2010-E-5
ASEAN and Human Security: Crisis-Driven Explanation
Takashi Terada
Professor, Organization for Asian Studies,
Waseda University
February 2011

Introduction
Transformations of the international structure normally influence changes in the foreign
policies of states; involving changes in normative beliefs, which fundamentally shape
the foreign policy direction. After the demise of the Cold War, representing thesubstantially relaxed ideological constraints on states’ behaviours especially in nations
belonging to the former Eastern bloc, ethnic confrontations, territorial disputes andreligious conflicts emerged, calling for more attention to the interior affairs of thesefragile states. These circumstances came to strengthen the international recognition that
not only states, but also individuals can be the subject and coverage of international law(Hoadley, 2006: 20), illustrating the individual input into the traditional thinking of
security discourse in which damage and suffering of individuals should be more
seriously acknowledged. The United Nations (UN) took a key role in socialising thehuman security concept as the UN Development Programme (UNDP) published the
Human Development Report in 1994. The UN was initially established to deal withproblems arising from both human and national security, but the Cold War contributed
to the Security Council dominating the UN politics and administration, and driving the
focus more on national security agendas, marginalising the role of other significant
organs such as the Economic and Social Council. The UNDP report, which proposed six
major agendas, including the establishment of a Global Human Security Fund for theinaugural organisation of the World Summit for Social Development the following year,
may have represented the growing international acknowledgement of the need forcorrecting this imbalance on security discourse by paying more attention to humansecurity issues.
Insecurity perceived by human beings normally transcends national borders throughtrans-national criminal networks or refugees, so collective preventive actions byregional countries which tend to share those sources of human insecurity as grave
threats can be more effective and practical than actions taken individually. It is thus nowonder that major regional institutions such as the EU have promoted human security
cooperation, and Glasius and Kaldor (2006: 7) highlight the following cases as
belonging to the human security category: genocide, large-scale torture, inhumane anddegrading treatment, disappearances, slavery, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), another regional body which has
sought to achieve a regional community, is not an exception, as the 2004 Vientiane
Action Plan (VAP) prioritised the institutional coordination among relevant ASEAN
bodies to promote cooperation on non-traditional security issues including
1

