ASEAN Regional Diplomacy and Cooperation in Reducing Poverty and Building Resilience: Towards Covid-19 Recovery

—ASEAN as an international organization that accommodates regional areas in achieving its goals carries out various beneficial collaborations with external parties (which are often called dialogue partners) be it state, organizational, institutional, sub-regional, regional, or international cooperation. Especially in the current pandemic situation, collaboration is needed to overcome the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic by maximizing the ASEAN organization. The formulation of the problem in this paper is how the position, function, and authority of ASEAN as an international organization, as well as the cooperation that has been carried out by ASEAN in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. ASEAN is a regional organization that aims to promote economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the Southeast Asian region through multilateral cooperation. Moreover, it serves as a non-political platform to maintain peace and stability among its member states and external partners. Several efforts have been discussed at the regional level by ASEAN to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic which has spread throughout the country, especially in the ASEAN Region. For example, the Joint Statement on Defense Cooperation against Disease Outbreak. On April 14, 2020, the Special ASEAN Summit (Summit) through a virtual conference resulted in the Declaration of the Special ASEAN Summit on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Furthermore, on the same day, the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) meeting was also held virtually. In addition, there are also other collaborations such as the ASEAN Comprehensive Recovery Framework (ACRF) which was initiated by the ASEAN Secretariat in 2020.