization, 52/4, 855–885. Russett, Bruce M (1993) Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). SAPA (2006a) ‘SAPA Letter to the EPG on the ASEAN Charter Reiterating the Key Points of its Submissions’. Accessed from www.alternative-regionalisms.org/?p=926 SAPA (2006b) ‘Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy (SAPA) Submission to the Eminent Persons Group on the ASEAN Charter’. Available at focusweb.org/solidarity-for-asianpeople-s-advocacy-sapa-submission-to-the-eminent.html?Itemid=153 SAPA (2006c) ‘Statement of the 2nd ASEAN Civil Society Conference’. Available at www.asiasapa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=43 SAPA (2007) ‘Civil Society Organisations Come Together to Criticise Failings of the ASEAN Charter’, 22 November. Accessed from www.alternative-regionalisms. org/?p=921 SAPA (2008) ‘Submission from the Second Regional Consultation on ASEAN and Human Rights to the High Level Panel on the Establishment of the ASEAN Human Rights Body’, 7 August. Cited from www.forum-asia.org/news/press_releases/pdfs/1st-CSSubmission-TOR-AHRB-2008-Sept(2).pdf SAPA (2009) ‘SAPA Task Force on ASEAN and Human Rights Submission to the High Level Panel on the establishment of an ASEAN human rights (HLP) during the HLP–Civil Society Dialogue Session during 9th HLP meeting’, 20 March. Cited from www.forumasia.org/news/press_releases/pdfs/3rd-CS-Submission-TOR-AHRB-2009-Mar.pdf SEANF (2008) ‘Position Paper of the National Human Rights Institutions of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand on Terms of Reference of the ASEAN Human Rights Body’, 11 September. Cited from www.aseannhriforum.org/attachments/015_ pospaper_tor_ahrb.pdf SEANF (2009a) ‘Position Paper on Terms of Reference of the ASEAN Human Rights Body’, submitted at the 2nd Consultation Meeting with the High Level Panel (HLP), 20 March. Cited from www.aseannhriforum.org/attachments/030_pospaper_20March09. pdf SEANF (2009b) ‘Position Paper concerning the Political Declaration on the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR)’, submitted at the 3rd Consultation Meeting with the High Level Panel (HLP), 28 August. Cited from www.aseannhriforum.org/en/home/joint-statements.html Selth, Andrew (2008) ‘Even paranoids have enemies: Cyclone Nargis and Myanmar’s fears of invasion’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30/3 (December), 379–402. Sending, Ole Jacob (2002) ‘Constitution, choice and change: problems with the “logic of appropriateness” and its use in constructivist theory’, European Journal of International Relations, 8/4, 443–470. Severino, Rodolfo C. (2006) Southeast Asia in Search of an ASEAN Community: Insights from the former ASEAN Secretary-General (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). Severino, Rodolfo C (2009) ‘The ASEAN Charter’ in Pavin Chachavalpongpun (ed) The Road to Ratification and Implementation of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), 24–31.
