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Abstract

It has been argued that the non-interference principle is given more emphasis than democracy and human rights in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Yet a certain kind of consensus has emerged: ASEAN members may become involved in one another’s domestic affairs as long as they do so via ASEAN organs and instruments. This can be seen in co-operation on disaster management. Since the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre) was established in 2011, the definition of a “disaster” appropriate for regional management has been broadened. Careful analysis of this case shows that, each for its own strategic reasons, ASEAN organs and institutions began to be useful for both “giving” and “receiving” member states. This article’s analysis of strategic interaction among member states yields useful insights on how intervention via multi-lateral frameworks shapes both the behaviour of domestic decision-makers and the dynamics within regional organisations.

Keywords

Myanmar Philippines Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management organs non-interference principle humanitarian assistance disaster

Introduction

Non-interference, a cardinal principle in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since its founding in 1967, has remained embedded in its institutions even after the 2003 Declaration of ASEAN Concord II and the 2007 ASEAN Charter incorporated democracy and human rights as principles that ASEAN should support. The contradicting principles have been controversial in ASEAN policymaking. ASEAN has positioned its institutions to challenge the non-interference principle, and discussions of the principle’s practical, day-to-day relevance have sometimes occurred during ASEAN meetings. Nonetheless, the outcomes of these discussions tend to reinforce the importance of non-interference, and this is reflected in organisational behaviour in practice.

Many scholars have taken an interest in the continued vitality of ASEAN’s non-interference principle. Some argue that the influence of ASEAN’s non-democratic members has secured its retention, despite recent steps in the direction of prioritising democracy and human rights (Dosch, 2008; Gerard, 2014; Kuhonta, 2006). These analysts point to the trajectory of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) since its establishment in 2009. Non-democratic ASEAN members agreed to establish the AICHR in order to enhance ASEAN’s international reputation and legitimacy, but, ever since, they have successfully opposed the creation of an operational mandate for the organ (Munro, 2011; Ryu and Ortuoste, 2014). Others argue that the ASEAN Way, the principle of non-interference and search for accommodation and consensus, is embedded in ASEAN institutions and its style of diplomacy. ASEAN’s engagement with Myanmar is offered as a case in point (Acharya, 2001; Haacke, 2005).

On the other hand, it has been argued that importance of the non-interference principle varies by co-operation area. ASEAN institutions in economic co-operation (including the ASEAN Free Trade Area, AFTA) have become more intrusive, including mandatory mutual reduction of tariffs and liberalisation in investment and services, because each member state understands that these intrusively collective constraints are beneficial to its economic growth. Shared economic rationality enables members to agree to narrow the scope of economic sovereignty, despite this deviation from the non-interference principle (Khong and Nesadurai, 2007). But ASEAN institutions in other areas have not changed in the same way. In security issues, including non-traditional security issues, the non-interference principle still dominates ASEAN decision-making (Caballero-Anthony, 2008). Taking environmental co-operation as an example, Khong and Nesadurai (2007: 57) argue that “ASEAN members seemed more anxious about the extent to which strict compliance with regional environmental commitments would undermine national competitiveness than about the health effects of the haze.” Martel (2020) is among the scholars who argue that non-state actors have shaped national and regional discussions about the non-interference principle. Although this line of argument generally does not demonstrate measurable changes in ASEAN institutions or decision-making processes, it does suggest that application of the principle to organisational practice is hotly debated. How do ASEAN member states attempt to manage competing interpretations of the non-interference for conducting co-operation activities? This article aims to answer this question.

Adopting democracy and human rights as ASEAN principles has had some impact on interactions among member states. Since 2003, ASEAN member states seem to have developed a consensus that they could be engaged in each other’s domestic affairs, although no member state has denied the non-interference principle in so many words. They have also agreed to establish institutions and organs whose operations could conflict with the non-interference principle. Although some institutions and organs, such as the AICHR, have been (re)designed in consonance with the non-interference principle due to strong objections by non-democratic states, functions of these ASEAN institutions and organs could be inconsistent with the principle. In fact, some member states are beginning to use ASEAN organisations in a more intrusive way, mostly in order to pursue their national interests.