trans-national crimes; those issues are now seen as important policy ingredients in theformation of the ASEAN Security Community. Ong Keng Yong, (2007), then ASEAN
Secretary-General, highlighted the significant areas that human security concerned in
the case of Southeast Asia and they included: 1) Avian Flu, 2) HIV/AIDS and othercommunicable diseases such as malaria, 3) haze and other trans-boundary
environmental degradation, 4) narcotic drugs, 5) natural disasters and 6) friction andconflicts arising from migrant workers. It is now clear that the EU and ASEAN display
different priorities and different approaches in terms of promoting human security;
ASEAN’s approaches omit issues related to protection of human rights, on which the
EU places more significant weight. Canada is well known for keenly promoting thiscategory of human security by pushing the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) approach
which intends to legitimize humanitarian intervention by outsiders to deal with genocide,ethnic cleansing or war crimes. Why do these distinctive categories of and approaches
to human security emerge? Does ASEAN have no intention or power to promote
R2P-related agendas in Southeast Asia, indicating that ASEAN’s human security
interests are selective? This paper examines the difficulties of introducing R2P as ahuman security approach to ASEAN by elucidating the process in which ASEAN has
been striving to introducing human security norms through key critical events such as
the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, the 1999 East Timor independence and the 2008
Cyclone Nargis. This paper concludes although ASEAN’s non-intervention principle isa major factor behind ASEAN’s difficulty in accepting R2P as a security norm, even the
UN has been struggling with the implementation of R2P.
Rise of human security
The concept of human security emerged as a novel framework of emphasizing thesignificance of individual security, but human security tends to encompass a wide rangeof fields related to providing security to human beings and there is no definite
clarification, causing a variety of approaches to be supported and employed by different
nations and regional organisations. Yet, the UNDP Report (1994: 3) presented two maincategories of human security: “freedom from fear” that includes violent threats to its
people and “freedom from want” that include a broader concept of individual freedom
and well-being, and the report (1994: 229) identifies four main features of the conceptof human security: 1) it is a universal concern, relevant to people everywhere because
the threats are common to all; 2) its components are interdependent since the threats tohuman security do not stay within national borders; 3) it is easier to achieve throughearly rather than later intervention; and 4) it is people-centred in that it is concerned2with how people “live and breathe” in society. The UNDP report (1994: 230) thenargues that the concept needs to shift from concentrating on achieving security throughweapons to concentrating on achieving security through sustainable humandevelopment.
The United Nations has strove to identify the policy steps with a view to promoting
human security. For instance it adopted eight “Millennium Development Goals”, with atarget date for achievement of 2015 at the United Nation’s Millennium Summit in 2000.
The specific policy goals included eradicating hunger, protection of the environment,sustainable development and education. The UN then published the 2003 “Human
Security Now” report drafted by Commission on Human Security, which highlighted ten
issues that can be basically categorized into two components of protection andempowerment of vulnerable people to promote human security. The UN’s contribution
in terms of the socialization of human security is not only to stress the need to focus
more on individuals as subjects of protection, but also to identify and refine arrays of
threats to human beings well beyond the traditional coverage of national security
approaches that include economic, health or environmental areas.
The human security’s refinement and conceptualisation process resulted in the
broadening of agendas, meaning that the human security approaches and scopes became
diversified, depending on foreign policy priorities and national interests of states. While
Japan has tended to support ‘human development’, which aims to eliminate poverty,
improve the health and enhance living standards, Canada has keenly promoted theconcept and the R2P approach intended to legitimise humanitarian intervention byoutsiders to deal with genocide, ethnic cleansing or war crimes in a fragile country. As
the 1994 Human Development Report (UNDP, 1994: 32) declares, the ability of people
to live in a society that honours basic human rights is one of the most important aspectsof human security, and R2P is supported by the participants in the Human Security
Network (HSN) established in 1999 by Canada. The ‘intervention dilemma’ refers towhen humanitarian intervention is controversial, for instance when the UN decides onhumanitarian intervention too early or too late, specifically on conflicts in Rwanda,
Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia (ICISS, 2001: 1). With regard to this, the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) launched an influential
expression with principles and processes for using coercive measure to protect
endangered people. The concept is based on an assumption that sovereign states have a
responsibility to protect their own people. It also indicates that a state is considered to3have failed to protect its people if they suffer from war, repression and state failure thatthe government is unwilling or unable to restrain (ICISS, 2001: XI). The concept has arhetoric that gives international community a right to interfere in a state without its
request or rejection for the sake of human protection.
So, it is clear that the different approaches have different priorities for different agendas
in the human security debate among even enthusiastic supporters of human security.
Thus, as Paris (2001: 88) contested, just like the case of sustainable development,
everyone supports human security, “but few people have a clear idea of what it means”
due to its substantially expansive coverage and vague definition, “which provides
policymakers with little guidance in the prioritization of competing policy goals andacademics little sense of what, exactly, is to be studied.” Sadako Ogata, then the Chieffor the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also admitted the conceptualvagueness: human security “can mean all and nothing; it is as elusive as it is appealing… almost any matter concerning people’s lives can fall within the scope of humansecurity, rendering it conceptually vague and of little practical use” (cited in Edström,
2009: 28). In sum, the introduction of human security functioned as a wake-up call forworld leaders, especially in well-developed nations, who had tended to see the security
paradigm too much from military and state-to-state conflicts; a conventional way of
thinking during the Cold War era.
In addition to the ambiguity and too broad coverage, human security is promoted
mainly by economically developed or politically stable nations, regardless of thedifferent priorities the freedoms from ‘want’ and ‘fear’ place. First, while national
security is primarily concerned with a nation-state’s own defence and safety, humansecurity denotes the provision of security for another state whose government cannot
take care of the protection of its own citizens’ lives. In other words, developed nations,which have found it natural to consider and provide human security for their own
citizens, tend to hope to transmit human security to these fragile nations. Secondly,
human security is seen as secondary or irrelevant in states or regions where the security
environments are not so stable and its safety is at high risk. For instance, most of thestates in North and Southeast Asia tend to see human security agendas ascomplementary, at best, to national security. If a nation who principally sees the use offorce as a means to settling the territorial disputes or existing political tensions, theneighbours would be forced to prepare for the situation in which they would be targeted
for attack. This is true with the case of North Korea in Northeast Asia. Thus, even Japan,4

