As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) marks its 59th year in 2026, its relevance remains disputable. Its guiding principles—mutual respect, noninterference, peaceful dispute settlement, and renunciation of force—are noteworthy from a nation-state perspective but ultimately self-absorbed. They suffer from an absence of any reference to how Asean relates to the peoples of its member-states. The principles are state-centered and reveal a top-down approach to regional integration.
It took 40 years via the 2007 Asean Charter for the grouping to introduce its so-called three pillars: political security community, economic community, and sociocultural community. The political pillar focuses on state interactions; the economic pillar facilitates business through open markets. Only the sociocultural pillar deals directly with people, aiming to be inclusive and socially responsible.
However, all three pillars are riddled with infirmities: lack of binding mechanisms (due to noninterference and consensus), diverse political systems, wide socioeconomic inequalities between and within nations, a poor record on integration, superficial and shallow adherence to human rights, big-power pressures, limited resources, and bureaucratic inefficiencies.
Structural failures
Beyond these internal weaknesses, Asean’s fundamental problem is structural: it was designed to protect elite and oligarchic interests, not to serve peoples. The principle of noninterference, for example, has consistently shielded military juntas in Myanmar, allowed extrajudicial killings in the Philippines under drug war operations, and enabled crackdowns on civil society and social movements in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
Asean has no enforcement mechanism for its own human rights body, the AICHR, which lacks investigatory powers and cannot receive individual complaints. This is not accidental—it is by design. Ignoring recommendations from the Asean Eminent Persons Group, the 2007 Charter deliberately excludes any provision for sanctions or suspension of members, even for gross human rights violations. Thus, Asean functions less as a community of peoples and more as an exclusive club of governments that protects its errant officials from accountability.
ACSC/APF
The main forum for civil society engagement with Asean is the Asean Civil Society Conference/Asean Peoples’ Forum (ACSC/APF). Formed in 2005, it is a network of Southeast Asian civil society organizations (CSOs) and social movements promoting the concerns of workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, women, LGBTQIA+, migrants, and other marginalized sectors. The ACSC/APF has organized national consultations, dialogues, regional meetings, parallel conferences and issued annual statements, hoping to achieve meaningful reforms in Asean.
Unfortunately, progress has been microscopic. An internal ACSC/APF Ten-Year Review (2005–2015) concluded that “Asean and its member governments have been seen to be more comfortable with the private sector and think tanks than with civil society,” and that member-states “have consistently resisted and vacillated” on civil society participation.
The 2016 Timor Leste Statement noted Asean’s “prevailing silence and lack of attention” to concerns repeatedly raised, particularly on development justice, democracy, human rights, peace, and discrimination. In 2015 and 2017, the ACSC/APF criticized the development paradigm of member-states for breeding inequality, marginalization, human rights violations, and environmental crises. The 2019 Statement argued that Asean’s shift toward prioritizing people’s welfare has been “more rhetorical than real,” adding that “meaningful peoples’ participation…are nowhere to be found.”
The 2020 Hanoi Statement declared that the region continues to be dominated by political elites and corporate oligarchies, where neoliberal strategies spur growth but unequally distribute benefits. In 2021, the ACSC/APF cited four indicators of state authoritarianism in Asean: weak commitment to democracy, suppressing opponents, tolerating violence, and shrinking civic space.
Rhetoric, not actions
Asean’s rhetoric of being “people-oriented” is not matched by its actions. Its patronizing attitude is reflected in official definitions. The 2012 Asean Guidelines on Accreditation define a CSO as a nonprofit organization that “promotes, strengthens and helps realise the aims and objectives of the Asean Community.” Similarly, the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights defines a CSO as a group that helps “realise the aims and objectives of Asean activities…in the promotion and protection of human rights.”
Asean “encourages” CSOs to seek accreditation as a “privilege and opportunity,” not a right. Approval is based on assessment of a CSO’s “positive contribution” to Asean’s goals. As Malaysian political scientist Helen Nesadurai observed, Asean prefers “a civil society that will help it achieve the already established goals…rather than a civil society that will…help Asean set these goals.”
Australian political economist Kelly Gerard noted that participation spaces are “structured to prevent CSOs from contesting policy” and merely legitimize Asean’s agenda. This violates internationally accepted definitions of CSOs as independent actors with their own vision.
Asymmetry
The failure of CSO engagement is not merely a matter of Asean’s bad faith. It reflects a deeper contradiction: Asean is a neoliberal project first and a human rights project only as an insincere afterthought. The Asean Economic Community (AEC) has binding targets for tariff reduction, investment liberalization, and other corporate-friendly measures. Yet there is no comparable binding mechanism for environmental protection, labor rights, housing rights, or social protection.
This asymmetry reveals Asean’s true priorities. When CSOs demand accountability on human rights, they are told to respect “national sovereignty.” When corporations demand faster border clearance, Asean delivers new protocols within months. The reality is that Asean is a regional project of elites and oligarchies locked into a state-supported, market-centered process that privileges corporate profits.
