Challenges to civil society in Asean and beyond
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen displayed his finest brinksmanship in handling the engagement with the Asean-based civil society organizations at the recent Asean summit in Phnom Penh. Ahead of the leader's meeting, his government organized a conference of hundreds of government-sponsored nongovernment groups from the local entities and other Asean members. It was the biggest ever in the Asean history with over 1,000 registered participants since the interface session between its leaders and the civil society started in earnest in 2005. On the same day, however at a local hotel, several dozens of Asean-based independent civil groups held a parallel conference but focusing on more senstive issues related to land evictions, migration workers' and minority' rights.
As the current chair of Asean, Hun Sen was able to set the format and agenda of the interface which has been the bone of contention in every summit in the past seven years.The Cambodian government handpicked its representatives to take part in the dialogue while the rest of Asean groups joined in with the exception of those from Indonesia and the Philippines.
The two countries wanted to pursue the existing practice of having the interface's representatives selected by themselves and not by the leaders. As long as the Asean civil society groups lack unity, the host would be able to manipulate the agenda and dialogue. It remains to be seen how the second interface planned in November will proceed.
Cambodia represents just one of numerous governments around the world with ambivalent attitude towards the role of civil society and how far they would be allowed to partake in the decision-making. These governments have become skillful in restricting democratic space through quasi-legal and other obstacles, but short of tradition forms of repression, to civil society's activities.
At the Phnom Penh summit, the host passionately preached the virtue of building the people-centered Asean Community (AC)—meaning engaging civil society and grass root groups at large by listening and considering their inputs.
However, in reality, it is an empty promise. For the time being the interactions have been carried out officially in a limited circle with the Asean Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and selective civil society and youth leaders.
Strong political will needed
While the Asean leaders hailed the achievement of Asean Economic Community (AEC), they remained less eager to discuss the outcomes of political-security and social-cultural communities - the other two pivotal pillars. Today only the AEC scoreboard was available, which put the overall achievement at roughly 74 per cent. Obviously, just to complete the AEC in 2015 would urgently require stronger political will from the Asean leaders who are still reluctant to do so due to domestic constraints especially on non-tariff barriers and trade in service.
Furthermore, Asean senior officials also have hard times to deploy quantitative measures on non-economic cooperation to give a comprehensive picture of the community-building. For instance, how can one measure the level of political or security cooperation or knowledge of Asean among the member countries? With the AC deadlines approaching, it raises an important question whether the people-oriented community can be achieved in time without full participation of all stakeholders.
Within Asean, Cambodia was not alone as Vietnam used the similar approach during its 2010 chair, separating independent and government-sponsored non-government organisations but with greater emphasis on the latter. When the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand hosted the interfaces, their governments gave due respect to the civil society groups and listened as much they could for views and took up a long list of inputs.
That helps explain why most of active civil society groups are based in these three countries. After the adoption of Asean Charter in 2008 and the establishment of Asean Intergovernmental Commission for Human Rights, there has been a new surge of civil society groups focusing on human rights issues, apart from the environment, migration, women and children issues.
In addition, they have also quickly picked up new topics related governance and transparency. Albeit this positive development, their contributions have not yet impacted on the top-down approach of Asean decision making process. In general, the Asean leaders have not taken seriously their civil society groups.
Recognition for NGOs
Last year, Asean came up with a guideline on how to recognize the nongovernmental organizations after years of debates.
Now they can apply to become either an Asean affiliated organization or a stakeholder. The latter would be able to have an interface with the Asean leaders through their representatives. Currently, there are three organizations - Working Group for an Asean Human Rights Mechanism, Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center and Federation of Institution of Food Science and Technology in Asean - that are acknowledged as Asean stakeholders. It is hoped that this framework will provide proper recognitions to existing civil society groups in all member countries that can lead to institutionalization of the interface with the Asean leaders. At the moment, most of the Asean affiliated organisations belonged to professional organisations such as Asean Kite Council, Asean Vegetable Oils Club, Asean Thalassaemia Society, to name but a few.
To be fair, liked Asean, civil society in other countries also face similar challenges because the governments in power continue to view them as threats or trouble makers with links with hostile foreign governments or organizations that providing funding. They try to deny the citizen rights to form and join civil groups as well as limit their operations and activities as the case may be. Recently after months of negotiations between the government and civil groups, Cambodia decided to postpone for two years the controversial law that would restrict the operation of civil society groups. Truth be told, even in the most mature democracies, there are also measures to restrict civic space, freedoms of association and assembly. In a canton in Geneva, for instance, a local law punishes demonstrators with hefty fine of 100,000 Swiss francs, if they did not listen to police orders.
In responding to the uneven and unfair treatments to the civil society globally, the United Nation Human Rights Council in Geneva passed a resolution in September 2010 on the "Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association" and appointing a special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of assembly and association. In other word, from now on the UN is fully involved in setting the standards and norms including promotion and protection of civil society organizations world-wide against all repressive governments. Since then, other regional organizations have contemplated a similar move. Last June, the Organization of American States adopted the same resolution.
The UN rapporteur's office has already sent official letters to the Asean governments for trips to their countries. So far, none of them have positively responded to the requests. In a long haul, this can tarnish the grouping's overall reputation and undermine the slogan of caring and sharing Asean community.
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