a promoter of the freedom of ‘want’ type of human security, considers national security
as a “precondition” or “prerequisite” for promoting human security, as Yukio Sato,
former Japanese Ambassador to the UN, declared (cited in Edström, 2009: 48). In
Southeast Asia where, according to Acharya (2001a: 62), many of the “intra-ASEAN
bilateral security agreements were geared to managing border security problems” fordecades, a state-centric approach to security policy has been encroached in Southeast
Asia. Yet, Southeast Asia is not blind to human security, as detailed later. Although theterm ‘human security’ was not explicitly used in the ASEAN Charter, for instance,
consideration about issues related to human security was insinuated in the Charter; itasserts that to “place the well-being, livelihood and welfare of the peoples at the centreof the ASEAN community building process” and the adherence to “respect for andprotection of human rights and fundamental freedoms” (ASEAN Secretariat, 2008a). A
point here is whether the orientation of human security is deeply embedded within
ASEAN’s norm through implementing collective actions to save the people whose lives
are put under the threat.
ASEAN and the introduction of human security
A crisis occasionally creates a major incentive for promoting regional or international
collaboration and cooperation to tackle the crisis-led problems, especially after older
beliefs, regimes and systems are judged inappropriate. Economic security emerged as a
key concept to pursue both human security and national security in ASEAN after themembers economies underwent the Asian financial crisis in 1997-8 that caused serious
human suffering such as the increased unemployment rates and the lower wages whichcame to question the conventional belief of enhancing national security througheconomic growth. As the 1994 Human Development report highlights, economic
problems such as unemployment are one of the main factors underlying politicaltensions and ethnic violence in many countries, and ASEAN was urged by the crisis toenhance economic cooperation, especially concerning economic security; an approachthat aims to provide more opportunities to the poor in underdeveloped countries in theregion. As the 2003 Human Security Now report suggests, more efforts are needed toprovide economic opportunity to poor and for that reason developing countries in theblock where economic difficulties makes people’s lives miserable. For instance, Surin
Pitsuwan, current ASEAN Secretary-General and then Thai foreign minister, pushed forthe concept of a social safety net, modeled after the developed nations, in the wake ofthe crisis in 1997, and then established a Thai proposal for the creation of an
ASEAN-Post Ministerial Conference Caucus on Human Security in 1998. ASEAN,
5however, failed to materialise Surin’s proposal by taking collective action to save people
who lost jobs due to the Asian financial crisis (Cotton, 2001: 129), despite its repeatedconcern that the absence of income would downgrade living conditions andoccasionally jeopardise human life, as it would deprive people of the opportunity toreceive appropriate health care and sufficient food; a serious threat to human security.
The Asian financial crisis caused the human security concept to be “crept into thesecurity lexicon used by ASEAN officials” (Caballero-Anthony, 2009: 194). For
example, ASEAN leaders announced the “ASEAN Vision 2020” in Kuala Lumpur on
15 December 1997, which acknowledged the importance of human security-related
issues such as food security, deprivation, and minorities’ empowerment; all issues,
which can be categorized into threats concerning ‘freedom from want’. However, one of
the reasons behind ASEAN’s incapability to move under the banner of human security
at crisis time was due to its adherence to the so-called ASEAN way: its guiding
principles, which include the absolute significance of state sovereignty, non-intervention
in the domestic affairs of other members, and avoidance of a legally binding approachto decisions, as the Article Two of the ASEAN Charter stipulates (ASEAN Secretariat,
2008a: 5). Therefore, the higher level of regional institutionalization, which would
require regulation and obligation on each state, has not been accomplished in ASEAN(Iain-Johnson, 1999: 290). The adherence to the principle of non-intervention makes it
most unfeasible for ASEAN to serve to resolve any violence affecting human lives inany member state. For instance, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin threatened to walk out of
the 2004 ASEAN Summit Meeting in Vientiane, if other members such as Indonesia andMalaysia raised the issue of Muslim unrest in southern Thailand during the meeting
based on ASEAN’s non-intervention principle, while So, the ASEAN way serves as an
impediment to the promotion of not only the ‘freedom from want’ version of humansecurity, as seen in the Asian financial crisis, but also the ‘freedom from fear’ version ofhuman security or R2P.
ASEAN and implementation of human security
In 1999, after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly in favour of a referendum forindependence from Indonesia, pro-Jakarta militias killed tens of thousands in a wave ofviolence that created general anarchy in East Timor. ASEAN was reluctant to take any
direct action in this brutal matter even though there were calls for "regional
intervention" within East Timor; the situation was eventually met with a UN
peacekeeping force. The fact that some ASEAN states such as Thailand and Singapore
6were initially reluctant to send troops to East Timor shows the persistence of the
non-intervention standard, given that the battles between Indonesian and ASEAN
soldiers would bring a serious blow to ASEAN (Dupong, 2000: 165). The UN force had
only limited participation by military personnel from the ASEAN states and thealternative solutions were provided by Australia, an outsider used to diminish ASEAN'ssignificance. ASEAN was criticized for its negligence and inactiveness to prevent
Indonesia’s brutal invasion in East Timor and the following massacre. East Timor
declared its independence from Portuguese colonization on November 28, 1975. Shortly
after the declaration Indonesia invaded and occupied East Timor, declaring it to be oneof the Indonesian provinces. Under the occupation period by Indonesia, which lasted 25
years until 1999, almost one-third of East Timor’s population died and 70% of theeconomic infrastructure was destroyed (Robinson, 2003: 16). The other ASEAN
members, however, remained silent to Indonesia’s brutal treatment of the East Timorese.
Thailand and Malaysia’s eventual decision to join the Australian-led multinational force
in East Timor (INTERFET) was not spawned by their humanitarian concern about theEast Timorese people, but by their unease to be seen as Indonesian supporters and to
restrict Australia’s dominant control over the operation (Hackke, 2003: 199-201).
Although ASEAN’s silence was partly attributed to Indonesia’s dominant status in theorganization, a main rationale was its adherence to the non-intervention principle, so
ASEAN did not move against Indonesia’s military action by viewing the occupation asa domestic matter of one member state (Narine, 2002: 172).
In short, the 1999 East Timor case created the need for ASEAN to acknowledge thatinternal problems had serious regional and global implications, meaning that ASEAN
has never been closed off from the rest of the world and the forces of globalization. So,
Yet, ASEAN’s indecision not to adequately respond to immediate human rights
problems as seen in East Timor failed to create its new image as a rigid and practicalinstitution in the upcoming global era. Yet, the East Timor case provided an initial
opportunity with ASEAN to consider more effectively in dealing with human security
issues including human rights.
When it comes to the “freedom from want”-type of human security, however, ASEAN
gradually started implementing a collective action. The tsunami crisis of 26 December
2004 in the Indian Ocean promoted ASEAN to establish the ASEAN Agreement on
Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) in July 2005. As one of its
key principles, the agreement aims to strengthen preventive, monitoring and mitigation
7