Bibliography 179 Shilts, Randy (2000) And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St Martin’s Press). SIM 3 (2010) Post-Nargis Social Impacts Monitoring: April 2010 (Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat). Available at: reliefweb.int/node/363148 Snyder, Glenn H (2002) ‘Mearsheimer’s world – offensive realism and the struggle for security’, International Security, 27/1, 149–173. States News Service (2011) ‘Dutch experts help Jakarta in battle against the sea’, States News Service, 6 July. Stockdill, Brett C (2003) Activism against AIDS: At the Intersections of Sexuality, Race, Gender, and Class (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Sukma, Rizal (2008) ‘To be responsible, Indonesia should not ratify ASEAN Charter’, The Jakarta Post, 22 July. Sukma, Rizal (2009) ‘The ASEAN Charter: Neither Bold nor Visionary’, in Pavin Chachavalpongpun (ed) The Road to Ratification and Implementation of the ASEAN Charter (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), 44–59. Suryodiningrat, Meidyatama (2009) ‘ASEAN 9, human rights 1’, The Jakarta Post, 24 July. Tarrow, S (1996) ‘Making social science work across space and time’, American Political Science Review, 90/2, 389–397. TFAHR (2010) Hiding Behind Its Limits: A Performance Report on the First Year of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) 2009–2010 (Bangkok: Forum-Asia). The Guardian (2010) ‘Press freedom: the Singapore grip’, Editorial, The Guardian, 17 November. The Nation (2011) ‘A paradigm shift in ASEAN’, The Nation (Thailand), 5 December. The Pacific Review (2006) ‘Theorizing Southeast Asian relations: emerging debates’, The Pacific Review 19/2. The Straits Times (1997) ‘Support for ASEAN move on Cambodia, Myanmar’, The Straits Times (Singapore), 28 July. Thomas, Ward (2001) The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Tusicisny, Andrej (2007) ‘Security communities and their values: taking masses seriously’, International Political Science Review, 28/4, 425–449. Ullman, Richard H (1983) ‘Redefining security’, International Security, 8/1, 129–153. UNAIDS (2007) The Positive Partnership Program in Thailand: Empowering People Living with HIV (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS). UNAIDS (2010) Global Report: UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS). UNAIDS (2011a) HIV in Asia and the Pacific: Getting to Zero (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS). UNAIDS (2011b) Universal Access to HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support: From Countries to Regions to the High Level Meeting on AIDS and Beyond: 2011 Road Map (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS). UNDP (2004) Building HIV Resilience along the ASEAN Highway Network (Bangkok: UNDP, ASEAN Secretariat and World Vision International). United Nations (2001) Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, 25–27 June. Cited from data.unaids.org/ publications/irc-pub03/aidsdeclaration_en.pdf United Nations General Assembly (2009) Promotion and Protection of all Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development:
180 Bibliography Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston, Human Rights Council, 29 April. Cited from www.extrajudicialexecutions. org/application/media/Philippines%20follow%20up%20April%202009.pdf UNRTF, UNDP and ASEAN (2008) HIV/AIDS and Mobility in South-East Asia: Rapid Assessment (Bangkok: UNRTF Secretariat). USAID (2001) Care for Orphans, Children Affected by HIV/AIDS and other Vulnerable Children: A Strategic Framework (Arlington, VA: Family Health International). US–ASEAN (2010) ‘Roundtable Meeting with the Representatives