Page 143 - The Ethics of ASEAN

How ASEAN’s ethical future could fail

as well as workers’ rights. Philippines is investigating the human rights violations of
Duterte’s war on drugs campaign. Nearly all ASEAN countries have adopted more
progressive women’s rights initiatives such as protection against domestic violence and
better access to education, healthcare and employment. The ASEAN Intergovernmental
Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) is working with business on sharing human rights
practices.
How the future of freedom and human rights will play out in ASEAN is not clear at
this point but the risk of regression is real. If ASEAN should continue to regress in the
major areas we have discussed here, the capacity to benefit from ASEAN’s remarkable
diversity would be lost.
Concerning the different types of ethics, there seems to be a disconnect between
the promotion of human rights when nations meet to discuss rules-based ethics at
the ASEAN level, and the active commitment to ensure freedom and rights and to
implement it at the national level. Commitment to meet international standards of
freedom, democratic representation and protection of human rights is an issue for
other regions of what is called the “global South” and lessons can be learned about
consequences of failure in the experience of African and South American regions.
A diverse ASEAN community requires freedom so that individuals and communities
can express their unique identities without fear of discrimination or oppression.
ASEAN’s socio-cultural community would be lost without freedom and human rights
because its human-centric ethics would be forced underground.

What can be done? Lessons can be learned from the EU. One of the most effective
ways to anchor the ethics of freedom and human rights is to teach it in the secondary
school curriculum. In 2010 the Council of Europe adopted a Charter on Education
for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education with adoption and key
development indicators measured by the European Directorate General of Democracy. 5
Given the differences between the EU and ASEAN, a “copy-paste” process would not
work, but it is timely to educate ASEAN ethics of freedom and human rights for youth in
the region’s schools.

Losing human development ethics
Human development is one of the founding aspirational values of ASEAN and by many
measures the region has made it a success. For example, the United Nations Human
Development Index established in the 1990s show that all ASEAN countries except
Myanmar have progressed in recent years based on their three measures of longevity,
6
years of education and GDP per capita.
5 The Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE) programme is related to
the work of the Education Department which is part of the Directorate of Democratic Participation within
the Directorate General of Democracy (“DGII”) of the Council of Europe. https://www.coe.int/en/web/edc
retrieved 28 July 2023. The Council of Europe Fact Sheet showing results can be retrieved at this link https://
rm.coe.int/factsheets-learning-to-live-together-council-of-europe-report-on-the-s/1680727be3
6 United Nations Human Development Reports compare annual scores country by country on their website
https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks Retrieved 28 July 2023. Since the creation of
the Index other indicators have been added: the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), the
Gender Development Index (GDI), the Gender Inequality Index (GII), the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)
and the Planetary pressure-adjusted Human Development Index (PHDI).

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