Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) objective, organs, importance and advantages.
Channel: Pusker
Date: 19/03/2022

ASEAN (officially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is a political and economic union of 10 member states in Southeast Asia, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political, security, military, educational, and sociocultural integration between its members and other countries in Asia. ASEAN's primary objective was to accelerate economic growth and through that social progress and cultural development. A secondary objective was to promote regional peace and stability based on the rule of law and the principle of United Nations charter. With some of the fastest growing economies in the world, ASEAN has broadened its objective beyond the economic and social spheres. In 2003, ASEAN moved along the path of the European Union by agreeing to establish an ASEAN community comprising three pillars: the ASEAN security community, the ASEAN economic community, and the ASEAN socio-cultural community. The ten stalks of rice in the ASEAN flag and insignia represent the ten southeast Asian countries bound together in solidarity. ASEAN also regularly engages other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. A major partner of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, ASEAN maintains a global network of alliances and dialogue partners and is considered by many as a global powerhouse, the central union for cooperation in Asia-Pacific, and a prominent and influential organization. It is involved in numerous international affairs, and hosts diplomatic missions throughout the world.  
Secretariat Jakarta
6°14.3353′S 106°47.9554′E
Largest city Jakarta
6°11.6962′S 106°49.3837′E
Working language English
Official languages of contracting states 
BurmeseMandarinEnglishFilipinoIndonesianKhmerLaoMalayTamilThaiVietnamese
Membership 
 Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia , Laos , Malaysia, Myanmar , Philippines, Singapore,Thailand, Vietnam
Leaders
• Secretary-General
Lim Jock Hoi
Establishment
• Bangkok Declaration
8 August 1967
• Charter
16 December 2008
Area
• Total
4,522,518[7] km2 (1,746,154 sq mi)
Population
• 2021 estimate
667,393,019[8]
• Density
144/km2 (373.0/sq mi)
GDP (PPP) 2022 estimate
• Total
Increase $9.731 trillion[8]
• Per capita
Increase $14,441[8]
GDP (nominal) 2022 estimate
• Total
Increase $3.595 trillion[8]
• Per capita
Increase $5,336[8]
HDI (2018) Increase 0.723[b]
high
Time zone UTC+6:30 to +9 (ASEAN)
 ASEAN was preceded by an organisation formed on 31 July 1961 called the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), a group consisting of Thailand, the Philippines, and the Federation of Malaya.[19][20] ASEAN itself was created on 8 August 1967, when the foreign ministers of five countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, signed the ASEAN Declaration.[21] As set out in the Declaration, the aims and purposes of ASEAN are to accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region, to promote regional peace, collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest, to provide assistance to each other in the form of training and research facilities, to collaborate for better utilization of agriculture and industry to raise the living standards of the people, to promote Southeast Asian studies and to maintain close, beneficial co-operation with existing international organisations with similar aims and purposes.The creation of ASEAN was motivated by a common fear of communism and the spread of it from recently taken over in mainland Asia with the Soviet Union occupation of the northern Korean peninsula after World War II establishing a puppet regime in North Korea (1945), People's Republic of China (1949) and portions of former French Indochina with North Vietnam (1954), accompanied by the communist insurgency "Emergency" in British Malaya and unrest in the recently independent Philippines from the U S. in the early 1950s. These events also encouraged the earlier formation of S.E.A.T.O. (South East Asia Treaty Organization) led by the United States and United Kingdom along with Australia with several Southeast Asian partners in 1954 as a "containment" extension and an eastern version of the early defensive bulwark NATO in western Europe of 1949.[24] However, the local member states of ASEAN group achieved greater cohesion in the mid-1970s following a change in the balance of power after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975 and the decline of SEATO. The region's dynamic economic growth during the 1970s strengthened the organization, enabling ASEAN to adopt a unified response to the subsequent Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia overthrowing the brief but violent radical leftist Khmer Rouge regime and short military border skirmishes with northern neighbor and former communist ally, China in 1979. ASEAN's first summit meeting, held in Bali, Indonesia in 1976, resulted in an agreement on several industrial projects and the signing of a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and a Declaration of Concord.  pusker joshi