Session IV - The ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community

Summary

The ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) has received the least attention and is the least developed among the three pillars mentioned in the Bali Concord II. This glaring oversight might impede the development of the AEC and ASC as regional social and cultural integration is integral to advances in the economic and security integration. For instance, an ASEAN social agenda is needed to ensure that poverty, deprivation or social inequities do not undermine the potential of economic growth, and indeed if economic development is threatened by social inequities, it in turn can undermine political stability. At the national level, all ASEAN states evidently recognized the utmost importance of social and cultural integration to their nation-building and economic development projects. Yet, however, the importance of building a socio-cultural community has yet to move beyond the national mindset and boundary to the regional level.

As it stands, the ASCC comes across as an afterthought in the Bali Concord II where non-security and non-economic issues are simply relegated. Moreover, it just strings together a lot of words that corresponds to what have by tradition been areas of functional co-operation, i.e., co-operation through projects rather than through policy-based initiatives, and this has been the traditional distinction between functional co-operation and economic cooperation in the ASEAN framework. Thus there is a need to make clearer what the ASCC means and what its objectives are, and below are a few issues for further consideration:

Unlike the ASC and AEC, the ASCC lacks an academic driver and this explains why the ASCC is both undervalued and underdeveloped. Scholars and researchers should be recruited to help to interrogate, conceptualize and define the concept. This would help policy-makers to better understand the concept and thus to set the socio-cultural agenda of a regional arrangement. Three elements to take into account in drafting an ASCC action plan are: (i) building caring societies to promote equity and human development in a broad sense, (ii) need to manage the social impact of economic integration, and (iii) strengthen the foundation of regional social cohesion and the promotion of ASEAN awareness. Perhaps an ASCC Integration Centre to facilitate the development and implementation of the concept could be established.