One typical example is the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre) established in Jakarta to implement decisions on disaster management, and be a focal point for international organisations and external countries as a member state seeks to respond to the human suffering that accompanies natural disasters. After developing experience in managing natural disasters, the AHA Centre was asked to assist in humanitarian relief efforts in the aftermath of human-induced disasters. Sometimes, the states that offered assistance focused more on their own national objectives than on the crisis they sought to have managed. Also, the states that induced the crisis also have domestic political incentives for accepting ASEAN “intervention.”

Given that the importance of the non-interference principle varies among fields of co-operation, it can be argued that member states take great care as they apply the principle to each field of co-operation. Therefore, it is possible to argue that the activities of the AHA Centre, mandated as an organ for natural disaster management, are less politically sensitive than those of the AICHR, and that the two organs’ different founding principles help to explain the variation in their attractiveness to ASEAN member states. In other words, the apparently non-political AHA Centre is allowed to participate in the management of domestic affairs, whereas the more explicitly political AICHR is not.

Taking the AHA Centre as an illustrative case, this article argues that ASEAN member states allow each other to intervene and be intervened in via ASEAN institutions when doing so is consistent with their strategic calculation of national interests. Both targeting and targeted states have national objectives in mind as they seek or oppose intervention. Targeted states might accept ASEAN intervention in order to divert or dampen international criticism on, for example, human rights violations. Myanmar might ask, rhetorically, “How can the international community claim that we are mistreating the Rohingya community after they see us doing everything we can – including welcoming regional humanitarian organisations – to care for members of this community?” Even so, such cases continue to be the exceptions rather than the rule. Most of the time, ASEAN member states are highly resistant to the idea that any external entity, including ASEAN, has the right to meddle in their domestic politics. Thus, since ASEAN decision-making processes take the will of targeted states into consideration, strategic interaction often ends up with the triumph of the non-interference principle: ASEAN remains relatively non-intrusive. And yet, ASEAN institutional “intervention” provides limits as well as opportunities for giving states, while allowing receiving states to accept assistance that comes without meddling. Repeated interactions of this kind broaden the comfortable zone of intervention among member states.

This article has three sections. First, it overviews the historical development of ASEAN institutions and organs regarding the non-interference principle up to the establishment of the AHA Centre in 2011, and introduces an analytical scheme on how organs expand their roles to explain the development of the AHA Centre, which is the topic of the second and third sections. The second section explains the initial design of the AHA Centre, which was limited to managing humanitarian relief in the aftermath of natural disasters. The third section explains why and how this role was expanded to include the management of humanitarian relief in the aftermath of human-made crises. Implications of the argument on the non-interference principle and its role in ASEAN institutions are discussed throughout and especially in the conclusion.

Non-Interference in ASEAN Institutions as Their Roles Evolve

In the late 1990s, ASEAN started discussing how it might assist in regional security management without contravening the non-interference principle. In 1998, Thailand’s foreign minister, Surin Pitsuwan, advocated a reform of the principle to include what he called “flexible engagement.” At first, the proposal was rejected outright by all member states except the Philippines, a toned down “enhanced interaction,” which allowed for public criticism of domestic problems and policies, was later accepted (Coe, 2019: 140; Haacke, 1999; Luhulima, 2000). In 1999, Singapore invented an ad-hoc ASEAN “retreat,” where member states could discuss politically sensitive issues in private. This successful initiative was later institutionalised (Oishi and Ghani, 2016: 96–98).¹ This tentative swing towards interference was balanced with a non-interference-oriented institution in 2000, when the ASEAN Troika – the foreign ministers of the present, past, and future ASEAN chairs – was set up to ensure continuity in the ASEAN approach to issues that might arise.² The Troika was mandated to carry out its work in accordance with consensus and non-interference, and to refrain from addressing issues that constitute the internal affairs of member countries (ASEAN, 2000; ASEAN Secretariat, 2003: 90–93). To date, no country has called upon the services of the Troika.

The role and relevance of ASEAN non-interference was next discussed in 2003, when the declaration of ASEAN Concord II introduced democracy as an ASEAN principle (ASEAN, 2003). Since then, ASEAN’s official agenda has included domestic issues, starting with discussions about Myanmar and later about Thailand. For example, when at least 70 people associated with Myanmar’s National League for Democracy were killed in Depayin township in 2003, foreign ministers expressed their collective concern about the slow pace of democratisation in Myanmar and requested national reconciliation.³ Based on the ASEAN Charter, which came into effect in 2008 (ASEAN, 2007), ASEAN took what might have been a big step towards domestic interference by mandating the newly established AICHR in 2009 to promote and not merely protect human rights (ASEAN, 2009). This institution has been criticised for not living up to its mandate in practice (Davies, 2014), yet it has become a forum where apparent human rights violations can be reported. At AICHR meetings between 2016 and 2018, for example, Indonesia and Malaysia repeatedly alleged that the Myanmar government had committed human rights violations (Jakarta Post, 6 December 2018).