measures to reduce disaster losses in the region. During the earthquake in Indonesia on
27 May 2006, ASEAN member countries were amongst the first to respond to theearthquakes, bringing in search and rescue teams, as well as medical and otheremergency supplies to Yogyakarta and Central Java. They were also quick to call forinternational assistance and were welcoming of aid during the crisis. The coordinated
ASEAN response during the tsunami crisis was made possible after the repeatedcrisis-management activities, and One Keng Yong (2006) hailed it as one the early
fruits of the AADEMER. It sounds rational to see Thai Prime Minister Abhisit
Vejjajiva’s confidence about ASEAN as a human security-oriented body as he, then
ASEAN Chair, concluded the 2009 ASEAN Meeting and declared: that “[ASEAN
members] have worked together to collectively address the challenges facing our region
and peoples – be they the global economic and financial crisis; climate change; food andenergy security, infectious disease; or natural disasters” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Thailand, 2009).
The more difficult and significant challenge for ASEAN’s commitment to humansecurity is “Should the promotion of human security allow for collective action even if
such action compromises the doctrine of non-interference in the internal affairs ofstates?” (Acharya, 2001b: 459). This means that ASEAN’s non-intervention principle
and human-security agendas, especially ones related to R2P, have been perceived toconflict with each other; moreover, these issues have become imminent problems in
ASEAN. For instance, minority ethnic insurgents from Laos and Myanmar have taken
shelter in Thailand, thousands of Indonesian illegal migrants have periodically strained
Malaysia-Indonesia relations, and Indonesian terrorist recruits have journeyed to thesouthern Philippines for training in Islamist camps run by the Abu Sayyaf or Moro
Islamic Liberation Front. Yet “ASEAN is able to do little to counteract these intramural
frictions” due to the non-intervention principle (Sheldon, 2008: 287). The ASEAN
challenge, arising from the contradiction between non-intervention principle and R2P
was well presented when the Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar in 2008.
ASEAN, Myanmar and human security
The mistreatment of its people by the military junta has brought the humanitarian crisis
in Myanmar to international concern. Myanmar is one of the countries mentioned in the1994 Human Development Report as “countries in crisis”; many people in Myanmar
were cited as being threatened with food security, health issues, job and income security,
human rights violations, as well as ethnic conflicts (UNDP, 1994: 42). In fact, the8refugee flows from Myanmar have been a social and security burden on its neighboring
countries, like Thailand, as they trafficked drugs, transmitted HIV, and became a major
source of regional instability. The view that the military junta in Myanmar has been
threatening the security, safety and well-being of its citizens for decades for the sake ofnational security became more apparent in the case of both the violent crackdown of theanti-government protestors in the 2007 Saffron Revolution and the detainment of
democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.
Whether ASEAN adheres to the non-intervention principle in dealing with humansecurity issues or not, especially in Myanmar is crucial as it has been seen as
deteriorating ASEAN’s effectiveness for regional cooperation on human security andhampering cooperative linkages with key Western countries. For instance,
non-intervention principle has served as a useful protective shield for Myanmar todivert criticism of its internal affairs, such as abuse of human rights, by other members
and Myanmar has been criticised, especially by Western societies for persecuting ethnic
minorities and recruiting child soldiers. The EU has premised its cooperation with
ASEAN on the basis of respect for human rights and democratic values. ASEAN is wellaware that without making some concessions, including in the area of human security,
the economic gains through the ASEAN-EU cooperation could not be attained. Thus,
ASEAN leaders agreed to endorse the EU’s insistence to include a human rights
dialogue at the 8th and 9th ASEAN-EU Ministerial Meetings in the early 1990s (Manea,
2008: 375).
ASEAN’s general approach to human security does not employ coercive means, such as
conditions on aid or economic sanctions, and the so-called ASEAN way, which has
attempted to gradually engage Myanmar into ASEAN’s integration processes has notbeen so effective as to help eliminate Myanmar’s repressive rule, which involved acampaign of mass arrests against Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters. While Thailand,
Malaysia and the Philippines tend to support a more interventionist approach, thelatecomers of ASEAN are opposed to the idea of abandoning the non-intervention
principle. Although Myanmar received strong criticisms from these member countries in
the wake of the junta’s brutal crackdown on civilian protesters in 2007, they did notintervene directly with the regime. As far as Myanmar’s internal matters posing a threat
to regional stability, peer pressure and friendly advice from other ASEAN members
appears insufficient from the viewpoint of ‘responsibility to protect’.

