NGOs Give Mixed Reviews of Asean Assembly

bali, Indonesia – Cambodian NGO officials invited to a recent meeting of the Asean People’s Assembly said they liked the idea behind the group but worried it wouldn’t be enough to make ordinary people’s voices heard in Asean.

The People’s Assembly began two years ago as a consultative group to the regional body. It is composed of civil-society members who are supposed to convey the concerns of grass roots society to their governments.

“The idea of the APA is great…. But I’m not convinced that the current government of Cambodia is going to listen to its people,” said Kek Galabru, president of the human rights group Licadho.

“My feeling is, leaders of countries like Burma, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are not willing to listen to the problems their own people are having,” she said.

About 300 representatives from all 10 Asean countries met in Bali late last month to share ideas and attend sessions on human rights, governance, transnational law enforcement, health and human security, HIV/AIDS, gender relations and corruption.

But Galabru said the Assembly has not formulated any concrete strategy for how to lobby the Asean countries’ leaders to put its ideas into action.

“Some of the leaders of the 10 Asean members just want to stay in power as long as pos­sible …including Cambodian leaders,” she said. “How can we lobby these governments and get them to listen to us?”

Chea Vannath, executive director of the Center for Social Devel­opment, compared the people’s as­sembly to “a 2-year-old baby running behind a 30-year-old”—Asean itself.

She, too, said the APA should push for concrete action. “They should come up with a strategy to get the Asean leadership to sign an anti-corruption agreement and make Asean leaders support the UN anti-corruption law that is being drafted,” she said.

But Kassie Neou, executive director of the Cambodian Institute of Human Rights, said the governments of Asean follow too many different systems to follow similar policies. As a consequence, their leaders have different priorities, he said, pointing to Thai policies that involve grassroots society in drafting laws and the Philippines’ term limits on the country’s presidency.

 

Related Stories

Latest News