From Crisis to Collaboration: Reflections on ASEAN’s protection mechanisms for forced migration is a report from CPD’s Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration, authored by Caitlin McCaffrie and Christy Kumesan.
The report summarises the processes and frameworks that already exist within ASEAN to address forced migration, and provides recommendations on how they can be improved to provide better protection for displaced persons in the region.
The report shows that, rather than needing to create an entirely new regional architecture, ASEAN already has a number of frameworks that can be built upon in order to better address escalating forced migration crises throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.
From Crisis to Collaborationsummarises the processes and frameworks that already exist within ASEAN to address forced migration, and provides recommendations on how they can be improved to provide better protection for displaced persons in the region.
Southeast Asia is home to hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers, yet it has the lowest rate of acceptance of the Refugee Convention of any region in the world. While some states have established effective refugee policies, many others struggle with implementation, leading to an inconsistent patchwork of rights and protections across and within states.
The lack of a unified protection framework within ASEAN leaves the region unprepared to address crises as they emerge, let alone adequately prepare for them, which regularly results in improvised and inadequate responses to forced migration.
Crises in Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka are likely to cause more widespread displacement, with additional global impacts from ongoing issues in Gaza and Ukraine further complicating the issue. No single country can handle these challenges alone; regional cooperation is crucial.
In late 2023, Indonesia faced a renewed refugee crisis when over 1,500 ethnic Rohingya arrived in Aceh on nine boats in just four weeks. This number was greater than the total arrivals from 2020 to 2022. Furthermore, 2023 was the deadliest year for maritime migration in the region since the Andaman Sea Crisis in 2015. Without a committed approach to refugee issues, ASEAN risks repeating mistakes of the past that will only lead to more loss of life.
CPD officially launched its report at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta on May 27, 2024. The event was organized in partnership with the Malaysia Permanent Mission to ASEAN and gathered representatives from the 10 ASEAN member states, as well as 18 ASEAN dialogue and external partner countries.
Participants were presented with the report’s findings and invited to discuss its key recommendations in detail. A lively discussion ensued on integrating forced migration into the ASEAN Community’s Post-2025 Vision, the benefits of allowing forcibly displaced populations in transit to access employment and education, and how a formal ASEAN Declaration on Forced Migration can address gaps in the current protection framework.
The discussions among ASEAN members and partner representatives were highly productive and are expected to build momentum for Malaysia to champion this issue when it chairs ASEAN in 2024.