Indonesia initiated several other proposals to make ASEAN more intrusive, including the creation of a peacekeeping force in 2003 (Jakarta Post, 16; 18 June 2003). This proposal was rejected by the other member states, but led to the 2011 establishment of the ASEAN Peacekeeping Centres Network as an arrangement for maintaining peace and stability in the region by promoting co-operation among the armed forces of member states, including sharing experiences, expertise, and related peacekeeping capacities (na Thalang and Siraprapasiri, 2016: 134–137). Indonesia also supported strengthening the ASEAN dispute settlement mechanism. The 2010 Protocol to the ASEAN Charter on Dispute Settlement Mechanisms gives the ASEAN chair or the ASEAN Secretary-General roles of good offices, mediation, and conciliation (ASEAN, 2010). In 2011, not only as ASEAN chair, but also as an enthusiastic independent actor, Indonesia attempted to play a mediation role during a territorial dispute between Cambodia and Thailand. After the Preah Vihear temple was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, both Thailand and Cambodia insisted the land surrounding the temple was its own territory. Although initially rejecting ASEAN intervention, the two countries finally agreed to mediation by Indonesia, which led to an agreement to receive observers from Indonesia in the border area (ASEAN, 2011b). The initial success of Indonesia’s mediation was largely due to the efforts of an ambitious diplomat, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa (Chachavalpongpun, 2013: 80). However, the agreement collapsed after Thailand reversed its position and rejected the deployment of Indonesian observers on its territory (Singhaputargun, 2016: 129). Here again, we see a theoretically intrusive ASEAN institution that, in practice, yielded to the preferences of the targeted state.

ASEAN also established potentially intrusive institutions in non-traditional security issues. In 1997–1998, haze from fires that originated in Indonesia became a high-alert issue in Singapore and Malaysia as well as Indonesia itself. ASEAN member states signed the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP) in 2002 to prevent, monitor, and mitigate fires in order to control transboundary haze pollution through concerted national, regional, and international co-operation (ASEAN, 2002). The Conference of the Parties (COP) to AATHP was established in 2003, and the potentially intrusive, Singapore-proposed ASEAN Sub-Regional Haze Monitoring System came online in 2013. In 2014, Indonesia finally ratified the AATHP, thus formally agreeing to make the substantial investments needed to tackle the haze problem created on its territory. However, co-operation moved slowly, due to Indonesia’s lack of will and capacity to implement the agreement. Neither the AATHP nor ASEAN more generally contained mechanisms that could compel Indonesia to act more quickly.

The above ASEAN institutions and organs are all potentially intrusive, but most of them revealed themselves to be non-intrusive once the details of their mandates were articulated or implemented in practice. Studies on organisations point out that all organisations are destined to change their roles from their initial design. In analysing decision-making in international organisations, Cox and Jacobson (1973: 7) argue that “once international organisations are established, in many instances they evolve in ways that could not have been foreseen by their founders.” In analysing the roles of secretariats, Jinnah (2014: 31) explains that “secretariat mandates are both fixed in treaty texts (fixed mandates) and evolve over time through official decision-making processes (evolving mandates).” Given these mandates, secretariats exerted influence by filtering information flow, shaping definitions of critical concepts such as refugees, knowledge brokering, negotiation facilitation, and capacity-building of some member states (Jinnah, 2014: 45–53).

These arguments can explain the development of ASEAN institutions. On the one hand, potentially intrusive ASEAN institutions and organs turned out to be non-intrusive in practice. On the other, apparently non-intrusive organs became increasingly intrusive. It should be noted that, given its basic intergovernmental structure, ASEAN organs and their officials are less autonomous than the secretariats and international bureaucracies of other international organisations. Also, their formal mandates for policymaking are likely to be limited, compared with other international bureaucracies. Both aspects constrain organisational change. As such, this article makes the following assumptions. First, because a consensus among member states is required before the mandate of an ASEAN organ can be broadened, formal mandate expansion is unlikely, regardless of the ambitions and intentions of officials who work with the organ. However, second, it is possible for concrete roles to evolve within the context of a fixed mandate. In this event, evolving roles can be interpreted as consistent with the original roles envisioned in a mandate that has not been amended. This is the story of the AHA Centre. In order to realise their own interests and policy objectives, member states manoeuvred to expand its roles in practice, even as they were circumscribing its fixed roles.