9The Cyclone Nargis that devastated the Ayeyarwady and Yangon Division of Myanmar
on May 2, 2008 caused a huge catastrophe with almost 140,000 dead or missing and it
had a severe and adverse impact on 2.4 million people. Yet, the Myanmar’s military
government had a slow response to the relief efforts. Not only did Myanmar reject
international humanitarian aid, the regime forced cyclone survivors to do menial labourin exchange for food (Associated Press, 5 June 2008). It was not until the junta realized
its inability to handle the disaster, coupled by the mounting pressures from theinternational community that the military government decided to accept aid andassistance from outside forces. In the immediate days following Cyclone Nargis, French
Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher responded to the junta’s inertia by leading a
campaign calling for the UN to invoke the international R2P as endorsed by the 2005
UN World Summit. Koucher asserted:
The discussions [with Myanmar] which have been going on for some days at
the UN and at bilateral level have given greater priority to norms protecting
sovereignty than those protecting life. We talk distress, they answer procedure.
We condemn the predicted death of thousands more civilians, they criticize us
for interfering in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state” (Financial Times, 22
May 2008).
The junta’s scepticism about receiving international aid and letting foreigners into thecountry stemmed from its fear that letting foreign agencies, especially those of Westerncountries, onto their sovereign soil would be a sign of its own weakness in managing
the crisis, demonstrating the junta’s intention to preserve its authority at expense of thesafety of its people (Selth, 2008). It is also noteworthy to point out that Cyclone Nargis
hit Myanmar at a time when its government was preparing to hold a controversialconstitutional referendum on 9 May 2008. Critics argued that the government did notwant foreigners to interfere in a process aimed at rubber-stamping the regime (The
Guardian, 12 May 2008). The referendum was a major factor surrounding the junta’s
refusal to accept international aid at the onset of the catastrophe.
Despite the harsh criticism, Koucher eventually conceded during the campaign that the
responsibility to protect in the UN text was envisaged only for armed conflicts. The
critical question arising from the Myanmar and Nargis case is whether it is right tosanction, be it economically or militarily, a country whose population is already in
distress due to a natural calamity.
10