The playing field is structurally tilted. For 20 years, the ACSC/APF played by rules designed to keep civil society at the margins. The time has come to write new rules.
Tireless efforts
For a long time, the ACSC/APF worked tirelessly to influence Asean. In a 2016 press release, it pleaded with Asean governments to recognize civil society “not as a threat, but as an important ally.” However, more forces within the ACSC/APF realized that the old way of engagement was futile. By 2017, the ACSC/APF was moving toward acknowledging the need for an alternative form of engagement.
Sounding the alarm over shrinking civic space, the 2017 Statement resolved to “develop and adopt a new vision…based on greater people-to-people interactions that will establish, expand and strengthen a new peoples’ regional integration process.” The 2019 Statement identified the task: to undertake “an alternative peoples’ regional integration based on the alternative practices of communities, sectors, and networks.”
Most significantly, the 2020 Hanoi ACSC/APF formally adopted a resolution to “overcome the frustration…of the 15-year engagement” by developing a new vision based on people-to-people interactions rather than state-to-state or market-oriented relations, leading to “a new peoples’ regional integration process.”
Alternative practices
One key lies in the 2020 resolution: an alternative regionalism “shall be based on…the alternative practices of peoples, networks, and organizations across the region’s societies.” These practices—political, economic, social, cultural—are deeply rooted in communities and basic sectors. They constitute a rich collection of empirical data that need to be distilled, compared, conceptualized, and developed into a paradigm and guide to action.
It is now up to CSOs, social movements, and their allies to take concrete steps in realizing this alternative regionalism. Here are examples of alternative practices:
Economic alternative practices. On the production side, social enterprises, producer cooperatives, and communities engage in sustainable food production: organic family farming, agroecology, biodiversity, zero-waste production, and indigenous agronomic practices (e.g., seed breeding). In marketing, direct consumer-producer linkages via alter-trade organizations and cooperatives strengthen cooperation between farmers and consumers, revive local markets, and use fair trade principles, counter-trade, and barter. In finance: credit cooperatives and alternative currency systems. In energy: community-based renewable systems (solar, wind, biogas). In information technology: community-managed connectivity systems.
Political alternative practices. Informal and formal networks of CSOs and social movements have operated for decades on environmental issues, women’s rights, workers’ and peasants’ rights, human rights, and human security. Joint advocacies and mass mobilizations occur during international gatherings. Lobbying with states and multilateral organizations, use of social media with emancipatory messages, and alternatives to traditional political parties (e.g., party-list systems) have emerged. A revived phenomenon is direct action through unilateral occupation of land and housing. Communities have also engaged in integrated regional socioeconomic planning and conflict settlement mechanisms.
Social alternative practices. Self-help groups and local networks coordinate social protection: community-based health systems guided by primary health care, “barefoot” health practitioners, and age-old healing practices including organic medicines. In education: folk schools, nonformal centers, lifelong learning. In shelter: vernacular architecture using indigenous designs, technologies, and materials. Peoples’ empowerment is the guiding principle.
Cultural alternative practices. Visual artists and cultural performers network through regional events showcasing Southeast Asia’s creative arts. Importantly, political and economic issues of concern to civil society are highlighted and represented in these cultural interactions.
What does alternative regionalism look like in practice? It is not a parallel summit or a rival bureaucracy. It is a mode of working that starts from the ground up. Where Asean builds highways for containers, alternative regionalism builds connections between farmers’ cooperatives across borders. Where Asean negotiates investment treaties that privilege foreign capital, alternative regionalism promotes fair trade agreements among peoples’ organizations.
A bold start: Massa
The Movement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (Massa) is a bold start toward realizing the goal of a peoples’ alternative integration at the regional level. Established in 2022, it is a convergence of peoples’ and grassroots organizations working to forge a new regional model of integration from below that challenges the Asean paradigm.
This alternative regionalism is based on the resistance and non-mainstream development practices that Southeast Asian peoples are already doing on the ground—guided by cooperation, solidarity, mutual benefit and sharing, the commons principle, and joint development. Currently, Massa has over 50 civil society partners and networks across the region, including from the Philippines, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma/Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia, and Cambodia.
The movement’s goals are:
1. Surfacing alternative practices through research and documentation.
2. Linking and facilitating knowledge sharing through people-to-people exchanges.
3. Popularizing alternative practices via workshops, conferences, solidarity actions, and social media.
4. Building and strengthening solidarity among practitioners.
5. Expanding solidarity networks regionally and globally.
Massa is not seeking accreditation from Asean. It is not asking for a seat at Asean’s table. Instead, it is building its own table—one where the peoples of Southeast Asia are hosts, not guests. The work is patient and long-term: documenting alternative practices of communities and sectors, linking them across the region and creating platforms where these practitioners exchange knowledge without waiting for government intervention and permission.
This is regionalism from below, and it is already more meaningful and substantive than most Asean three-pillar programs and projects. CS
This piece is a revised and shorter version of a presentation at the ACSC/APF 2024 Regional Steering Committee Meeting, May 29–31, 2024, Dili, Timor Leste (online).
