For decades since the 1970s, Southeast Asia has enjoyed a period of relative peace. It has been called ‘an abode for peace’ given the absence of inter-state conflicts between states in the region. This was an achievement given that in the early 1960s, Southeast Asia was then regarded as the ‘Balkans of the East’ since the region was rife with conflicts between the maritime states of Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines, and shadow of the 2nd Indochina wars still looming across the mainland Southeast Asia.

Much of the transformation from an environment characterised by enmity and instability to peace and security was attributed to the conscious efforts by states to come together and establish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (asean). Founded in 1967, asean as many scholars had described became a critical regional mechanism for states in Southeast Asia to manage inter-state relations and prevent conflicts.¹ For all intents and purposes, asean was deemed largely instrumental in managing regional conflicts and achieving a relative state of peace and security in Southeast Asia. This peace dividend became essential factor in the rapid economic development and significant economic growth achieved by many countries in the region. Four decades later, the continuing quest for peaceful change reached its heights with the transformation of asean from an ‘ordinary’ regional organisation to an asean Community anchored on the three community pillars, namely the asean Political-Security Community (apsc), asean Economic Community (aec) and asean Socio-Cultural Community (asean Community). The envisioned asean community in the 20th century was a ‘democratic, just, peaceful, prosperous, caring and sharing’.²

However, in what appeared to be a peaceful transformation of Southeast Asia belied the unsettled intra-state conflicts which were largely unattended by asean.³ This was a conscious decision taken by asean to leave domestic conflicts for member states to manage and resolve internally, without interference from other member state of the grouping and external powers. This approach was defined by the norms and practices that asean has developed in order to achieve harmonious inter-state relations and regional stability. While asean’s normative framework proved successful during its formative and consolidation period, this approach has increasingly been tested in a rapidly changing regional environment. On one hand, simmering internal conflicts can no longer be ignored as contentious issues of self-determination, exclusion and marginalisation, and atrocities and human rights abuses surface and rock the foundations of nation building and regional resilience. On the other, are new and emerging transnational security challenges that require collective action and decisive response. These include climate change and its attendant challenges such as water and food security, extreme weather events that have caused massive population displacements, irregular migration and refugee crises, human trafficking, environmental security and emerging infectious diseases like the covid-19 pandemics.

It is against the background of a rapidly evolving environment and the questions about asean and its member states’ ability and willingness to change in order to maintain peace and security that articles in this special issue engage with. It brings together a combined set of regional and selected case studies that examine how asean and its member states respond to crises and conflicts. Among the key themes that this special issue examines are: 1) asean/Southeast Asia’s norms and practices and the stickiness of the ‘asean Way’ against pressures to effectively respond to transborder security threats; 2) the transfer and localisation of global norms like the Responsibility to Protect (R2P);⁴ 3) protection of civilians, human rights, and women, peace and security (wps),⁵ and 4) regional architecture including the asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, asean Commission on Women and Children, asean Institute of Peace and Reconciliation, and the asean parliamentarians.

These themes are analysed against regional discourses and practices and the extent to which global norms are translated and adopted into national legal frameworks, as well as the issue of sustainability of these norms in the context of democratic transitions and democratic backsliding/authoritarianism, conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The volume also includes articles that identify the challenges and key lessons for promoting and implementing the R2P principle, especially in light of asean’s diplomacy towards an erring member like Myanmar since it was admitted as a member of the regional organisation. Specifically, it addresses the problem of adhering to asean’s traditional norm of non-interference and consensus-decision making, which has failed in generating an effective regional response to ongoing atrocities in Myanmar since the Rakhine crisis in 2017 and in the aftermath of the February 2021 coup. In doing so, the articles speak further to the overarching question of how Southeast Asia, through asean, can do better in addressing internal and regional conflicts and the extent to which member states can move beyond their comfort of non-interference to become more relevant and effective in a changed regional political and security environment.

This special issue brings together scholars and analysts from the asean region whose expertise straddle academic and policy-oriented research. The individual papers identify the emerging research agendas in democratisation, conflict prevention and peacebuilding. They delve into issues of power, democratic transition, political competition and security sector reform/governance. These issues are pertinent in countries like the Philippines and Thailand which, over the years, had seen patterns of democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. What continues to be interesting for the countries that have had a longer history of democratisation like Thailand is the dynamics between civil-military relations and the lack of progress in achieving security sector reforms. On the other hand is the enduring role of the military in a country like Myanmar despite its experience of democratic transitions, albeit short-lived.