ASEAN’s failure to secure quick access by international humanitarian workers into theaffected regions of Myanmar can be viewed as an example of the conflict between thespirit of humanitarian intervention and the norms of consensus-building in ASEAN. In
other words, the Cyclone Nargis represented a case of mixed R2P and natural disaster;
ASEAN’s interest in dealing with the ‘freedom from want’-type of human security wascompromised due to the observance of the ASEAN way. However, recognising thefutility of possible sanctions, Holliday argues that “in the state sector no figure in aposition of real power seriously proposes launching military action, and in the non-state
sector no known group is able to take out the junta by military means. The practicalsignificance of this strand of thinking is therefore close to zero” (Holliday, 2009: 487).
The fact that the first UN plane arrived only six days after the devastating storm and that
the UN could do no more than to send its Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Special
Adviser Ibrahim Gambari to the crisis-hit areas in Myanmar suggest that “the realm of
non-coercion, consensual state engagement” is still prevalent even amongst the key
powers and international organizations (Holliday, 2009: 488). In sum, if the UN could
do no more than to “morally-persuade” the Myanmar regime to accept international aid
during Cyclone Nargis, ASEAN, a much smaller grouping, could not be expected tointervene in a more forceful way.
Rather than violating the non-intervention principle, ASEAN established the ASEAN
Humanitarian Task Force for the Victims of Cyclone Nargis to distribute and utilize theassistance from the international community to support the Myanmar government’s
relief, recovery and reconstruction effort (ASEAN Secretariat, 2009a). Simultaneously,
ASEAN also set up Tripartite Core Group (TCG) comprising of the ASEAN, the UN
and the Myanmar government to act as an ASEAN-led mechanism that facilitated trust,confidence and cooperation between Myanmar and the international community in theurgent humanitarian relief and recovery work after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar(ASEAN Secretariat, 2008b).
ASEAN’s failure to secure quick access by international humanitarian workers into theaffected regions in Myanmar in the case of Cyclone Nargis can be viewed as an
example of the conflict between the spirit of humanitarian intervention and the norms ofconsensus-building in ASEAN. In other words, the Cyclone Nargis represented a caseof mixed R2P and natural disaster; ASEAN’s interest in dealing with the ‘freedom fromwant’-type of human security was compromised due to the observance of the ASEAN
11

way. As Haacke (2008: 371) argued, this case presented ASEAN with an excellent
opportunity to deepen its human security agenda since ASEAN was forced to discuss
Myanmar’s need for assistance and reconstruction”.
Although member countries such as Singapore and Indonesia were active in providing
humanitarian aid to Myanmar, they did so without political motives, nor as a tool forpolitical pressure. According to Albright, a former United States Secretary of State,
Myanmar was given the membership into ASEAN with the promise that the member
countries would “push the junta to open its economy and move in the direction of
democracy” (cited in New York Times, June 11, 2008), but ASEAN members remained
reluctant to pressure Myanmar for change. This is clearly due to the adherence of themember countries to the ASEAN norm of non-intervention in domestic state affairs.
Even though some member countries may show support for Myanmar’s change towards
democracy, ASEAN in general avoids public confrontation against the domestic affairsof its member countries. For instance, during the APEC summit 2009 held in Singapore,
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak displayed his view that he hoped that the“problem of national reconciliation and principles of democracy as a system to be
adopted in Myanmar will become a reality, sooner or later” (The Straits Times,
November 16, 2009). However, ASEAN’s reluctance in interfering with Myanmar’s
domestic affairs was revealed when the call to release political prisoners held by the
Myanmar Junta was not included in the joint statement released by the APEC summit(The Straits Times, November 16, 2009). As declared by Gloria Arroyo, Philippine’s
President, ASEAN will continue to pursue its “constructive engagement” with Myanmar,and such “conditional embrace” by ASEAN is regarded as the “Asian way” to deal with
regional issues with understanding and sensitivity. According to Arroyo, it is designed“to encourage Myanmar to open up its democratic space” (cited in AFP, 25 October2004). Such response by ASEAN has greatly disappointed the West and this questions
the accountability of ASEAN and its norms in providing security for the people in theregion, as well as ASEAN’s role in leading regionalism in East Asia.
Singapore and Thailand have taken on a tough stance on Myanmar. In May 2009, in its
capacity as the ASEAN Chair, Thailand issued an unprecedented statement reminding
Myanmar that the country has a “responsibility to protect and promote human rights” asa “responsible member of ASEAN” (cited in Financial Times, 26 May 2009). At theclose of the 4th East Asia Summit Meeting in Thailand on 25 October 2009, the leaders
issued a statement on EAS Disaster Management, describing the agreement in EAS to12

