Dec 31, 2015 may be just another New Year's Eve to most, but to Southeast Asia, this night is when Asean officially becomes a community, a grand new experiment that may in time transform the region into a global powerhouse if it plays its cards right.
The road to community has been a long one: From Asean's founding in Bangkok in 1967 to the idea announced in 2003's Bali Concord II to establish a community, through the launch of the Asean Charter in 2008 and most recently the development of the Asean Community Vision 2025 in Kuala Lumpur in 2015.
Given its great diversity of membership and turbulent past, that Asean has come so far is a considerable achievement. Far from allowing Asean to rest on its laurels, the dawn of community means that Asean must continue to evolve to meet the needs and aspirations of its peoples and the challenges of the day.
In order to achieve those objectives, what kind of community should Asean become and how will we get there?
The Asean Vision 2025 gives us some indication as to the direction the grouping will take during its first decade.
First and most significantly, the vision foresees Asean as a Community that is people-centred and people-oriented -- in a word: inclusive. This is a considerable departure for an organisation that for most of its existence to date has been driven primarily by government officials.
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Inclusiveness, of course, is open to interpretation. Some may be of the view that Asean should formulate policies that have as their highest priority the welfare and interests of the region's peoples. Others may believe that the people should also have a role in shaping the future of the community.
But what is clear is that Asean member countries have agreed on the need to make the people a higher priority than ever before.
When Thailand joined our Asean partners in drafting the Asean Community Vision 2025 and its accompanying blueprints, we held the belief that Asean should be a community where everyone has a voice, every voice is heard, and no one is left behind, echoing the United Nations as it adopted Sustainable Development Goals.
This means that all stakeholders, including the weak and the powerful, the young and the elderly, the able-bodied and those with disabilities, civil society and the private sector, as well as the vulnerable and the marginalised recognise that they too have a stake and a voice in shaping this Community. That is why, for example, Thailand proposed that all information relating to the Asean Community must be accessible by those with disabilities.
And of course, a people-centred community must be reinforced by the mainstreaming of good governance, anti-corruption, human rights and fundamental freedoms in all of the community's policies, activities, and initiatives.
Second, the Asean Community will have to be competitive and dynamic, while closing development gaps and pursuing sustainable policies. The Asean Economic Community (AEC) can truly become a single market and production base only when factors of production can flow freely among the member states and non-tariff barriers are identified and eliminated.
The Asean Single Window must come into effect soon with supporting legal infrastructure, and necessary legislation at the regional and national levels. The Community also should not forget the role of SMEs and farmers who are the lifeblood of the Asean economy and key to its long-term resilience.
A competitive and dynamic AEC will need to be connected. Enhanced Asean connectivity, a Thai initiative since 2009, needs to be translated into effective air, sea and land links across Southeast Asia. So whether it is new railway projects linking Singapore to southern China, maritime routes through the Malacca Straits and onward to the Indian Ocean or South China Sea, or more efficient air links, further development of regional connectivity will help people, goods and services flow across the region more quickly and cheaply.
But there is a dark side to enhanced connectivity that the Asean Community needs to prepare for. This includes transnational crime such as human trafficking, drug trafficking and cybercrime.
The Asean Community must therefore guard against various cross-border challenges. Asean's strong cross-border facilitation regime needs to be complemented by an equally robust border management system. In this regard, the Asean NARCO Centre was established in Thailand this year to fight drug trafficking. The Asean Centre of Military Medicine will soon be launched in Thailand to enhance regional capacity in responding to humanitarian consequences of natural disasters. Thailand also recently proposed an Asean centre to fight cybercrime.
Lastly, the Asean Community must be united and ensure that its central role in regional affairs is respected.
It is hoped that the Asean Work Plan on enhancing and maintaining its centrality will be an important component of the Asean Community's future.
Asean must continue to work in close partnership with all our partners including its strategic partners. Only then can the Asean Community become an effective platform for major powers to come together to peacefully address the common challenges of our time.
Happy New Year 2016. And welcome to the Asean Community.
Jakkrit Srivali is the director-general of the Asean Affairs Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.