of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR)’, United States Mission to ASEAN, 16 November. Cited from asean.usmission.gov/pr11162010.html Valencia, Mark J (2005) ‘The proliferation security initiative: making waves in Asia’, Adelphi Paper, 376 (Abingdon: Routledge). Vietnam (2010) ‘Statement by the Chair of ASEAN on the 7th November General Elections in Myanmar’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 8 November. Accessed from www.mofa. gov.vn/en/tt_baochi/pbnfn/ns101109091505#1Kk9Ttqc0nSe also see www.aseansec. org/25580.htm Wahyuni, Sri (2011) ‘CSOs “pleased” with meeting with ASEAN leaders’, The Jakarta Post, 5 May. Wahyuningrum, Yuyun (2009) Thanks, Achievement and Way Forward, email correspondence to [email protected], 23 July. Walt, Stephen (1991) ‘The renaissance of security studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 35/2, 211–239. Weiss, Meredith L (2006) Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalition for Political Change in Malaysia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Wendt, Alexander (1999) Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wheeler, Nicholas and Ken Booth (1992) ‘The Security Dilemma’ in John Baylis and N J Rengger (eds) Dilemmas of World Politics: International Issues in a Changing World (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 29–60. Whiteside, Alan (2008) HIV/AIDS: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press). WHO (2011) Global Health Sector Strategy on HIV/AIDS 2011–2015, (Geneva: World Health Organization). Williams, Michael C (2001) ‘The discipline of the democratic peace: Kant, liberalism and the social construction of security communities’, European Journal of International Relations, 7/4, 525–553. Williams, Michael C and Keith Krause (1997) Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (London: UCL Press). Working Group (2008) ‘Proposed Elements for the Terms of Reference of an ASEAN Human Rights Body’, submitted 11 September. Cited from aseanhrmech.org/ downloads/WGsubmissiontoHLP.pdf Working Group (2009a) ‘Participants at the 8th Workshop Anticipates More Engagements With the Human Rights Body’, Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, Bangkok, 14–15 July. Cited from www.aseanhrmech.org/news/participants-anticipatesmore-engagements-with-human-rights.htm Working Group (2009b) ‘Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism Welcomes the Imminent Creation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights’, Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, Manila, 27 July. Cited from www.aseanhrmech.org/news/creation-of-asean-intergovernmental-commission.htm
Bibliography 181 Working Group (2010) ‘Principal Assistants of the AICHR Representatives Look into the European Human Rights System’, Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, 21–26 November. Cited from www.aseanhrmech.org/news/aichr-repslook-into-the-european-hr-system.htm World Bank and IMF (2006) Joint Statement from World Bank and IMF on CSO Participation in the Annual Meetings in Singapore, 7 September. Accessed from www.imf.org/external/ np/sec/pr/2006/pr06193.htm Yokohama Strategy (1994) Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World: Guidelines for Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation, World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction, Yokohama, Japan, 23–27 May. Available at www.unisdr.org/eng/about_isdr/bd-yokohama-strat-eng.htm Youde, Jeremy (2007) ‘HIV/AIDS and Democratic Legitimacy and Stability in Africa’, in Robert L Ostergard, Jr. (ed) HIV/AIDS and the Threat to National and International Security (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan), 197–222. Young, Oran R (1989) International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Zappei, Julia (2009) ‘15,000 in Malay street violence’, Sunday Mail (South Australia), 2 August.
