Page 80 - The Ethics of ASEAN

The Ethics of ASEAN

Dr Yang Mee Eng: Ethical leaders cultivate
positive relationships among stakeholders
Dr Yang Mee Eng is Executive Director of the ASEAN
Foundation. Starting in media, her early career was in business
development at the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation.
She later became CEO of GameView, the largest mobile game
publisher in Malaysia, and Senior Vice President at Alphacap.
ASEAN’s economic growth is driving a more integrated
regional community and enhances ASEAN’s status as one of
the world’s leading development hubs. The COVID-19 pandemic
greatly accelerated the sense of the ASEAN community,
connectedness and need for resilience and sustainability.
For Dr Yang the concept of ethical leadership is becoming
Figure 3: Dr Yang Mee Eng,
Executive Director of ASEAN increasingly important in ASEAN’s own culture. She highlights
Foundation five leadership ethics principles that the ASEAN Foundation
supports: honesty, justice, respect, community, and integrity.
She sees these principles at the individual, team and
organisation level, In ASEAN companies, ethical leadership
should ensure a people-centred and positive work environment
for employees as well as contributing to ESG standards valued
by ethical investors.
The ASEAN Foundation contributes to programmes
supporting young leaders with ethics. Examples are the
ASEAN Leaders’ Programme, the ASEAN-China Young
Leaders Programme and the ASEAN Young Climate Leaders
Programme.

Dr Marzuki Darusman: After the Cold War a
great ethical shift took place in ASEAN
Dr Marzuki Darusman is a co-founder of ECAAR and currently
working with the UN Human Rights Council chairing the
Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar
(IIFFMM). A leading ASEAN human rights campaigner, Dr
Marzuki founded and chaired the Indonesian National Human
Rights Commission from 1993-1998. In 1996, he was on the
Figure 4:Dr Marzuki
Darusman, current Chair of ASEAN Regional Human Rights Working Group, which led to the
an Independent International formation of the current ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission
Fact-Finding Mission on for Human Rights (AICHR).
Myanmar (IIFFMM) under the
UN Human Rights Council, As a leader in ethics internationally and founder of human
Indonesian lawyer and
human rights campaigner rights institutions, Dr Marzuki has direct experience of ASEAN’s
evolution in ethics. He reminds us that historically ASEAN
was established more than fifty years ago on the basis of
fear of communism. Southeast Asia had been destabilized by

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