Page 34 - EU_ASEN Relations: Perspectives From Malaysia

organisations share the same goals of peace, stability, and prosperity for its

citizens and addressing issues through multilateralism.

The three pillars of the ASEAN Community do not work in isolation, but rather

collectively to make ASEAN a stable, safer, more prosperous, sustainable, and
peaceful region. Making opportunities accessible to all without the barriers of

religion, language, gender, or other social and cultural backgrounds is
embedded in the ASEAN Vision 2020, Declaration of ASEAN Concord I and

II, and the Hanoi Plan for Action (HPA). Socio-Cultural cooperation is crucial

to ASEAN, as it juxtaposes normative or identity regionalism with its
functionalist role. The very idea of an ‘ASEAN Way’ for diplomacy, for

example, has constructivist roots in the Malay culture of consultations and
consensus (musyawarah dan mufakat). By and large, ASEAN has been

successful in establishing a ‘prototype regional identity’, which itself is a

phenomenal success given its extreme diversity, and the fact the young nations
of this region were involved in a difficult and complex nation-building process

during the Cold War period.

ASEAN Socio-Cultural Cooperation

Although socio-cultural cooperation was featured in both the Bangkok

declaration of 1967 and in the 1997 Vision 2020 document of the ASEAN, it

was not until the adoption of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC)
in 2009 that such a cooperation between ASEAN nations was formalized.

Adopted as part of the Cha-am Hua Hin Declaration on the Roadmap of
th
ASEAN Community (2009–2015) at the 14 ASEAN Summit, the blueprint
aims to improve the quality of life of its people through cooperative activities
and through the promotion of human and social development. With the

formation of ASCC, ASEAN expanded its dimension of cooperation, which

hitherto had been mainly in the areas of economics and political security.

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