Index
9/11 Attacks 17, 44 Acharya, A. 15, 21, 29, 31–2, 34–7, 40, 44, 47–8, 56, 60–4, 73, 85, 152 Adler, E. and Barnett, M. 2–9, 153, 156; constitutive norms 31, 34, 36, 38, 45, 47; dependable expectations of peaceful change 11–14, 17, 19, 21–2, 24–5, 27; human rights 81; norm entrepreneurs 49, 52–4, 61, 77, 79 Adler, E. and Greve, P. 11–12, 23–4, 45 ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Responses (AADMER) 134–37, 140, 151, 155, 158–9; Work Programme 2010–2015 146–50 ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASEAN-CCI) 46 ASEAN Charter 5, 6, 8–9, 32, 34, 36, 43, 46, 49, 52, 61, 67, 68–74, 76–8, 86–7, 90–3, 103–5, 147, 152, 156–57, 159, 161 ASEAN Civil Society Conference (ACSC) 66–8, 71, 74–6; see also ASEAN People’s Forum ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC) 85, 102, 103–4 ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM) 132, 140, 146, 150 ASEAN Concord II see Bali Concord II ASEAN Co-ordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) 132, 134–5, 137, 147–9, 150–1, 158 ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2, 62, 63, 68, 69
ASEAN Expert Group on Disaster Management (AEGDM) 132, 144 ASEAN Foundation 64, 73 ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) 35 ASEAN Human Rights Body 5, 72, 83, 104, 107; terms of reference 94–100; see also ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights ASEAN Human Rights Court 95 ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) 87 ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS) 46, 52, 63–71, 81, 83–4, 86, 92 ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) 80–9, 157–61; CSO engagement 90; HIV/AIDS 127; human rights mechanism 102–6; norm consolidator 100–2; Terms of Reference (ToR) 94–9 ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) 46, 62; human rights 81–2, 96, 101; disaster management 141, 144, 160 ASEAN Partnership Group (APG) 146, 149–151, 155, 159 ASEAN Peacekeeping Operation 63 ASEAN People’s Assembly (APA) 64, 66–9, 71–2, 74, 85 ASEAN People’s Forum (APF) 67, 74–6; see also ASEAN Civil Society Conference ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) 2, 161; blueprint 3, 62, 152–53; see also ASEAN Security Community (ASC) ASEAN Preferential Trading Arrangements (PTA) 35 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) 136
Index 183 ASEAN Regional Programme on Disaster Management (ARPDM) 133–34 ASEAN Secretary-General 34, 39, 42, 68, 82, 140, 143 ASEAN Security Community (ASC) 2, 8, 61–3, 68–9; Plan of Action (ASC PoA) 63–5 ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) 2, 61, 63, 68–70; blueprint 107, 153; Plan of Action (ASCC PoA) 65, 70 ASEAN Summits 32, 37, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 76, 94, 103, 120, 132, 149, 152, 153, 155, 157, 159 ASEANthink 63 ASEAN Way 31, 39, 48, 64, 70, 128 ASEAN Work Programmes (AWP): disaster management 146; HIV/ AIDS 120–28 ASEAN’s: emblem 5; motto 57 ASEAN-CSO consultative body 67 ASEAN-CSO interface 68, 74–5 ASEAN-ISIS Colloquium on Human Rights (AICOHR) 46, 83–7, 90, 105 ASEAN-ISIS network 52, 65–6, 83 Asia Foundation and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) 84 Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) 85 Asian Financial Crisis 1997–8 39, 49, 85 Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) 30 Australia 44, 149 Ba, A. 29–31 Bali Concord-II 2, 46, 48, 63, 66, 69, 77 Bangkok Declaration 31–2, 63 Bjola, C. and Kornprobst M. 22–3, 27 Brunei 72, 75, 76, 156; disaster management 140, 148, 150; HIV/ AIDS 111, 120; human rights 84, 92 Burma 8, 9, 37– 43, 48, 60, 62, 72, 74–5, 156, 160, 162; disaster management 130; HIV/AIDS 108; human rights 84, 85, 92, 93, 99, 102; see also Cyclone Nargis and Saffron Revolution Buzan, B. 12, 26 Caballero-Anthony, M. 7, 66–8, 77, 151, 161 Cambodia 37, 40, 43–4, 48, 72, 74–5, 76; disaster management 131,
