Page 138 - The Ethics of ASEAN

The Ethics of ASEAN

aspiration if not made applicable through policies and working conditions. However
compliance is more powerful as an intrinsic than extrinsic ethic, when imbedded in a
corporate culture of human rights and development and enforced as mindset of leaders.
Professor Welyne Jehom is an anthropologist at the Universiti of Malaya. Her
study of rural-urban migrants and indigenous workers show that the social, cultural,
and psychological dimensions of work are as important as working conditions. She has
contributed to ASEAN by creating an International Master in Human Development at
Universiti of Malaya to produce experts capable of using the qualitative methods of law,
sociology, psychology and anthropology in human development.
In the online discussion, the speakers unanimously agreed that human development,
or human net positive, should be more than an economic indicator, and human
development practitioners in the workplace need to include rights, culture, and social
science measurement. Much interest from the student audience was also generated
around Prof Jehom’s announcement of the International Master’s in Human Development
at the Universiti of Malaya.

Concluding remarks on the ECAAR Dialogues
This book is focused on the ethics of ASEAN from an inside perspective, that is, from the
point of view of someone in the region and committed to the region. Part One provided
the historical context and foundations of ASEAN ethics. Part Two shows how eight major
contemporary issues or challenges in ethics can be discussed in a forum by ASEAN
experts or representatives from different ASEAN countries. The forty-four speakers
represent multiple perspectives in ethics and many have made some aspect of ASEAN
ethics their life’s work. Their experience and careers also give the reader an idea of the
wide range of career possibilities that exist in practical ethics.
Reflecting on these eight ECAAR dialogues we can see how different types of ethics
clash in disagreement and even conflict, for ethics are about what is most important. For
example, those who believe that their own virtue ethics should constitute the guidelines of
society will clash with those who believe that ASEAN is a diverse rules-based community.
We have seen how leaders stand up for ethical principles in contrast to leaders who believe
that ASEAN needs no change, or leaders who see ASEAN only according to their own
benefit.
Have these eight ECAAR dialogues exhausted the ethical landscape of ASEAN? Far
from it. A short list of further dialogues would include the religious tolerance, ethical
education in school, slavery and human trafficking, ASEAN inequality, ASEAN freedom of
mobility, ASEAN non-interference ethics, the ethics of political ideologies and emerging
ethical issues such as animal rights and using artificial intelligence in war weapons.

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