This article uses the experience of the AHA Centre to support a more general argument: ASEAN member state decisions about intervening and allowing intervention via ASEAN institutions are based on strategic calculations of national interest. Analysis of the AHA Centre shows that its role developed as a result of strategic moves by Malaysia and Indonesia. These changes were accepted to a certain degree by the Philippines and Myanmar, which calculated that doing so would help each of them to realise its own interests and policy objectives as it dealt with a specific domestic problem.

AHA Centre for Natural Disaster Management

Established in Jakarta in 2011, the AHA Centre has become a focal point among international organisations, external countries, and member states facing a humanitarian crisis in the wake of a natural disaster. However, the story of ASEAN co-ordination for disaster relief goes back to 2005; one year after a tsunami ravaged Aceh, Indonesia, ASEAN member states signed the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) (ASEAN, 2005). Its development was also encouraged by the movement that sparked the global Hyogo Framework Action of 2005 (Rum, 2016: 503–504).

The next tentative step towards regional co-ordination occurred in 2008, when the Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar. Although disaster management is fundamentally humanitarian, it is also closely associated with governance and internal security: decisions about distribution are inherently political, and citizens might misinterpret even well-intended decisions to send relief supplies to one community rather than another. In addition, a government might be concerned about what relief providers could see as they did their humanitarian work. For these reasons, Myanmar initially declined to accept any disaster relief assistance from the international community due to concerns about interference in its internal affairs (Amador, 2009).

ASEAN sought to insert itself into this delicate political-humanitarian space, and the principles embedded in AADMER enabled it to do so in a way Myanmar was ready to accept. Indeed, it chaired the Trilateral Core Group, an AADMER innovation that also included representatives from ASEAN and the UN, and was responsible for overall implementation of the effort (ASEAN Secretariat, 2010). ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan played a crucial bridging role between Myanmar and external parties, including the UN (Oishi and Ghani, 2016: 104–105; Rum, 2016: 504–505). In short, Myanmar accepted relief assistance from ASEAN, the UN, and individual countries through this ASEAN-led mechanism because its own leadership role enabled it to secure its interests and demonstrate its state strength.

In 2011, the AHA Centre was established with substantial material and political support from Indonesia, where it is headquartered. It quickly sought to clarify two key questions: what would it do, and who, exactly, would do it? One answer to the “what” question can be found in the statements of ministers at the time. Even Indonesia, which generally is the strongest supporter of more intrusive ASEAN organs, acknowledged that the Centre’s operations would be limited to co-ordinating collective responses to natural disasters (Bangkok Post, 30 October 2011).⁴ This perspective is consistent with AHA Centre practice. The Centre played a leading co-ordinating role in the aftermaths of Typhoon Bapha in the Philippines in December 2012, Cyclone Mahasen in Myanmar in May 2013, the Aceh’s Bener Meriah earthquake in July 2013, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013, flooding in Laos and an earthquake in Indonesia in 2018 (Rum, 2016: 492).⁵

However, one can also look to an organisation’s mandate for hints about what it will do and along which trajectory it might evolve. The AHA Centre’s mandate is surprisingly broad. According to the Agreement on the Establishment of the AHA Centre, disaster means “a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses” (ASEAN, 2011a: 3). The AHA Centre was expected to receive and disseminate information on risk level of identified hazards; collect data on earmarked assets and capacities for the regional standby arrangement to disaster relief; facilitate joint emergency response, assistance, the processing of transit of personnel, equipment, and other facilities; and share information with relevant international organisations (ASEAN, 2011a: 4–5).

Crucially, the causes of such disruptions are not mentioned. The AHA Centre is mandated to function for all disasters, and not be limited to natural disasters. The idea is that, on the ground, the aftermath of both natural and human-made disasters looks the same: people need food, clothing, shelter, and medical supplies. The practical, humanitarian task is the same, and the country to receive aid after a human-made disaster can be expected to seek safeguards from unwanted meddling by regional partners who are providing much-needed assistance – even more so than in the context of a natural disaster. So, it makes sense that the AHA Centre should be positioned to do both, even though such positioning in no way guarantees that it in fact would be used for relief provision after human-made disasters.

