ASEAN gears up to build security community

Lilian Budianto, The Jakarta Post, Cha-am, Thailand | Mon, 03/02/2009 2:13 PM  

Border disputes, human trafficking and illegal logging will pose great challenges to ASEAN member states as they gear up to live under one security community umbrella by 2015. 

As member states clinched their commitment under the ASEAN Charter and adopted the blueprint for security community during the 14th ASEAN Summit in Thailand last weekend, relations among members in the 41-year-old bloc have remained testy, with the thorny issue of border security threatening to jeopardize the idea of a security pillar. 

Analysts have warned the vague concept of a security community amid the lack of commonality in standards of maintaining border security and settling disputes among member states might render the charter a toothless document. 

Philip S. Robertson Jr., adviser to the Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Regional Cooperation in Human Development (SEARCH) human development group, said the governments were left with a raft of homework to improve their security gaps before they could really implement the idea of one community. However, he highlighted the governments' "lack of political will" as a major obstacle to any good ideas they had given birth to. 

"They might tell the public about how much or how well they have progressed at the negotiation tables, but at the end there's not much to expect. Disputes will prolong and it's just an on-and-off matter," Robertson said. 

Member states have been faced with many disputes over their border security and boundaries, which have sparked military tensions and some ominous saber rattling. Standoffs have spilled over to the political stage and triggered exchanges of arguments among politicians, such as between Indonesia and Malaysia. Both countries have been locked in a dispute over the oil-rich Ambalat maritime area in the Sulawesi Sea, off the northern coast of Kalimantan, since the 1980s. 

Although the idea of using the ASEAN forum to settle disputes might strengthen the region's leverage on the global stage, a foreign minister in the region said member states might be underwhelmed with the idea. 

"Border disputes are a very sensitive matter," said the minister, who refused to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. 

"If solved in a regional forum and later *the body* has to rule in favor of a certain country, there could be tensions, not only between the two *conflicting* countries, but also *among members* in the whole region." 

Despite the many disagreements over how ASEAN should handle border disputes or disputes triggered by a lack of security, ASEAN governments have committed to cooperating with each other in the bloc, home to more than half a billion people. 

There is no shortage of problems in the region. Member countries often quarrel over the issues of illegal fishing, illegal logging, human trafficking, migrant workers, haze, pollution control and border disputes. 

Antara reported that Indonesia suffered US$3 billion a year in losses from illegal fishing in its vast waters, amid a lack of human resources to control its maritime borders. Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand have long been countries of origin for human trafficking victims destined for Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and a number of European countries. 

On haze and pollution, ASEAN members have yet to reach agreement on a control mechanism. Indonesian lawmakers rejected in 2008 a bill that would have allowed the government to ratify the ASEAN treaty on trans-boundary haze control. They argued ASEAN members would first have to agree on measures to curb illegal logging from Indonesia to a number of ASEAN countries before they could proceed on the haze control issue. Haze from Indonesian forest fires has become the center of the issue as it disrupts flights and creates breathing problems for residents of neighboring Malaysia and Singapore. 

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said all members should improve the way they sorted through their disputes and engaged themselves more on the regional stage for a better new community. 

"If you want to be taken seriously as a regional organization, members have to sort through their problems in a manner that is acceptable to the international community. Whether conducted in informal or formal talks, *problems* should be addressed among them. We are now under a new chapter of ASEAN and members should not jeopardize it," Surin said in Cha-am, Thailand.