150–1; HIV/AIDS 108, 112; human rights 84, 85, 93, 102 Chalmers, M. 37 Checkel, J. 11, 17 children’s rights see youth China 30, 41, 43, 125, 142 civil societies 21, 25, 27, 154 civil society organisations (CSO): ASEAN interaction 45–48; community builders 51–6; definition 3–5, 52; see also track-II and trackIII coalitional capital 8, 55, 67, 72, 77, 91–2, 98, 105, 155 Cold War 16, 22, 32, 38, 41, 43, 82, 130, 132, 160 community building 2, 4, 152–53, 155–56, 160; ASEAN’s constitutive norms 30, 33–6, 45, 47; dependable expectations of peaceful change 17, 22, 26; disaster management 151; HIV/AIDS 107; human rights 80, 90; norm entrepreneurs 49, 53, 55–6, 61, 63–6, 68, 76–8 community see security community conflict-free ASEAN 54, 63 see also war consensus decision making 3, 8, 32, 34, 62–3, 69, 72, 76–7, 156–60; disaster management 146, 149–50; HIV/ AIDS 121, 127–8; human rights 79, 87, 91, 94–6, 101, 105 constitutive norms 5–9, 15–19, 29–48; modus operandi 36; see also consensus decision making, informality and non-interference constructivist approach 15, 29 counter-terrorism see terrorism Cox, R. 52 criminal gang 20 Cyclone Nargis 130–31, 137–40, 151, 155, 160; ASEAN 140–46; PostNargis Periodic Review 144–45, 151 Declaration on ASEAN Unity in Cultural Diversity: Towards Strengthening ASEAN Community 153 democracy 37, 40–2, 53, 60, 63–4, 72, 76, 83, 85, 92, 154 dependable expectations of peaceful change 2, 7, 10, 21, 23, 25–6; security communities 11–16 Deplu paper (Departemen Luar Negri/ Department of Foreign Affairs) 62–3 Desker, B. 157
184 Index Deutsch, K. 1, 3, 8, 11, 19, 21, 25, 31, 53, 153–54 Deutschian security community 1, 152, 161–62 developmental nationalism 30 diplomacy 19, 23, 35, 74 see also Tun Razak: ‘sport shirt diplomacy’ disaster management: ASEAN cooperation 131–33; emergency response (ER) 9, 134–36, 146, 151; natural disasters 130–31 Dosch, J. 71–2, 92–3 Dunant, H. 50 East Timor 37, 47, 85; International Force for East Timor (INTERFET) 38 earthquakes 130–31, 137, 142 economic interdependence 61 Edwards, B. and Foley, M. 54 Elias, N. 22–3 Eminent Persons Group for the ASEAN Charter 67–77 Emergency Rapid Assessment Team (ERAT) 140 European Union 82, 85, 149 Finnemore, M. and Sikkink K. 8–9, 17, 50–1, 53, 57–60, 76, 80–2, 91, 153, 155, 161–2 Forum-Asia 55, 66–7, 85, 89, 99 functional cooperation 5–7, 78, 108–15, 122–3, 137, 158 Galtung, J. 155 gender inequality 76, 109–11, 115, 142 see also women’s rights Global Program on Aids (GPA) 115–16 Greater Involvement of People with AIDS (GIPA) 117–18, 121, 127–28 Hammerstad, A. 24 Hernandez, C. 69–71 High Level Panel (HLP) 9; human rights 90, 94–100, 103, 105 High Level Task Force (HLTF) 9; norm entrepreneurs 69–70, 72, 156; human rights 91–94, 98, 103, 105, 158 HIV/AIDS: ASEAN response 120–27; international norms 115–16; involvement of people with AIDS 117–118; modus operandi 127; 118–20; multi-sectorality 109–18 Hopf, T. 11, 18–19
