ASEAN | Definition, History & Facts

 

 ASEAN- Association of Southeast Asian Nations

In order to further economic development, social advancement, cultural development, and peace and security in Southeast Asia, the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand founded ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in 1967. Following Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999, Brunei became a member in 1984. More than 600 million people live in the ASEAN region, which has a total size of 1.7 million square miles (4.5 million square km). The Philippines, Thailand, and the Federation of Malaya (now a part of Malaysia) founded the Association of South East Asia (ASA) in 1961. ASEAN succeeded ASA as the regional organization in the region.

The main initiatives of ASEAN are programs for joint research and technical cooperation among member governments, the promotion of trade among ASEAN nations and between ASEAN members and the rest of the world, and economic cooperation. These initiatives fall under the banner of cooperative peace and shared prosperity.

ASEAN was held together somewhat shakily in its early years, but towards the middle of the 1970s, a new sense of coherence emerged as a result of the altered power dynamics in Southeast Asia following the end of the Vietnam War. The organization was bolstered by the region's explosive economic growth in the 1970s, which allowed ASEAN to respond swiftly to Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1979.

A number of industrial projects were approved at the inaugural ASEAN summit meeting, which took place in Bali, Indonesia, in 1976. A Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and a Declaration of Concord were also signed.

The ASEAN countries were able to exercise more political independence in the region when the Cold War between the US and the USSR ended at the end of the 1980s, and in the 1990s ASEAN began to take the lead on problems relating to regional trade and security. For instance, ASEAN worked to end the East Timor conflict and adopted a declaration to settle conflicts in the South China Sea. It also established the ASEAN Regional Forum to foster discussion on regional security.

By establishing the ASEAN Free Trade Area in 1992, members decreased intraregional tariffs and loosened limitations on foreign investment.

History- Financial Crises

Founding

The Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), which was established on July 31, 1961, was a grouping of Thailand, the Philippines, and the Federation of Malaya. The ASEAN Declaration was signed on August 8, 1967, by the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, thus founding ASEAN. According to the Declaration, ASEAN's goals and objectives are to promote regional peace, cooperation, and mutual assistance on issues of common interest, accelerate economic growth, social advancement, and cultural development within the region, assist one another with training and research facilities, work together to better utilize agriculture and industry to raise living standards for citizens, and more.

To contain communism was the initial driving force behind the formation of ASEAN. With the occupation of the northern Korean peninsula by the Soviet Union after World War II, communist governments were established in North Korea (1945), the People's Republic of China (1949), and parts of the former French Indochina with North Vietnam (1954). These events were accompanied by the communist "Emergency" in British Malaya and unrest in the recently independent Philippines from the United States in the early 1950s.

As a "containment" extension and an eastern counterpart to the early defensive bulwark NATO in western Europe of 1949, these events also encouraged the earlier formation of SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organization), which was led by the United States and United Kingdom along with Australia and several Southeast Asian partners in 1954. A change in the balance of power following the fall of Saigon and the conclusion of the Vietnam War in April 1975, as well as the downfall of SEATO, allowed the local member nations of the ASEAN group to attain more coherence in the mid-1970s.

A number of industrial projects were approved at the inaugural ASEAN summit meeting, which took place in Bali, Indonesia, in 1976. A Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and a Declaration of Concord were also signed. After the Cold War ended, ASEAN nations were able to exercise more political independence in the area, and in the 1990s, ASEAN began to take the lead on matters relating to regional trade and security.

The Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty was signed on December 15th, 1995, to make Southeast Asia a nuclear-weapon-free zone. After being accepted by all but one of the member nations, the treaty came into force on March 28, 1997. After the Philippines approved it, it became fully effective on June 21, 2001, thereby outlawing all nuclear weapons in the world.