The answer to the “who” question is also fraught with political implications. The AHA Centre has a skeleton staff, with only twenty-seven experts in 2018 (Straits Times, 4 August 2018) and thirty-one in early 2019, with a prospect of increasing its number (Interview by the author at the AHA Centre, 24 January 2020). This staff is sufficient for monitoring and co-ordinating assistance, but actual deployment of relief items and human resources is conducted by member states. Each member state has its own National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and, collectively, these NDMAs comprise the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM), AHA Centre’s governing body. These NDMAs tend to be dominated by military or para-military actors and thus cannot be expected to be a neutral and impartial humanitarian actor (Trias and Gong, 2020: 15). These military-dominated NDMAs play major logistical roles during AHA Centre operations. This situation was supported by ASEAN more broadly in 2009, when the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) released a concept paper that encouraged the use of ASEAN military assets and capacities for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (ADMM, 2009). Others have argued that involving the military in regional disaster management could also help ASEAN countries redefine the role of the armed forces (Rum, 2016: 506–507). Indonesia established National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB) in 2008 as an NDMA that is exclusively in charge of disaster management. It could be argued that the establishment has a hidden agenda to accommodate the military.

The overall division of labour is straightforward. AHA Centre professional staff work to monitor situations of disasters and generate a consensus about what member states would provide and how their relief items would be delivered. Actual delivery and distribution are dominated by military units of member states, their NDMAs, that have been detached from their normal duties for these clearly defined and delimited operations. In the case of Typhoon Haiyan, the AHA Centre monitored the development from the beginning, and also extended direct assistance to Philippines-led disaster response operations by erecting pre-fabricated offices and warehouses and facilitating the delivery of relief goods such as food, water, emergency shelters, and hygiene kits through its NDMA (AHA Centre, 2018c: 19). Several member states sent relief goods on their own ships or aircraft; they also gave financial support to the Philippines through bilateral channels as well as the AHA Centre (AHA Centre, 2014: 26–27). After the Bohol earthquake in 2013, the AHA Centre deployed its officers and ASEAN-Emergency Response and Assistance Team (ERAT) members to monitor the situation on the ground, as well as providing 250 family tents and 250 family kits. The Government of Malaysia, through its National Security Council (MKN) and the Royal Malaysia Air Force (RMAF), provided two air carriers (C–130) to transport relief items from the ASEAN emergency stockpile in Subang, Malaysia to Mactan Air Force Base in Cebu, the Philippines. Further, the Philippines Air Force and the Philippines Navy transported the relief items to affected areas (AHA Centre, 2014: 30). For the Lombok earthquake, the Centre deployed its ERAT members to give evaluation of the need, and supported the Indonesian NDMA, BNPB, to mobilise relief items from the region’s stockpile (AHA Centre, 2019: 26).

Evolving Role for Human-Made Disasters

After activating the implementation of disaster management particularly for several natural disasters, the Centre began to be engaged in managing human-induced disasters. Its formal mandate is not limited to disaster relief after natural disasters; thus, its engagement in human-induced ones is still within its mandate, but against practices and consensus. Hence, extensive political discussions preceded each relief operation. In 2016, Indonesia was chair of the ACDM and the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Disaster Management (AMMDM) at the same time, and used this opportunity to strengthen ASEAN disaster management capabilities (Sudirman and Putra, 2018). Generally, it is hard to distinguish between human-made and natural disasters, and AADMER operations are sometimes hindered because some members are reluctant to share sensitive yet valuable information that is held by their military and police forces (di Floristella, 2016). Sometimes, the challenge goes one level deeper, when military and police officials refuse to share information with their country’s political decision-makers. Despite these domestic challenges, national leaders are sensitive to international criticism and thus can be expected to do their best to at least appear to support humanitarian efforts, even for crises they set in motion. Near the end of 2016, the huge outflow of Rohingya refugees from Rakhine State into Bangladesh generated the first discussions about using the AHA Centre for humanitarian responses to human-induced disasters. However, the first actual operation of this kind centred on the city of Marawi, in the Philippines.

