Page 151 - The Ethics of ASEAN

How to build a positive ethical future for ASEAN

human development capability comes with knowing the results of policies and
practices, and this is where the Directorate plays an essential role.
Results-based ethics in human development requires evidence, of which there are
different levels. The validity of evidence is generally classified in the following order,
from the lowest to the highest quality, according to the methodologies used in the social
sciences. 3
1. the opinions of respected authorities;
2. evidence obtained by single case observations;
3. evidence obtained from historical or geographical comparisons;
4. evidence obtained from cohort studies or controlled case studies;
5. evidence obtained through randomised controlled trials (RCT).
The Covid-19 pandemic was a global experiment in using randomised controlled
methods to identify how the virus was communicated, what vaccines worked best and
how effective measures such as masks and social-distancing were.
However, the hierarchy of five levels of evidence listed above is not cast in stone.
Randomised controlled trials are certainly not the appropriate methodology for
gathering evidence on human rights abuses. Another example is genetic engineering,
where the opinions of respected authorities were the right evidence for deciding not
to clone humans, although for medical genetic engineering in humans randomised
controlled trials (RCT) would certainly be used.
Implementing results-based ethics in ASEAN’s economic community and socio-
cultural community is significantly enhanced by collaboration between ASEAN
directorates and research in collaboration with universities, professional groups and
civil society organisations.

Dealing effectively with emerging ethical challenges
The question here is what is effective. ASEAN has tended to be a follower in dealing with
emerging ethical issues for two reasons.
First, when it comes to emerging political challenges, the preference for not taking
sides and not intervening when understood as the ASEAN way of doing things slows
down the process of dealing with an issue. It is like the child at school who hopes that
the aggressive behaviour of the class bully will just go away. In some cases that works
but in other cases it makes the issue worse. Dealing effectively would mean knowing
how to develop ethical arguments on the issue that represent ASEAN’s position,
agreeing to a commitment and organising an effective decision-making process. It
would also include the next step of taking ethical action, managing risks and learning

3 “Goals of evaluation and types of evidence” by Marielle Berriet-Solliec National Institute of Agronomy, Food
and Environment (Agrosup Dijon), France Pierre Labarthe French National Institute for Agricultural Research
(INRA), France Catherine Laurent French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), France,
published in Evaluation 2014, Vol. 20(2) 195 –213 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278409063_
Goals_of_evaluation_and_types_of_evidence retrieved 5 August 2023

141