Plans to establish a Charter for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is already on its way. However, majority of the regional bloc's population have not yet even heard of this recent development.

The plan for an ASEAN Charter was first presented in the Kuala Lumpur Declaration during the 11th ASEAN Summit in December 2005.  An Eminent Persons Group was tasked to come up with the recommendations for inclusion in the Charter. The recommendations will be presented during the ASEAN Summit in Cebu, Philippines in December 2006. A high-level task force will then be formed to draft the Charter proper, which is expected to be ready by the December 2007 Summit.

Critics suspect that the lack of public consultations over the Charter, which aims to achieve closer cooperation and economic integration, might be intentional. Anil Netto of Integrated Press Service News Agency, in the article titled “Charter for ASEAN Bloc Bypasses Civil Society,” said that “They [the ASEAN] see the Charter as giving a legal personality to ASEAN, paving the way for a regional economic framework that would facilitate investment and trade in the region, while the interests of ordinary people—workers, the poor and the marginalised—could come a distant second.”

Through the Charter, the ASEAN might construct an economic community similar to that of the European Union (EU), one which will ensure the free flow of goods, services, investment, and capital. This means that unskilled labour, including migrant workers—thousands of whom are undocumented and exploited in host countries in the region, will be out of the picture.

Activists fear that once the ASEAN Charter is ready, it will be thrust upon the people of the region as a done deal. The ASEAN is calling for increased interest in labour and migration, some activists surmise, for the Charter to appear as people-centred, as opposed to being business or trade-centred.

The Joint memorandum prepared after the SUARAM-SEACA workshop in October 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia stated that “The ASEAN Charter should not legitimise the current neo-liberal economic policies being pursued by ASEAN through bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements.” Civil society groups are hoping that this statement will remain true.

FYI

A national consultation conference on the ASEAN Charter was held last October 16-17, 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was attended by 32 Malaysian NGOs, who jointly made a statement of their key concerns.

For a copy of the statement, please visit <http://www.suaram.net/display_statement.asp?ID=586>.

Source:
“Charter for ASEAN Bloc Bypasses Civil Society”from Inter Press Service News Agency, posted on November 2, 2006, <http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35344>.