• 35th NEAT CCM
 
Crisis Management in the ASEAN Plus Three Countries
 
 
 
Somkiat Kamolpun, Ed.D.
Office of the Higher Education Commission
Chadarat Singhadechakul
Office of the Higher Education Commission
1. Rationale
 
Enhanced cooperation and interaction among the ASEAN Plus Three countries significantly fosters political, economic, and social development in each individual country and the region as a whole. Nevertheless, new challenges have emerged and without proper management, they have become crises, for instance, natural disaster, migration and human rights, and epidemic. According to the Nay Pyi Taw Declaration on the ASEAN Community’s Post-2015 Vision, crisis management is an immediate and cross-cutting issue in the three pillars of ASEAN Community. The Declaration urges member states and dialogue partners, including ASEAN Plus Three and ASEAN Plus Six, to develop more dynamic and robust regional mechanism to address challenging issues. Because of globalization and interconnectedness of the global citizens, a number of crises have inevitably affected many countries in the region. ASEAN have policies to deal with a number of crises, but those policies have never been translated into actions. Although each individual member state attempts to mitigate the effects of the crises, the lack of synergy in policy implementation hinders the effectiveness in regional crisis management.
 
The Post-2015 Vision indicates that natural disaster and climate change are emerging challenges. Along with human rights and economic challenges, natural disaster and climate change increase the number of forced and irregular migration which eventually affects health security in the region. These crises have brought about a number of consequences, for instance, loss of lives and livelihood, homeless and misplaced people, health care burdens, transnational crimes, to name a few. To address these crises effectively, concerted effort among the ASEAN Plus Three countries is needed at the levels of policy makers and academic community.
 
Hence, Thailand would like to propose the theme of ‘Crisis Management’ for the 24th and 25th Network of East Asia Think Tanks Coordinators Meetings and the 13th NEAT Annual Conference. It consists of three sub-themes: natural disaster and climate change, migration, and health security. The main goal of the meetings and the conference with the theme ‘Crisis Management’ is to support the Post-2015 Vision by initiating dialogues among scholars and providing policy recommendations to the ASEAN Plus Three leaders. The concept papers on respective sub-themes appear in Annex 1, 2, and 3.
 
For the full text of the report, click here.