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                   ASEAN| Short Detail  (Simple English) 

Expansion

Brunei joined ASEAN as its sixth member on January 7, 1984, and Vietnam joined as its seventh member on July 28, 1995, after the Cold War ended. On July 23, 1997, Laos and Myanmar (formerly Burma) united. [36] A coup in 1997 and other domestic unrest prevented Cambodia from joining at the same time as Laos and Myanmar, delaying its membership. It rejoined on April 30, 1999, when its administration had stabilized.

At the UN General Assembly in 2006, ASEAN was granted observer status. In response, the group granted the UN the title of "dialogue partner."

Commonality

In addition to being geographically close to one another, Southeast Asian countries are also at a crucial intersection of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, which makes them a cultural crossroads between East Asia and South Asia. As a result, before the European colonial eras, Islamic and Persian influences heavily influenced Southeast Asian nations.

The Southeast Asian archipelago has had a key position at the intersection of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea commercial routes from around 100 BCE, which boosted the economy and the flow of ideas. This included the transmission of the Chinese script to Vietnam as well as the introduction of abugida scripts to Southeast Asia. In addition to a variety of native scripts, abugida Brahmic scripts were also widely used in countries like Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malay, etc.

French Indochina (today's Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), British Burma, Malaya, and Borneo (today's Myanmar, Malaysia, and Singapore), Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia), Spanish East Indies (today's Philippines and various other colonies), and Portuguese Timor (today's Timor-Leste) were among the historical European colonial influences on various ASEAN countries. Only Thailand (then Siam) was the only Southeast Asian nation un Sandwiched between British Burma and French Indochina, Siam functioned as a useful buffer state, but its kings had to deal with unfair treaties, British and French political intervention, and territory losses following the Franco-Siamese War in 1893 and the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909.

The ASEAN Charter

Members of the charter, which was signed in November 2007, convened on December 15 in Jakarta to begin the process of creating "an EU-style community." The charter gave ASEAN legal status and attempted to unite the 500 million-person region into a single free-trade zone. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the president of Indonesia, stated: "This is a significant development as ASEAN unifies, integrates, and develops into a community. It is accomplished at a time when the international order is going through a seismic transition and ASEAN seeks to play a more active role in Asian and global affairs ". He concluded by stating that "Southeast Asia is no longer the brutally divided, war-torn area it was in the 1960s and 1970s," in reference to climate change and economic turmoil.

The purposes of the charter were viewed as being threatened by the financial crisis of 2007–2008,[48] which also inspired the notion of a proposed human rights body that would be debated in a summit in the future, in February 2009. This idea generated debate since the body would be ineffective because it lacked the authority to sanction or punish nations that infringed the rights of their citizens. [49] Later in 2009, the organization was founded as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). The commission approved the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in November 2012.

2020 saw Vietnam serving as ASEAN's chair. It was held in Brunei in 2021.

Public Health

In order to develop a regional public health response in the event of pandemics, ASEAN cooperated with ASEAN+3 and other parties.

SARS Outbreak

In order to create a response to the SARS outbreak, ASEAN and ASEAN+3 collaborated. We developed immediate and short-to-medium-term solutions. The parties also agreed to strengthen cooperation between their various health agencies and unify travel processes to ensure that thorough health screening would take place. They also agreed to increase the sharing of best practices against the disease. Additionally, China made the promise to give $1.2 million to the ASEAN SARS fund to demonstrate its willingness to work with the rest of the region and to atone for its secrecy during the early phases of the outbreak.

H1N1 Pandemic

On May 8, 2009, ASEAN organized a special gathering of health ministers from ASEAN and ASEAN+3. At this meeting, it was decided to create hotlines between public health agencies, organize collaborative response teams, and support current research initiatives.

Myanmar crisis

Since 2017, the political, military, and ethnic affairs in Myanmar have posed ASEAN with uncommon difficulties, setting unprecedented circumstances and threatening the group's traditions, unity, and international standing—with ASEAN responses pointing to a potential fundamental change in the organization's makeup.