human rights: ASEAN human rights mechanism 79, 87–8, 90, 92; ASEAN’s interest in human rights 79, 81–83; Asian values debate 82, 85; modus operandi 88, 91, 95; spiral model 9, 79–81; the Working Group 87–89; world time 9, 81–2, 86, 157 human security 3, 70, 109 imitation community 29 India 30, 138 Indonesia 2, 8, 30, 33, 37–8, 40, 44, 47, 51, 59–63, 68–9, 72–6, 152, 155– 59, 161–62; disaster management 131, 136, 137, 150; HIV/AIDS 107, 108; human rights 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105; Jakarta 34, 38, 62, 72, 73, 76, 92–3, 131, 137, 147, 157, 162 informality 3, 8, 32–4, 36, 70, 156–58, 160; disaster management 132, 135, 137, 144, 146–9; HIV/AIDS 121, 123–26, 128; human rights 79, 91, 94–5, 98, 101 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 59, 66 international norms 57, 113, 115–16, 121, 128, 134–37, 144, 146–47, 161 Internet see social networking Jakarta see Indonesia Japan 83, 130, 149 Jervis, R. 7, 12–14, 16, 23 Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS see UNAIDS Jones, D. 36, 63 Jones, L. 36, 38–9, 41 Joint United Nations Initiative on Mobility and HIV/AIDS in Southeast Asia (JUNIMA) 124–5 Kant, I. 21–2 Keohane, R. 13 Krasner, S. 13 Kuala Lumpur see Malaysia Kupchan, C. 1, 47 Laos 40, 72, 74, 76; disaster management 150; HIV/AIDS 126; human rights 84, 92–3, 102 liberalism 60–1, 71, 77, 154 logic of appropriateness 16–19, 26, 58, 153
Index 185 logic of consequence 13–14, 16–17, 22, 26, 81, 153 Malaysia 30, 33, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 59, 63, 66, 68, 72, 76, 156; disaster management 140; HIV/AIDS 107, 111, 124; human rights 82, 84–5, 88, 92, 93; Kuala Lumpur 39, 47, 66, 96 March, J. and Olsen J. 11, 13, 16–18 migrant workers 44, 76, 85, 89, 90, 102, 104, 122, 123, 124, 125, 128, 158 Millennium Development Goals 76 Minus X formula 35–6, 95 monitoring and evaluating 158; disaster management 149; HIV/AIDS 120 Mouritzen, H. 24–5, 27, 43, 47, 56, 70, 154 mufakat 35 Multi-Country AIDS Programme (MAP) 117–18 musyawarah 34–5 mutual accountability 47, 81, 122 mutual assistance 132, 140 mutual identification 39, 43–5, 48, 156 Myanmar 7, 72, 76; disaster management 139, 141, 143, 151; human rights 85, 93; see also Burma Nathan, L. 11, 25, 27, 154 nation building see state building national resilience versus regional resilience 8, 37, 41, 158–9 New Zealand 149 Nischalke, T. 43, 48, 156 non-interference 8, 29–49, 60, 63, 72, 76–8, 81, 156–60; disaster management 133–24, 141–42, 145, 148, 151; HIV/ AIDS 121–23, 125, 128; human rights 79, 81, 83, 91, 94–5, 96, 100 non-proliferation see proliferation non-state actors see civil society organisations non-traditional security threats 1, 26–8 56, 62, 65, 154, 161 norm life cycle 17, 32, 49–50, 58, 76, 153; cascade 8, 17, 19, 50, 56–8, 60, 72, 76, 77, 93, 98, 100, 105, 162; emergence 17, 49, 50, 56, 57, 76, 77; internalization 17, 18, 22, 32, 50, 58; tipping point 8, 17, 50, 56, 57, 60, 77, 93, 105, 162 norms: compliance 14, 43, 48, 52, 58, 80–1; entrepreneurs 8–9, 49–78, 83–90, 94, 103, 105, 155; key actors
(norm leaders) 50, 52, 56–8, 60, 72, 77; modus operandi 49, 52, 61, 63, 68, 76–7; see also constitutive or regulative norms North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 1, 17–18, 21–2 North Korea 14 organisational platforms 8, 50, 56–58, 61, 79, 105 Pancasila 30 see also national resilience Paris Principles 88–9, 95–7; see also human rights Patterson, A. 115–17 Patterson, D. 128 People’s Empowerment Foundation (PEF) 55, 76 people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) 109, 111, 113, 116–18, 123, 127–8, 150, 158–9; see also HIV/AIDS people-oriented: changes in ASEAN 49, 55, 65, 70–1, 75, 78; constitutive norms 45–7; disaster management 130, 136, 145, 147–9; HIV/AIDS 107, 128; human rights 79, 86, 90, 102–4; rhetoric 1–4, 8–10, 152, 156–62 Peterson, S. 108, 115 Philippines 33, 38, 40, 44, 47, 59, 60, 63, 67–8, 72, 73, 76, 156, 158; disaster management 136, 138, 140, 148, 150, 151; HIV/AIDS 108, 120; human rights 84, 85, 88, 89, 92, 93, 98, 100 Pisani, E. 110–11, 114–15, 118, 120 Pitsuwan, S. 39, 51, 60, 140, 141, 145, 151 Plans of Action 49, 52; see also Community Plans of Action pluralism 23–8, 45, 77, 154 Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) 143–4, 155 post-Cold War see Cold War Pouliot, V. 11, 17–19, 22–3 principles see norms Programme of Action see Vienna Declaration proliferation 14, 16 Putnam, R. 8, 53–4 Ravenhill, J. 33, 35 regimes: insecurity 37; institutionalised security regimes 14, 24, 26–27; security regimes 7, 12–15, 23–4, 26–7, 39, 48, 81, 153–54 regional community 30, 161