The other contributions to this special issue focus on the role of asean from the lens of regionalism and peacebuilding. These papers examine the persuasive influence of asean in sensitising and institutionalising the Responsibility to Protect,⁶ and the Women, Peace and Security (wps) agenda.⁷ These studies assess the progress and challenges faced by asean institutions that are critical in advancing the agenda of conflict management and atrocities prevention, including its mechanisms such as the asean Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Women and Children (acwc).

The seven articles in this special issue identify a new regional agenda for asean to make the association relevant in a changing security environment. In charting a new agenda, the papers examine the problems and lack of collective action in asean that are largely constrained by the norms of non-interference and consensus decision-making.⁸ These problems are now plaguing a once-celebrated asean as it struggles to respond to the worsening political crisis in Myanmar in the aftermath of the February 2021 coup. Against the vision of a ‘caring and sharing’ asean community, the articles in this issue also examine the role of civil society organisations and their significant contributions in providing protection to victims of atrocities and human rights abuses.

The role of parliamentarians is by far the least examined area of asean regionalism, particularly in promoting peace, conflict prevention, and atrocities prevention. Although asean does not have a regional parliament like the European Union, the regional organisation has created mechanisms for interacting with national legislators through the asean Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (aipa). Some of these national parliamentarians have also created networks to promote human rights protection as well as the protection of freedom of religion or belief.

Desi Hanara’s lead article focuses on the critical role played by parliamentarians in the region in safeguarding freedom of religion or belief in the context of prevailing conflicts and mass atrocities in Southeast Asia. She argues that parliamentarians should vitalise their roles and enhance synergies with existing asean mechanisms and entities to strengthen the protection of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and the prevention of conflicts and mass atrocities in the region. She proposes the establishment of a network of parliamentarians to support atrocity prevention and promote the responsibility to protect (R2P) in Southeast Asia. The creation of such network could very well amplify various parliamentary roles to support atrocity prevention, including legislative action on atrocity prevention, sharing of best practices on the establishment of national mechanisms for atrocity prevention, and capacity building for parliamentarians in preventing mass atrocities from occurring in the future.

The protection of women is an agenda that asean has formally adopted in its charter, declarations, and agreements. In fact, it created the asean Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Women and Children (acwc) in 2008 to demonstrate its commitment in ensuring, among others, the protection of women from violence. Ma. Lourdes Veneracion’s article examines the role of the “asean Way” in promoting the global agenda of Women, Peace and Security (wps) in the context of protecting women from violence, including in situations of armed conflict. She argues that in Southeast Asia, even though women’s human rights have gained traction in the region through cross-cutting issues on gender equality and violence against women, not much has been said in the context of these in armed conflict and peacebuilding situations. In fact, to date, asean was the latest regional body to have adopted a framework for action on wps. This study uses the norm life cycle model to explain the emergence and cascade of wps in the asean and explains the challenges to the internalization of the norm in the region.

Two articles in this issue examine peace processes in internal armed conflicts in two asean member states—Thailand and the Philippines. These case studies clearly provide a comparative analysis of how these two countries have used different approaches in finding solutions to internal armed conflicts, including the extent to which asean’s norm on sovereignty were invoked and the willingness of state and other stakeholders to allow for external mediation by some asean members.

Chanintira na Thalang’s contribution analyses the search for peace in Thailand’s southern border provinces in the context of the contentions between sovereignty or upholding state authority and human rights protection. Her article argues that there are three important lessons for strengthening asean’s role for conflict resolution in southern Thailand: First, asean’s entrenched norms have prevented a regularised role for asean in conflict resolution. Second, due to this arrangement, asean member states have applied a varied mix of approaches to resolving or managing ethnic conflicts. From a comparative perspective, the Thai approach to resolving the conflict falls in an in-between position along the spectrum of democratic and authoritarian means used by its fellow asean member states. Third, the lack of regularised procedures is not necessarily an obstacle to resolving conflict, but it reduces opportunities to deepen regional cooperation. More pressing is asean’s inability to protect minority rights, which has negatively affected asean’s centrality, and its commitment to building a people-centred community.

