The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional organisation formed by the Governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand through the Bangkok Declaration on 8 August 1967. It aims to increase economic activity, make social progress, and maintain cultural development so as to promote regional peace, collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest, provide assistance to each other in the form of training and research facilities, collaborate for better utilisation of agriculture and industry, and promote Southeast Asian studies. The group also tries to maintain close ties with other countries and groupings to further its agenda.
Although the organisation was started from a fear of communism, it started becoming effective after the end of the Vietnam war in 1975. ASEAN's first summit meeting happened in 1976 when they met in Bali, Indonesia where member states signed a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. ASEAN used this treaty to adopt a unified response to Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1979. The end of the Cold War brought ASEAN a degree of autonomy from great-power rivalry.
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On 15 December 1995, ASEAN adopted the Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty to ensure that…
On 15 December 1995, ASEAN adopted the Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty to ensure that the area remained a nuclear-weapon-free zone. In 1997, the ASEAN Plus Three grouping was created with China, Japan, and South Korea primarily for economic and currency stability. Slowly, the cooperation expanded to include food and energy security, disaster management, people-to-people contacts, narrowing the development gap, rural development, poverty alleviation, human trafficking, labour movement, communicable diseases, environment and sustainable development, and transnational crime including counter-terrorism. Then the ASEAN Plus Six was created to include India, Australia, and New Zealand. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free-trade agreement involving 15 of the 16 countries of ASEAN Plus Six (all except India) was signed in November 2020 and entered into force on 1 January 2022. India saw this as a terrible deal for its own industry; in retrospect, ASEAN's growing trade deficit with China is cited by critics of RCEP as vindicating India's decision. However, India has independent free trade agreements with ASEAN, Japan, and South Korea.
Meeting at Jakarta, member states launched on 15 December 2008 a new charter, which had been signed in Singapore on 20 November 2007 to make the grouping more like the European Union. Through this move, ASEAN took a step towards a single market (the ASEAN Free Trade Area dates from 1992 and the ASEAN Economic Community from 2015) encompassing about 684 million people (2024) in which they are no longer bitterly divided and can take a unified view on climate change and economic changes. In 2009, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) was set up and adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in 2012.
There are 31 urban centres within ASEAN each with more than 1 million people and…
There are 31 urban centres within ASEAN each with more than 1 million people and 10 cities with more than 5 million people. The largest city is Jakarta. The average GDP growth rate ranges from 3.8% to 7% (give years), which is higher than the APEC average (give source). Singapore is the richest country and Myanmar the poorest, by GDP per capita (2025). ASEAN continues to be an export-dependent grouping with relatively little intra-grouping trade (about 22% of total ASEAN trade). Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) came mostly from outside the region, led in 2023 by the US and the EU, with Hong Kong and Japan also significant. However, intra-group tourism accounted for about 38% of all international arrivals (2024).
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