ASEAN: The Literally Invisible Hand in Disaster Management1

Abstract

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established through the Bangkok Declaration on 8th August 1967. To date, ASEAN has comprised 10 member countries namely Cambodia, Thailand, Brunei, Myanmar, the Philippines, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia. Originated in 2015, the ASEAN Community consists of three pillars namely ASEAN Security Community (ASC), ASEAN Economic Community-AEC, and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). The three pillars of the ASEAN community in particular are aiming towards the unification, conciliation and consolidation of the Southeast Asia region with a strong focus on the importance of shared responsibility among the member countries in tackling security issues in every aspect including non-traditional threat. Nonetheless, as for ASEAN, a truly crucial and obvious challenge to date has been its operation when it comes to Disaster Management. Despite the fact that almost all of these countries are situated in the areas of high vulnerability to natural hazards, and that many country members have encountered severe natural disasters throughout the past decade e.g. the 2004 Tsunami Attack, the Cyclone Nargis, the Typhoon Haiyan, there has hardly been any mutually recognizable or tangible mechanisms related to disaster management to date. This might be attributed to the fact that each country operates in accordance with their own national mechanism based on the principle of sovereignty, and that all of them are active members of certain international organizations working towards disaster management in cooperation with global mechanisms who mainly receive international assistance. In this respect, the existence of ASEAN in connection with regional mechanisms such as the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and the Emergency Response (AADMER) seems to literally be the invisible hand when it comes to regional disaster management.