Partnering for Protection is a report from the Centre for Policy Development that outlines a series of policy recommendations to address Southeast Asia’s forced migration crisis.
The Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal are now the deadliest maritime migrant routes in the world. Driven by ongoing conflict in Myanmar, global instability, rising transnational crime and severe climate vulnerability, Southeast Asia is experiencing levels of forced migration not seen in decades.
Strengthening the region’s formal coordination arrangements is essential in order to prevent and respond to forced migration, and avoid human rights abuses and exploitation from proliferating, undermining the broader stability of the region.
No single country can handle these challenges alone. The ADFM’s latest report outlines a series of actionable strategies for how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and its 11 Dialogue Partners, can strengthen existing humanitarian coordination, extend rights protections to displaced groups, and build genuine pathways into education and employment.
This report is an extension of the ADFM’s 2024 report From Crisis to Collaboration; a stocktake of existing ASEAN mechanisms that could be used to address forced migration.
This report outlines how ASEAN’s 11 Dialogue Partners can support the agenda laid out in From Crisis to Collaboration, leveraging resources and policy expertise and long-standing agreements with ASEAN across human rights, labour, and security issues.
Improving state-to-state cooperation and coordination on forced migration will directly lead to the outcomes sought in ASEAN’s 2045 Vision, which is working towards a “People-Centred” and “Resilient” region that “leaves no one behind”.
The challenge ASEAN faces is not the absence of regional architecture, but rather how existing mechanisms can be better connected, coordinated, and leveraged to respond to displacement in a manner consistent with ASEAN’s own long-term vision.
To strengthen these existing mechanisms the report outlines six actionable strategies for ASEAN and Dialogue Partners to implement; marking a critical step toward a more unified and proactive multilateral framework:
Across the region, whether arriving by land or sea, a lack of legal status leaves the vast majority of displaced populations in a state of permanent limbo. Denied the right to work legally, go to school, or access healthcare, hundreds of thousands are forced into informal work, leaving them highly vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking.
This also means countries are missing out on the significant economic contributions that all migrants can make to national economies.
Without working to fix this coordination gap now, the region risks not only deepening instability and feeding trafficking networks, but also missing out on a huge economic opportunity to truly “leave no one behind”.
Taken together, these recommendations push for a more people-centred, regional response, one that shares responsibility across ASEAN and its Dialogue Partners, for the collective benefit and prosperity of the pacific neighbourhood.
This paper was discussed in June 2026 at a meeting of the Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration in Jakarta, and benefited from feedback during those discussions.