In May 2017, 400,000 people were displaced from Marawi as the Philippines army launched a large-scale effort to root out anti-government groups affiliated to the Islamic State (IS) (Straits Times, 23 October 2017). The IS-affiliated group included Malaysian and Indonesian nationals, and these governments argued that they should have a voice in how their citizens would be treated (Nation, 10 June 2017). This disaster included elements that are consistent with ASEAN interventions in a variety of issue areas (Suzuki, 2019), namely a blurry line between humanitarian and political considerations, and regional spillover effects. The AHA Centre co-ordinated the collection of relief items (such as personal hygiene kits, family tents, family kits, kitchen sets, and water filtration units) and arranged for their transport from Subang, Malaysia aboard two Malaysian military aircraft on 19 July 2017.⁶

Malaysia had security interests in the Marawi crisis and showed intentions to be engaged in the crisis. It initiated a joint sea patrol with Indonesia and the Philippines, followed by a trilateral air patrol (Bangkok Post, 7 June 2017) in its effort to quash the remaining IS forces. The proposal was accepted by Indonesia and the Philippines, and the sea and air patrol were launched in June and October respectively (Straits Times, 19 June 2019; 12 October 2017). Although operation of the AHA Centre was very focused on specific tasks and kept a low profile throughout its mission, compared to its responses to natural disasters (Trias and Gong, 2020: 14–15), it was a good opportunity for Malaysia to be involved in the crisis by utilising the AHA Centre in order to show its willingness to stop spillover effects of IS-related movements.

Interestingly the Philippines accepted the support from Malaysia, largely for two reasons. First, the Philippines admitted it was not equipped to deal with the crisis and the Philippines Defence Secretary expressed the need for training in urban settings (Channel NewsAsia, 4 August 2017). The government accepted assistance in principle from countries within ASEAN and beyond (Channel NewsAsia, 19 July 2017). At the request of the Philippines government, the US special forces joined the battle to crush militants holed up in Marawi, although its role was limited to technical assistance (Channel NewsAsia, 10 June 2017). Second and relatedly, the Philippines accepted Malaysia’s position that the situation was urgent along many dimensions: Islamic terrorism was a global phenomenon that spilled both into and out of the Philippines; stabilising the situation was crucial for separating peaceful Filipino Muslims from the tiny minority of violent individuals, as well as weakening links in the global IS network – including links in Malaysia. To these ends, the Malaysian Defence Minister urged a special meeting among ASEAN defence ministers to share experiences and enhance intelligence co-operation (Channel NewsAsia, 25 July 2017). In addition to its own national fighters, Malaysia warned that ASEAN was now also dealing with the return of foreign fighters who were fleeing from crackdowns in the Middle East (Channel NewsAsia, 12 October 2017).

It can be argued that the assistance to the Philippines was possible because Malaysia’s support was conducted through the AHA Centre, an ASEAN mechanism that enables it to claim its non-interference principle whenever necessarily. Other members agreed with an evolving role of the AHA Centre. Singapore’s Home Affairs and Law Minister admitted “the AHA role will be expanded” (Straits Times, 19 August 2017).

The problem of the Rohingya has rarely been off the ASEAN agenda since 2014, but the first moment of intervention occurred in 2017. The AHA Centre’s first involvement in this human-induced humanitarian crisis dates to August 2017, when another massive outflow of Rohingya refugees was reported after attacks by the Myanmar military, this time in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. More than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to leave the Rakhine state and go to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where the Bangladesh government struggled to cope with the influx.

The international community viewed the Rohingya issue as a collection of serious human rights violations. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) established an independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar in March 2017 (UNHRC, 2017), but Myanmar did not allow the mission to enter the country. The mission nonetheless issued a report in September 2018 that recommended, among other things, the investigation and prosecution of senior Myanmar military generals in an international criminal tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (UNHRC, 2018). In December 2017, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the Resolution calling upon the Myanmar government to end the systematic violation and abuse of human rights of the Rohingya community (UNGA, 2017b).

During the December 2017 UN debate, the Myanmar government sought to convince the world that it was doing its best to manage the humanitarian crisis associated with this massive population movement. Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN emphasised his country’s efforts to tackle this problem, as well as its willingness to receive humanitarian assistance through the AHA Centre (UNGA, 2017a). This implies that Myanmar attempted to deflect international criticism by accepting international assistance from the AHA Centre. Myanmar’s leaders agreed to allow the AHA Centre to enter the country and provide relief services, as long as Centre activities were conducted under government supervision and in co-operation with domestic organisations like the National Disaster Management Organisation in Yangon (AHA Centre, 2018a: 24). The country opened its borders to the AHA Centre, which facilitated the provision of eighty tonnes of relief items between October 2017 and January 2018. Additional relief items were procured locally by utilising a S$100,000 contribution from the Government of Singapore (AHA Centre, 2018b).