“cooperate to enhance post-disaster management and recovery efforts, and encourage
greater interaction of early recovery activities in the immediate post-disaster phase toensure a smooth transition from relief to recovery, including supporting an ASEAN-led
mechanism and other organizations in the region” (ASEAN Secretariat 2009b). The
rhetoric and criticism aside, it appears that the crisis, be it financial or disaster, has
urged the need of ASEAN to tackle issues related to freedoms from ‘want’ and ‘fear’and thus, human security may eventually feature prominently on the ASEAN agenda.
Concluding remarks
Human security and the ASEAN way, especially the non-intervention principle, areincompatible with each other since the former focuses more on individuals andnecessitates an approach to undermining the state sovereignty, which ASEAN members
have cherished as an uncompromisable political value. ‘Freedom from fear’ or‘responsibility to protect’, which implies protecting humans from ethnic and intrastate
violence, has also been debated at the global stage, like in the UN, but when and how
the humanitarian intervention can be justified has been neither clearly defined nor
determined. Observing the UN debates on R2P, Bellamy (2009: 195-6) argued that there
has been “no criteria for the use of force, no guideline about how to proceed when the
Security Council was deadlocked, no code of conduct on veto, and no continuum of
measures ranging from prevention to rebuilding”.
The effect of endeavours to establish human security as a shared global/regional norm,
by Japan and Canada, has been also limited, as seen in the fact that the UN finally usedhuman security in its official declaration only eleven years after the 1994 UNDP reportthat touched on the term was published. In the United Nations Human Security Fund, asymbol of Japan’s commitment to the human security concept, for which it has used 39
billion yen by 2009, Japan remains as the only financial contributor; no other majorcountry supports it financially. This means that the security discourse in the global
setting remains state-centric, contributing to the human security concept not being
prominently recognised in the global setting.
While there is a view that regional organisations are better placed to act on humansecurity issues in contrast to an international institution such as the UN, there are also
doubts surrounding the capacity of a regional grouping like ASEAN to tackle the broad
spectrum of human security, as discussed so far. This has led Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy(2009: 206-7) to propose that international organizations with substantial resources such13

as the UN should provide logistics and financial support to regional organisations.
There are few such cooperative linkages between the UN and regional institutions, such
as ASEAN, on human security. Yet, as this paper argues, ASEAN has been graduallychanging its attitudes on and interest in human security through experiences humansecurity-related crises; the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 1999 East Timor crisis, the2005 Indian Ocean Tsunami Crisis and the 2008 Cyclone Nargis Crisis. ASEAN’s slow
but realistic responses to theses crises prove that the ‘freedom from want’ version that
contains a broader definition of human security has possible paths for ASEAN to follow
for the purpose of regional cooperation, which could avoid the incompatibility with thestate-centric values of ASEAN way. ASEAN established the ASEAN Intergovernmental
Commission on Human Rights in 2009, although the draft committee had to reject any
measures that would hold accountable any ASEAN member for its violation of humanright or would deviate from the non-intervention principle. Then, will another crisis benecessary for ASEAN to develop its serious interest in dealing with issues related to the“freedom from fear” version of human security by giving teeth to the Human Rights
Commission?