186 Index regional solutions 38–9, 43–7, 141, 156 regionalism 30–1, 35–7, 56, 59, 156, 160 regulative norms 4, 6, 13, 27, 122, 124 Risse, T. 9, 11, 80–1, 91 Roberts, C. 39–40, 62–4 Saffron Revolution 40, 139, 142, 160 security community formation 3, 8, 14–16, 21, 23, 43, 48–9, 52, 79, 81; ascendant stage 14–17, 26, 29, 44, 48–9; mature stage 2, 8, 14–17, 25–6, 36, 45–6, 48–9; nascent stage 2, 14–16, 26, 29, 26, 44, 48–9, 140, 153 security community: absence of war 11, 25, 47; collective identity 15; modus operandi 28–9; non-liberal 23–4, 28, 61; self-restraint 22–7, 154; see also dependable expectations of peaceful change and security community formation security dilemma 12–3, 48, 108, 153 Sending, O.J. 18 Shadrake, A. 59 Singapore 33, 40, 41, 44, 45, 48, 59, 62, 66, 67, 68, 72, 75–6, 152, 156, 160; disaster management 138, 140, 141, 144; HIV/AIDS 111, 120, 123; human rights 81–2, 84–5 Skinner, Q. 53 Smith, M. 29, 36, 46, 63 social capital 8, 54–55, 71 social learning 8, 155; ASEAN’s constitutive norms 31, 35–6, 38, 45, 48; dependable expectations of peaceful change 15, 21–3, 25; norm entrepreneurs 53, 55, 57, 61, 70, 77 social networking 19, 57 socio-cultural associations 47 Solidarity for Asian Planning on Advocacy (SAPA) 5, 67–78, 155; Task Force on ASEAN and Human Rights 89, 90, 94–105 South East Asia National Human Rights Institution Forum (SEANF) 89–90, 94–7, 101, 105 state building 30–1, 37–9, 159 state compliance 14, 34, 53, 57, 69, 104, 123, 149, 151, 160 state-elite 56, 58, 63 strategic partners 70, 72 structural violence 155 Sukma, R. 62–3, 72–3, 152, 157
symbolic politics 57 Taylor, C. 19 terrorism 38, 44, 63, 68, 89 see also 9/11 Thailand 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 47, 48, 55, 59–60, 68, 72, 74–6, 156, 159, 161–2; disaster management 130, 131, 136, 151; HIV/AIDS 108, 111–12, 124; human rights 83, 84, 85, 88, 92, 93, 94, 98–9, 100–3 track-II 46, 52, 58, 63, 65–6, 69–71, 73, 83, 105, 156, 158 track-III 52, 58, 65–9, 73–4, 84, 86, 90, 102–3, 156, 158 trafficking 20, 60, 63, 89, 122 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation 31, 43, 73 Tripartite Core Group (TCG) 143–45 tsunami 130–31, 136 Tun Razak: ‘sport shirt diplomacy’ 33 UNAIDS 4, 51, 108, 112, 114, 116–26 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): disaster management 143; South East Asia HIV and Development Programme (SEAHIV) 116, 124–25 United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 107, 142 United States (US) 16, 23, 27, 30, 38, 41, 44, 160; disaster management 138, 149; HIV/AIDS 110, 113–14, 117, 119 Vienna Declaration 81, 104 Vietnam 30, 37, 40, 42, 47, 60, 72, 74–6, 161; disaster management 150–51; HIV/AIDS 107, 112; human rights 84, 92, 93, 101 Walzer, M. 54 war: human rights 95, 99; norm entrepreneurs 50–1, 55; on terror 44; security community 11–12, 17, 20–1, 24–5, 27, 47–8, 154 Weiss, M. see coalitional capital Wendt, A. 17, 23–24 women’s rights 50–1, 85, 104 World Bank 56, 59, 117–19, 142–43 World Health Organisation (WHO) 4, 107, 110, 113–16, 121, 142 Yokohama strategy 133 youth: HIV/AIDS 111–12, 114, 116, 126; human rights 85, 89–90; norm entrepreneurs 74