Meanwhile, Rosalie Arcala-Hall’s article focuses on the peace process between the Philippine government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front provided (milf), which provided a breathing space for many communities and opportunities for calibrated civilian protection practices by the military and non-government organisations or ngo s. She argues that while the principle of non-intervention largely kept the imprint of asean to a minimum, Indonesian and Malaysian brokering enabled the establishment of bridging mechanisms such as ceasefire monitoring committees to moderate the armed violence. A more permissive environment allowed ngo s to deliver humanitarian aid and acquire improved capacities for risk mitigation in the Bangsamoro region, aided in part by a shift in the Philippine military’s approach toward putting a premium on civilian consultation and dialogue. Despite these normative gains, the uptick in horizontal violence among rival clans and the military’s preference for the use of artillery fire as a conflict de-escalation strategy create enduring challenges for civilian protection on the ground.

Apart from internal conflicts in Thailand and the Philippines, two articles in this issue examine the challenges and constraints of advancing and implementing R2P and human rights protection in Myanmar and the limitations of asean’s past and present regional responses to internal conflicts in that country.

Moe Thuzar’s contribution focuses on the problems of engaging Myanmar from a historical perspective and in the context of relevant asean norms and principles, as well as the Responsibility to Protect. She argues that since its admission into asean in 1997, the human rights situation in Myanmar has been a major concern of the organisation. asean has had to respond to external reactions and pressures calling for decisive action on various crises in Myanmar, notably the 2007 Saffron Revolution, the 2008 Cyclone Nargis humanitarian disaster, the clashes between Rakhine and Rohingya in 2012, and the military operations against the Rohingya in 2017. Myanmar’s internal crisis has also put asean on the spot for failing to prevent further atrocities in the country in the aftermath of the 1 February 2021 coup. Myanmar’s internal situation has challenged norms and principles in the asean Charter, and tested the limits of asean’s decision-making processes, but has also occasioned asean to set new precedents in its regional diplomacy toward defiant members. She concludes that it is possible for asean to set new precedents for intervening diplomatically, within the bounds of the regional diplomatic and security culture, to protect the longer-term interests of the region, including those of the people of Myanmar. However, neither asean nor the international community seems to possess enough leverage on their own to compel or persuade stakeholders in Myanmar into resolving the conflict by dialogue. Accordingly, the limits of asean’s Myanmar response, whether past or present, are also the limits of the asean Way.

Complementing Thuzar’s article is Noel M. Morada’s examination of asean’s options in responding to atrocities in Myanmar after the February 2021 coup using the R2P lens and looking beyond the organisation’s normative and structural constraints. He argues that asean has been ineffective in dealing with the atrocities occurring in Myanmar, particularly after the 2021 coup, due to its adherence to its traditional norms and the “asean Way” even though there are some nuances in the way that different asean chairs have dealt with the erring member. However, faced with the defiance of the junta in Myanmar, asean leaders may be forced to move away from its non-interference principle, and should in fact consider difficult options such as suspension of Myanmar membership in the organisation. By adopting the principle of non-indifference and holding the Myanmar military accountable for its continuing atrocities against civilians, asean could strengthen its credibility not just before the international community but, more importantly, among the people of Myanmar who are no longer willing to tolerate a return to military rule and impunity by security forces. His article also identifies some hard measures that asean could consider as the junta in Myanmar continues to defy the Five Point Consensus agreement reached in April 2021.

Finally, the last article in this volume by Mely Caballero-Anthony focuses on how to make asean “fit for purpose” in conflict management and atrocities prevention in the region. She argues that asean is now confronted with a slew of political and security issues that has severely challenged its modalities of addressing regional problems, including the internal conflicts of its member states. The continuing political crisis in Myanmar reflects the kinds of dilemmas faced by asean in keeping to its sticky regional norms and practices while being a responsive and effective regional organisation.

As asean struggles to become “fit for purpose”, the paper argues that a negotiated “asean Way” that are founded on the ideas of positive peace and human security allows this regional body to chart a renewed agenda for maintaining peace and security in Southeast Asia. Regional efforts in advancing positive peace pay closer attention to the structural impediments to achieving social justice that can cause more marginalisation and exclusion which can become drivers of conflicts. At the same time, putting more efforts in addressing human security challenges that affect the pursuit of ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from fear’ significantly contributes to having a comprehensive approach to resolve regional conflicts and prevent atrocities.