TRANSFORMATION FROM STATE-CENTERED TO PEOPLE-CENTERED SECURITY IN ASEAN COMMUNITY: MILESTONE OF THE ASEAN APPROACH TO HUMAN SECURITY

Abstract

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) through the establishment of the ASEAN Community in 2015 has formally entered a new milestone in its security perspectives, from solely focus on state-centered to people-centered security. Previously, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1994 introduced the people-centered approach to security, namely human security. The United Nations (UN) has emphasised that the human security framework facilitates member states to handle widespread and cross-cutting challenges to the survival, livelihood, and dignity of their people. Nevertheless, while ASEAN community concerns on people-centered security, it has not made any reference to the term human security in its formal documents. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ASEAN version of people-centered security, whether substantially following the UN‘s human security or creating a new different version. This study applies process tracing analysis and found that ASEAN develops its own version of people-centered security embraced by ASEAN Way as the governing value in ASEAN. The study brings a new contribution to human security studies by proposing ASEAN version of human security in addition to the UN, Japanese, Canadian, and the Europe Union approach to human security.