In November 2018, the statement released at the end of the 33rd ASEAN Summit “welcomed the invitation extended by Myanmar to the AHA Centre to dispatch a needs assessment team to identify possible areas of cooperation in Rakhine State to facilitate the repatriation process” and reiterated ASEAN’s readiness to support Myanmar (ASEAN, 2018). On this authority, ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi visited Rakhine state in December 2018, where he observed the process of repatriating Rohingya refugees and identifying possible areas for co-operation in Rakhine state (Jakarta Post, 17 January 2019).

Among the member states, Indonesia was most supportive of a larger role for the AHA Centre in Myanmar, including its assistance in the Rohingya repatriation process, which is closely related to the management of human rights issues and perilously close to such delicate questions as citizenship and immigration (Jakarta Post, 17 November 2018). At the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat in Chiang Mai in January 2019, ASEAN formally agreed to allow the AHA Centre to take part in the coming comprehensive assessment and to monitor the repatriation process (Jakarta Post, 2; 14 March 2019). The Thai foreign minister emphasised the changed, broadened role for the AHA Centre: “the issue in Rakhine state is not only about humanitarian assistance, but also about repatriation” (Bangkok Post, 29 April 2018). Malaysia also supported the move, expressing concerns that Islamic extremists could exploit the Rohingya crisis by infiltrating the refugee camps and radicalising the refugees (New Straits Times, 8 September; 26 October 2017). This was not an idle concern. Malaysian police had detected several Malaysians who had entered Myanmar to fight alongside the Rohingya, and the Malaysian government feared that the actions of such radicalised infiltrators would increase the likelihood of new terror (Straits Times, 26 September 2017).⁷

In March 2019, the ASEAN-ERAT, a division within the AHA Centre, visited Rakhine state “to conduct needs assessment to identify areas that ASEAN can offer to facilitate the repatriation process so it’s very focused – it’s just to facilitate,” according to Adelina Kama, AHA Centre executive director (Channel NewsAsia, 10 June 2019).⁸ The ERAT report estimated just 500,000 refugees, 200,000 below other credible estimates (Nation, 11 June 2019), and avoided mentioning the human rights abuses against the Rohingya during the military crackdown of 2017 (Bangkok Post, 19 June 2019). Following its recommendations, ASEAN member states agreed to have an in-country ASEAN-ERAT training programme based in Myanmar to support the repatriation process (Jakarta Post, 29 May 2019). Although not clearly announced, the programme was expected to serve Myanmar’s interests. The ERAT report also recommended the dispatch of a high-level mission to Cox’s Bazar to investigate the living situation of the Rohingya refugees. The mission was led by the Myanmar government and included representatives from the ASEAN Secretariat and the AHA Centre, including an ASEAN-ERAT member, to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, from 27 to 29 July 2019 (Jakarta Post, 5 August 2019). It implies that activities of the AHA Centre neither violated the ASEAN non-interference principle nor touched directly upon human rights issues. The AHA Centre and its ERAT in Myanmar continue to be closely monitored by the Myanmar government.

Looking forward, the AHA Centre might become an alternative ASEAN organ to the AICHR to deal with the Rohingya issue. As mentioned earlier, Indonesia and Malaysia advocated that the AICHR should have functions for protecting human rights, such as investigating claims of human rights violations and reporting their findings. At the AICHR meetings between 2016 and 2018, the two countries continued to allege that the Myanmar government had committed human rights violations (Jakarta Post, 6 December 2018). The willingness of Indonesia and Malaysia to expand the role of the AHA Centre could be derived partly from their frustration that they never succeeded in persuading the other member states to strengthen the role of the AICHR. It should be noted, however, that Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim-majority states, attempted to improve their domestic reputations as global protectors of Islam; their claims against Myanmar arguably were motivated more by their domestic interests than by their fundamental interest in human rights issues (Ekklesia and Fitrian, 2018). The AICHR continues to be blocked from collaborating with the UN fact-finding mission to Myanmar (Jakarta Post, 17 November 2018). While blocking the AICHR, Myanmar accepted the AHA Centre, partly to divert international criticism in its own favourable way, which was influenced by its successful experience in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. As it did from the ASEAN assistance in Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar could expect the Centre’s actions to be in line with the country’s political interest in avoiding criticism about human rights violations. The AHA Centre eventually became a focal point of among ASEAN member states about how to frame the Rohingya issue.

