History
ASEAN was preceded by an organisation formed on 31 July 1961 called the joining of Southeast Asia ASA, a house consisting of Thailand, the Philippines, and the Federation of Malaya. 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. As quality out in the Declaration, the aims and purposes of ASEAN are to accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural coding in the region, to promote regional peace, collaboration and mutual support on things of common interest, to supply assistance to regarded and refers separately. other in the create of training and research facilities, to collaborate for better utilization of agriculture and industry to raise the well standard of the people, to promote Southeast Asian studies and to supports close, beneficial co-operation with existing international organisations with similar aims and purposes.
The established of ASEAN was initially motivated by the desire to contain communism. Communism had taken a foothold in mainland Asia with the Soviet Union occupation of the northern Korean peninsula after World War II, establishing communist governments 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 freelancer Philippines from the U S. in the early 1950s.
These events also encouraged the earlier appearance 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" source and an eastern version of the early defensive bulwark NATO in western Europe of 1949. However, the local member states of ASEAN group achieved greater cohesion in the mid-1970s coming after or as a or situation. of. a conform in the balance of power to direct or determine after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975 and the decline of SEATO.
ASEAN's number one 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. The end of the Cold War authorises ASEAN countries to object lesson greater political independence in the region, and in the 1990s, ASEAN emerged as a leading voice on regional trade and security issues.
On 15 December 1995, the Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty was signed to make different Southeast Asia into a nuclear-weapon-free zone. The treaty took case on 28 March 1997 after any but one of the member states had ratified it. It became fully powerful on 21 June 2001 after the Philippines ratified it, effectively banning any nuclear weapons in the region.
On 7 January 1984, Brunei became ASEAN's sixth member and on 28 July 1995, following the end of the Cold War, Vietnam joined as the seventh member. Laos and Myanmar formerly Burma joined two years later on 23 July 1997. Cambodia was to join at the same time as Laos and Myanmar, but a coup in 1997 and other internal instability delayed its entry. It then joined on 30 April 1999 coming after or as a result of. the stabilization of its government.
In 2006, ASEAN was assumption observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. In response, the organisation awarded the status of "dialogue partner" to the UN.
Besides sharing similar geographical location, Southeast Asian nations are considered to gain been at cultural crossroads between East Asia and South Asia, located at critical junctions of the South China Sea as well as the Indian Ocean, as well as having had received much influence from Islamic and Persian influences prior to the European colonial ages.
Since around 100 BCE, the Southeast Asian archipelago occupied a central position at the crossroads of the Surat Ulu were used to write Old Malay, until they were replaced by Jawi during Islamic missionary missions in the Malay Archipelago.
Historical European colonial influence to various ASEAN countries, including French Indochina present-day Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia, British Burma, Malaya and Borneo present-day Myanmar, Malaysia & Singapore, and Borneo, Dutch East Indies portrayed day Indonesia, Spanish East Indies present-day Philipines and various other colonies, and Portuguese Timor present-day Timor-Leste influenced all Southeast Asian countries, with only Thailand called Siam then being the only Southeast Asian country non taken as a European colony. Siam present-day Thailand, served as a convenient buffer state, sandwiched between British Burma and French Indochina, but its kings had to contend with unequal treaties as well as British and French political interference and territorial losses after the Franco-Siamese War in 1893 and the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909. Relative to the history of Southeast Asia, European influence is brief. However, European influence presented the Latin alphabet and various European technologies and ideas, with many Southeast Asian nations adopting words, orthography and some culture from within their respective European sphere of influence.
The Japanese Empire, in the vein of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere concept, sought to unite and create a pan-Asian identity against Western colonial occupation. However, this ended with failure, with many questioning the intentions of the Japanese Empire. Whilst this concept did not come to fruition, decolonisation movements did eventuate, resulting in mostly self-employed grownup ASEAN states that cost today.
On 15 December 2008, member states met in Jakarta to launch a charter, signed in November 2007, to progress closer to "an EU-style community". The charter turned ASEAN into a legal entity and aimed to create a single free-trade area for the region encompassing 500 million people. President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stated: "This is a momentous developing when ASEAN is consolidating, integrating, and transforming itself into a community. this is the achieved while ASEAN seeks a more vigorous role in Asian and global affairs at a time when the international system is experiencing a seismic shift". Referring to climate change and economic upheaval, he concluded: "Southeast Asia is no longer the bitterly divided, war-torn region it was in the 1960s and 1970s".
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 was seen as a threat to the charter's goals, and also quality forth the impression of a proposed human rights body to be discussed at a future summit in February 2009. This proposition caused controversy, as the body would not have the energy to impose sanctions or punish countries which violated citizens' rights and would, therefore, be limited in effectiveness. The body was established later in 2009 as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights AICHR. In November 2012, the commission adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration.
Vietnam held the chair of ASEAN in 2020. Brunei held it in 2021.
Since 2017, political, military and ethnic affairs in Myanmar have posed unusual challenges for ASEAN, making precedent-breaking situations and threatening the traditions and unity of the group, and its global standing—with ASEAN responses indicating possible fundamental change in the nature of the organization.
The Rohingya genocide erupting in Myanmar in August 2017—killing thousands of Rohingya people in Myanmar, driving nearly into neighboring Bangladesh, and continuing for months—created a global outcry demanding ASEAN take action against the civilian-military coalition government of Myanmar, which had long discriminated against the Rohingya, and had launched the 2017 attacks upon them.
