When the Asean Economic Community was officially launched in 2015, the rhetoric was intoxicating. A single market and production base. The free flow of skilled labor. A region where a Filipino engineer could compete on equal footing with a Singaporean counterpart, where a Filipino nurse could work in a hospital in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok...
Tag: asean
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Marcos urged to push proposed Maritime Zones Act in the face of China’s ‘10-dash’ line map
China’s latest map should not distract the Philippine government from addressing the more “disconcerting” Chinese harassment of Philippine vessels in the West Philippine Sea, according to a foreign affairs and security analyst. If anything, said Lucio B. Pitlo III, the map with a new 10-dash line that still encompasses parts of the Philippines’ 370-kilometer exclusive...
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A new path for Southeast Asian civil society engagement with Asean
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) marks its 56th year in 2023 and holds its 43rd summit of leaders in September in Jakarta, the second such meeting of the year. Asean is guided by these principles drawn up in 1976: mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, and national identity of all...
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Asean’s divisive responses to the Covid-19 pandemic
The responses of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) as a regional grouping to Covid-19 have been divisive, unclear, nonconsultative, impromptu, and driven by divergent policies, leading its member-states to control the pandemic individually and independently of each other. These are the assessments of observers among think tanks, media outfits, and independent researchers. A...