Conclusion

The nature of disaster management as humanitarian assistance enables members to intervene in domestic affairs without explicitly provoking controversy on the non-interference principle. In other words, engagement in disaster management can disguise commitments to intervene in internal affairs, including in politically sensitive issues such as human rights. Using professional humanitarian relief organisations can provide room for strategic interest calculation and interaction among the member states. The AHA Centre, like every ASEAN institution and organ, was utilised to serve the interests and policy objectives of ASEAN member states. Once established, the Centre’s role has evolved via its interactions with self-interested member states. The interesting point is that both targeted and targeting states shared a common interest in the AHA Centre’s evolution into an organisation with a broader mandate than the one it was born with.

The AHA Centre was originally expected to perform humanitarian relief activities after natural disasters such as typhoons and tsunamis. However, its role evolved gradually to dealing with human-induced disasters. The Centre was one of the few ASEAN organs to have its own staff and budget, which provide it with a certain amount of autonomy as it implements decisions in specific issue areas. This infrastructure was established with substantial support from Indonesia, which had its own reasons for mobilising its military in this way. Other member states also saw value in providing their militaries with new roles, and this conjoining of interests led to shaping the ADMM agreement on usage of military personnel for disaster management in 2009.

Facing crises in Marawi and the Rakhine state, the AHA Centre was tapped to take charge of the regional response. Malaysia was deeply involved in the Marawi crisis and was a main contributor of relief supplies. In Myanmar, both Malaysia and Indonesia condemned the Myanmar government for gross violations of human rights against the Rohingya, who, like the vast majority of Malaysians and Indonesians, are Muslims. These charges were part of their strategies to boost political support from their own Muslim constituencies. Indonesia in particular supported strengthening the role of the AHA Centre to deal with the crisis and generated an ASEAN consensus to send an ERAT team to Myanmar to investigate the situation. The affected member states, the Philippines and Myanmar, accepted involvement of the AHA Centre because doing so was consistent with their national priorities. The Philippines accepted assistance from Malaysia through the AHA Centre in order to deal with spillover effects of its crisis. Myanmar did so to divert international criticism by showing that it was willing to accept outside assistance. Their acceptance of a specifically ASEAN organ ensured a certain high level of non-interference, yet it also indicated a continued crawl towards greater ASEAN intrusiveness.

This article contributes to theories on organisations in two aspects. First, the AHA Centre case study includes data that supports the organisation-theoretical work of Cox and Jacobson (1973), Jinnah (2014), and others. Specifically, the case study supports the theoretical idea that organisational practices shape the evolving roles of organs. Second, the case study presented here supports the position that, compared to its counterparts around the world, ASEAN continues to be a non-intrusive regional organisation. At this time, AHA Centre intrusiveness is the exception to the ASEAN non-interference rule. Still, this change is significant. Attempts by Malaysia and Indonesia to utilise the AHA Centre and acceptance by the Philippines and Myanmar, respectively, could become precedents or reference points for future actions. It is possible that, at some point, other members also would find a confluence of their own national objectives and “intervention” in fellow member states.

The analysis in this article also invokes a discussion on intervention via regional organisations. Nowadays, unilateral intervention does not attain legitimacy in the international community even when it is clearly humanitarian in nature. Humanitarian intervention or assistance is more likely to be accepted when it is invoked in multi-lateral frameworks. Regional organisations, as well as the UN, provide countries with tools for intervention. ASEAN is not an exception, although it is still non-intrusive.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Analysis of Current Affairs in Asia, FY2020 (Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization); FY2020 (the University of Tokyo).

Notes

Author Biography

Sanae Suzuki is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, Japan. She received a PhD in international relations at the the University of Tokyo. Her research interests include comparative analysis of regional organisations on conflict management, regional security in Southeast Asia, and ASEAN. Her publications include “Increasing ownership for intervention in ECOWAS,” African Security Review, 2020; “Exploring the roles of the AU and ECOWAS in West African conflicts,” South African Journal of International Affairs, 2020; and “Why is ASEAN not intrusive? Non-interference meets state strength,” Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies, 2019.

Email: suzuki@global.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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