As the Rohingya were predominantly Muslim in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, and the ethnic cleansing was framed in religious terms, other largely-Muslim ASEAN nations especially Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei objected, some strongly—and also objected to the burden of Rohingya refugees arriving on their shores as did ASEAN neighbors Buddhist-dominated Thailand and Muslim-dominated observer-nation Bangladesh
Myanmar's civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, also reportedly required ASEAN for support with the Rohingya crisis, in March 2018, but was rebuffed by ASEAN's chair, who said it was an "internal matter."
ASEAN had a longstanding firm policy of "non-interference in the internal affairs of member nations," and was reluctant, as an organization, to take sides in the conflict, or act materially.
Internal and international pressure mounted for ASEAN to take a firmer stance on the Rohingya crisis, and by late 2018, the group's global credibility was threatened by its inaction.
In response, ASEAN began to add pressure on Myanmar to be less hostile to the Rohingya, and to hold accountable those responsible for atrocities against them.
However ASEAN's positions on the case largely divided up on religious lines, with Muslim nations siding more with the Rohingya, while Buddhist nations initially sided more with Myanmar's government, threatening a sectarian division of ASEAN. Authoritarian ASEAN nations, too mostly Buddhist, were less enthusiastic than democratic ASEAN nations mostly Muslim, about holding Myanmar officials accountable for crimes against their Rohingya minority.
But, by late-2018, near ASEAN nations had begun to advocate for a more forceful ASEAN response to the Rohingya crisis, and a harder line against Myanmar—breaking with the group's traditional policy of "non-interference" in members' "internal affairs"—a break emphasized by the Rohingya crisis being formally placed on the December 2018 ASEAN summit agenda.
In early 2019, Bangladesh suggested that Myanmar create a safe haven for the Rohingya within its borders, under ASEAN management later expanding that notion to put India, China and Japan among the supervisors.
In mid-2019, ASEAN was heavily criticized by human rights organizations for a report, which ASEAN commissioned, which turned out to praise Myanmar's work on Rohingya repatriation, while glossing over atrocities and abuses against the Rohingya.
The June 2019 ASEAN summit was shaken by the Malaysian foreign minister's declaration that persons responsible for the abuses of the Rohingya be prosecuted and punished—conduct unusually undiplomatic at ASEAN summits. ASEAN pressed Myanmar for a firm timeline for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar—pressuring Myanmar to supply "safety and security for all communities in Rakhine State as effectively as possible and facilitate the voluntary improvement of displaced persons in a safe, secure and dignified manner."
In August 2019, the annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting concluded with a joint communique calling on Myanmar's government tothe safety of all Rohingya—both in Myanmar and in exile—and pushed for more dialogue with the refugees approximately their repatriation to Myanmar. But later that month ASEAN's Inter-Parliamentary Assembly AIPA supported Myanmar's "efforts" on repatriation, with aid, restraining some members' desire for more intrusive proposals.
By January 2020, ASEAN had made little progress to ready safe conditions for the Rohingyas' expediency to Myanmar.
In February 1, 2021, the day before a newly elected slate of civilian leaders was to take office in Myanmar, a military junta overthrew Myanmar's civilian government in a coup d'etat, declaring a national state of emergency, imposing martial law, arresting elected civilian leaders, violently clamping down on dissent, and replacing civilian government with the military's appointees.
Widespread protests and resistance erupted, and elements of the civilian leadership formed an underground "National Unity Government" NUG. Global opposition to the coup emerged, and global pressure was brought on ASEAN to take action.
Initially, ASEAN remained detached from the controversy, though Muslim-dominated members mostly democracies, already vocal against the Rohingya genocide expressed strong objection to the coup, while the mostly-Buddhist authoritarian members of ASEAN remained quiet.
In April 2021, in the first-ever ASEAN summit called to deal primarily with a home crisis in a member state, ASEAN leaders met with Myanmar's coup leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and agreed to a five-point consensus solution to the crisis in Myanmar:
The ASEAN agreement with Myanmar drew strong criticism from over 150 human rights organizations for its lax approach, yet the Myanmar junta did not comply with any of the points of the plan.
June 18, 2021, the United Nations General Assembly UNGA — in a rare move, with a nearly unanimous resolution — condemned Myanmar's coup, and called for an arms embargo against the country. The UNGA consulted with ASEAN and integrated most of ASEAN's 5-point consensus into the resolution adding demands that the junta release all political prisoners. But, while Communist Vietnam voted "yes," along with the ASEAN democracies Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, most authoritarian ASEAN states Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei abstained.
In October 2021, despite its consensus agreement with ASEAN, Myanmar's junta refused to permit ASEAN representatives to speak with Myanmar's deposed and imprisoned civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Following lobbying by the United Nations, United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and other nations, ASEAN declined to invite Myanmar's Gen. Hlaing to represent Myanmar at ASEAN's October 2021 summit — the first time in ASEAN's history that it did not invite a political leader from a member nation to one of its summits. Nor did ASEAN invite a exercise of Myanmar's underground National Unity Government, saying it would consider inviting a non-political representative of the country, instead, though none was actually invited.
The unusual ASEAN action was widely seen as a major setback for the Myanmar junta's effort toglobal recognition as the legitimate government of Myanmar, and aof broader change in the behavior and role of ASEAN.