14

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Acharya, Amitav (2001a) Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia:
ASEAN and the problem of regional order, Routledge, New York and London.
——— (2001b) “Human Security: East Versus West”, International Journal, 61 (3), pp.
442- 460.
ASEAN Secretariat (2008) Charter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,———(2008b)“FirstPress
Releaseof
Tripartite
Core
Group”
http://www.aseansec.org/21691.htm, 24 June.
——— (2009a) “Fact Sheet: ASEAN’s Post-Nargis Humanitarian Assistance”——— (2009b) “Cha-am Hua Hin Statement on EAS Disaster Management”, 25
October.
Bellamy, Alex J. (2009) Responsibility to Protect, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Caballero-Anthony, Mely (2009) “Challenging Change: Nontraditional Security,
Democracy and Regionalism” in Emmerson, Donald K. (ed.) Hard Choices: Security,
Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia, Institute for Southeast Asian Studies,
Singapore, pp,198-218.
Commission on Human Security (2003) Human Security Now, Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
Cotton, James (2001) “Against the Grain: The East Timor Intervention”, Survival 43 (1),pp.127-42.
Dupont, Alan (2000) “ASEAN’s Response to the East Timor Crisis”, Australian Journalof International Affairs, 54 (2), pp.163-170.
Edström, Bert (2004) Japan and the Challenge of Human Security: The Founding of a
New Policy 1995–2003, Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm.
Glasius, Marlies and Kaldor, Mary (2006) “A Human Security Vision for Europe andBeyond” in Glasius, Marlies and Kaldor, Mary (eds.) A Human Security Doctrine forEurope: Project, Principles, Practicalities, Routledge, New York and London,
pp.3-19.
Haacke, Jürgen (2003) ASEAN's Diplomatic and Security Culture: Origins,
Development and Prospects, RoutledgeCurzon, New York and London.
——— (2008) “ASEAN and Political Change in Myanmar: Towards a Regional
Initiative”, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30 (3), pp.351-378.
Hoadley, Stephen (2006) “The Evolution of Security Thinking: An Overview in
Hoadley, Stephen and Ruland Jurgen (eds.) Asian Security Reassessed, Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies, Singapore, p.3-33.
15

Holliday, Ian (2009) “Beijing and the Myanmar Problem”, The Pacific Review, 22 (4),pp.479-500.
ICISS [International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty] (2001)
Responsibility to Protect, International Development. Research Centre, Ottawa.
Johnston, Alistair Iain (1999), ‘The Myth of the ASEAN Way? Explaining the Evolutionof the ASEAN Regional Forum’, in Haftendorn, Helgas, Keohane, Robert andWallender, Celeste (eds.), Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions over Time andSpace, Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp. 287-324.
Manea, Maria-Gabriela (2008) “Human Rights and the Interregional Dialogue between
Asia and Europe: ASEAN-EU Relations and ASEM”, The Pacific Review, 21 (3),pp.369–396.
Narine, Shaun (2002) Explaining ASEAN : Regionalism in Southeast Asia, Lynne
Rienner Publishers, Boulder.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thailand (2009) “Remarks by Mr Abhisit Vejjajiva, Prime
Minister of Thailand, at the Closing Ceremony of the 15th ASEAN Summit andRelated Summits”, 25 October.
Ong, Keng Yong (2006) “Mega Disasters and Resulting “Tipping Point: An ASEAN
View” speech delivered at the Senior Policy Forum, Pacific Disaster Center, Maui,
Hawaii, 15-6 August.
——— (2007) “ASEAN at the Heart of Dynamic Asia” speech delivered at the Opening
Ceremony of the Annual German Ambassadors’ Conference, Berlin, 3 September.
Paris, Roland (2001) “Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?” International
Security 26 (2) Fall, pp. 87-102
Robinson, Geoffrey (2003) East Timor 1999 Crimes against Humanity A Report
Commissioned by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights(OHCHR).
Selth, Andrew (2008) “Even Paranoids Have Enemies: Cyclone Nargis and Myanmar’s
Fears of Invasion” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30 (3), pp. 379-402.
Simon, Sheldon (2008) “ASEAN and Multilateralism: The Long, Bumpy Road toCommunity”, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30 (2), pp. 264-92
Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou and. Chenoy, Anuradha M (2009) Human Security: Concepts
and Implications, Routledge, New York and London.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (1994) Human Development Report:
New Dimension of Human Security, UNDP, New York.

16

GIARI Working Paper Vol. 2010-E-5,
February 2011
Published by Waseda University Global COE Program
Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration (GIARI),
Waseda University, Nishiwaseda Bldg. 5F#507 1-21-1
Nishi-waseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-0051 Japan
E-mail: affairs@waseda-giari.jp
Webpage: http://www.waseda-giari.jp
Printed in Japan by TRY-EX Inc.

17