As the Southeast Asian regional organisation steps into 2022 – maintaining and reaffirming its role as the central platform within which regional institutions are anchored – a clear direction for further consolidation could be distinguished.
While the Chairman’s Statement of the 38th and 39th ASEAN Summit expressed “concerns (…) by some ASEAN Member States on the land reclamations, activities, serious incidents in the area”(i.e. South China Sea), hinting at the territorial claims raised by China, ASEAN has largely displayed a conciliatory position, preferring to manage China’s rise by engaging Beijing in the organisation’s mechanisms and refraining from becoming part of containment strategies and groupings.
A clear signal of rejection toward any revisionist territorial land claims in the area has been sent by ASEAN through its reaffirmed urge to “pursue peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with the universally recognised principles of international law, including the 1982 UNCLOS”.
Concrete further steps have also been taken in the direction of resolving the on-going border disputes among the ASEAN members in the South China Sea. According to the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, in 2021, 17 rounds of border disputes negotiations have been conducted with the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, more than double the rounds held in 2020 (only 7). According to the Indonesian high dignitary, in 2022 Jakarta will intensify the negotiations in this regard, comprising both terrestrial and maritime borders.
With regard to the Indonesian-Malaysian border, Jakarta hopes to “sign treaties on the delimitation of the territorial waters in the Sulawesi Sea and on the most souther part of the Malacca Strait”. On the Indonesian-Philippines border, Indonesia plans to start negotiations “on technical level for the delimitation of continental platform and follow up the agreement for the delimitation of the continental platform and the exclusive economic zone with two separate lines”. Thirdly, Jakarta intends to continue the negotiations with Hanoi in order to reach an agreement on the limits of the exclusive economic zone in the waters close to the South China Sea.
With regard to the terrestrial boundaries, Jakarta intends to resolve the demarcation issues on its “eastern sector, including Sebatik island”, a peripheral island situated on the Eastern Coast of Borneo island, on which both Indonesia and Malaysia share border.
The Indonesian Foreign Minister further added that the border disputes need to be settled according to the norms of International Law, reaffirming Indonesia’s position on the South China Sea. Despite Indonesia does not consider itself involved in any territorial disputes with China – describing certain actions as “fishing incidents” – the Natuna Islands, situated between the Malaysian Peninsula and Borneo island falls within China’s “nine-dash line”, a demarcation line used by Beijing to claim a significant part of the South China Sea.
While the boundary delimitation negotiations have not been conducted within the ASEAN framework, their growing rate may signal a common will – at the level of the ASEAN Member States, with Indonesia as the driving force – to successfully resolve the on-going territorial disputes among Southeast Asian countries, thus building the premises for a more efficient – and better coordinated – approach of the claims raised by other states, outside ASEAN.It is thus not unlikely that, following concrete and pragmatic conclusions resulted from the border disputes negotiation among the ASEAN members, significant progress in the negotiations for a Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea could be witnessed in the year ahead.
Certainly, as every democratically-led organisation, ASEAN also faces certain effervescences in the light of the on-going situation in Myanmar. While maintaining its practice of non-interference, non-use of force and consensualism, ASEAN took slow yet determined steps into addressing the crisis generated by the 2021 military coup in Myanmar.ASEAN’sFive Point Consensus and the appointment of a Special Envoy on Myanmar, have generated positive reactions at United Nations level, as well as in the European Union, United States and China, stressing on the “ASEAN Centrality” as the linchpin of the Myanmar crisis. Furthermore, ASEAN’s decision to invite General Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the military junta, to the ASEAN’s Leaders’ Meeting in April 2021, but to exclude the General from the ASEAN Summit held in October 2021, signalled both willingness to mitigate the crisis as well as a firm hand in implementing the consensually agreed measures.
It is in this context that, according to media sources, a meeting among the Foreign Ministers of the ASEAN Member States scheduled on January 17 has been postponed due to differences on the approach of the military junta of Myanmar. According to the authorities in Cambodia, which holds the rotating presidency of the organisation in 2022, travel difficulties that would have prevented the presence of some foreign ministers have been cited as the main reason of postponement.
As, so far, the Naypydaw authorities seem to not have entirely followed the “Five Point Consensus” advanced by ASEAN, it is not impossible that certain differences of opinion with regard to approaching the crisis in Myanmar may have arisen at ASEAN level.Inter alia, the Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah, opposed further inviting members of the military junta at the ASEAN-level meetings, citing lack of progress in implementing the organisation’s “Five Point Consensus”. Moreover, the Singaporean Prime Minister proposed the ASEAN Chair Hun Sen that ASEAN’s approach to Myanmar “had to be based on new facts”.
While sincere debates and diversity of opinions are sine qua non characteristics of any democratic regional organisation, the various scenarios for approaching Myanmar at ASEAN level may indicate a potentially challenging year ahead for the Southeast regional organisation.
Suggestively, ASEAN’s main headlines in the first half of January may hint at three of the most significant prospects of the regional organisation in 2022: negotiating an effective and substantive Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, mitigating the Myanmar crisis in accordance with the will of its people and – most importantly – interacting with stakeholders to maintain peace and stability in the region. Clearly, the 2022 prospects essentially fall under ASEAN’s stakeholder outreach in the light of “ASEAN Centrality”, one of the most significant instruments in reaching the regional organisation’s aims and purposes, as set in the ASEAN Declaration as early as 1967.
G.N.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position or view of IRSEA.