By Carol Mercado

At the 15th ASEAN summit, held this past October, ASEAN inaugurated its Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR).  The announcement was met with criticism from some quarters, but ASEAN called it a “historic milestone” in its 42-year history of community-building in the region.

During the summit’s concluding statement, ASEAN said that the AICHR “gives concrete expression to the implementation of Article 14 of the ASEAN Charter and ASEAN’s commitment to pursue forward-looking strategies to strengthen regional cooperation on human rights.” The Commission is mandated to support and protect human rights by promoting public awareness and education, and providing advice and capacity-building to government agencies and ASEAN bodies, among other things.
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By John J. Brandon

This week Barack Obama will make his first trip to Asia as President of the United States. In addition to paying state visits to China, Japan, and South Korea, President Obama will meet with 20 national leaders in Singapore to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Although member countries vary in economic clout individually, APEC economies collectively represent 55 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, 45 percent of global trade, and 40 percent of the world’s population.
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By John J. Brandon

From 2002 to 2006, The Asia Foundation implemented a series of exchanges for 80 promising young professionals from Southeast Asia and the United States to help develop a better understanding of one another’s region. This program was initiated by the Foundation because of concern that fewer Americans had been involved with Southeast Asia since the end of the Vietnam War and subsequently were less familiar with the region’s nuances and complexities. Consequently, a younger generation of Southeast Asians had limited exposure to the United States and their understanding has been limited as well.
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On Thursday, November 5, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will host and stream live a discussion on President Obama’s trip to Asia next week. Asia Foundation Trustee Douglas Paal, who is Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will discuss President Obama’s trip with Michael Pettis, a senior associate in the Beijing-based Carnegie China Program, and Taiya Smith, a senior associate in the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program, and the Carnegie China Program. Expected to be among the most important foreign tours during his first year in office, the president will visit Japan, Singapore, China, and South Korea from November 12 through November 19. During the trip he will attend the annual summit of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation in Singapore, where he will be the first U.S. leader to hold formal talks with all 10 heads of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Watch the discussion live here at 12:15 p.m. EST on November 5.

By John J. Brandon

John J. Brandon is The Asia Foundation’s Director of International Relations Programs. He can be reached at jbrandon@asiafound-dc.org.

Historically, the idea of piracy carries with it a romantic image of sailing ships, handsome swashbucklers like Errol Flynn, and Jolly Roger flags. But in recent years maritime piracy has become a security problem of substantial proportions. Attacks of late have most notably occurred off the Coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, where more than half of the world’s 293 pirate attacks took place in 2008. Trends indicate that pirate attacks will increase given Somali pirates ability to range further out to sea and the Somali government’s inability to counter these threats; the most notable of these attacks occurring in April when an American captain of a cargo ship was taken hostage by Somali pirates 350 miles off the country’s coastline.
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In a recent piece on Foreign Policy.com, The Asia Foundation’s Yeling Tan and Ann Florini, a professor and director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation, National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, challenge the traditional norms in ranking countries for their openness and transparency, and present surprising scenarios of two new contenders.

“Western countries no longer have a monopoly over the definition and value of openness and disclosure. India’s grass-roots approach champions transparency as a critical means of empowering the poor. China’s state-driven approach wields transparency fundamentally as an alternative (rather than a prerequisite) to democratic reform.” Read the full piece here.

By John Brandon

John Brandon is The Asia Foundation’s Director for International Relations programs. He can be reached at jbrandon@asiafound-dc.org.

Less than a month after taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama has shown he wants to engage with Asia in a serious, meaningful way. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first overseas trip is not to Europe or the Middle East, but to Asia. Her high-profile, week-long trip to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China was preceded by a major foreign policy speech on Asia in New York City. While it is unclear whether Secretary Clinton read The Asia Foundation’s “America’s Role in Asia” report, there is a remarkable similarity in what Secretary Clinton says about how the Obama administration wants to move forward in Asia, and the findings and recommendations articulated in the report. As the report states: “Asia needs to be accorded unique attention given its inherent importance to the United States. Asia contains more than half of the world’s population, produces more than 30 percent of global exports, and controls a much larger share of the world’s savings pool.”
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