Your Excellency, Prof. Said Iransdoust,
President of the Asian Institute of Technology

Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen

1. First and foremost I would like to thank Prof. Said Iransdoust, for your kind invitation to me to attend and deliver a keynote address at this very important meeting. Please accept my sincere apologies for not being able to be here personally to deliver my address as urgent priorities require me to be elsewhere at this time. I have asked my officer at the ASEAN Secretariat to carry my message to you with the hope that it will provide some guidance on the very important work that you have embarked upon.

2. In the last one year, several new developments have taken place in ASEAN with the aim of further strengthening the viability and dynamism of the region. Undoubtedly, the most important milestone has been the signing of the ASEAN Charter by the Leaders at the 13th ASEAN Summit in Singapore in November 2007. The signing of the Charter and its eventual entry into force in December 2008, signals a new beginning for ASEAN as a regional entity. The Charter, in effect transforms ASEAN from a loosely governed coalition to one with a legal personality and adherence to a rules based approach. The ASEAN Charter also for the first time articulates clearly in writing the purposes and principles of ASEAN.

3. One of the key purposes of ASEAN as stated in Chapter 1 of the Charter, is to promote a people-oriented ASEAN in which all sectors of society are encouraged to participate in, and benefit from, the process of ASEAN integration and community building. This in itself highlights the very strong emphasis that ASEAN will place on the social dimensions of development in particular alleviating poverty and narrowing the development gap.    

4. Narrowing the development gap in ASEAN will indeed be the most important challenge in forging an ASEAN Community by 2015. ASEAN Member States lie on different ends of the development continuum, with the older Member States, often referred to as the ASEAN-6 at a higher end of the continuum, while the newer Member States that is the CLMV, at a much lower rung of the continuum. Issues of poverty and human resources development will have to be addressed concertedly, if we are to successfully narrow this gap.

5. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide a firm basis for ASEAN to bridge the social and economic gaps among its Member States. However, in the context of ASEAN, the challenge of achieving the MDGs should be viewed at two levels. First, the acknowledged social importance of attaining these goals as ends in themselves; and second the correlation between attaining these goals and progress towards other ASEAN goals, which include deepened integration among the ASEAN countries. In this regard, the MDGs should be seen as a tool and platform for ASEAN Member States to make development choices that move beyond achievement of these fundamental but essential development parameters. For ASEAN, there should be a broader goal through the MDGs, which encompasses three areas: economic integration, through the ASEAN Economic Community; security integration, through the ASEAN Political and Security Community; and socio-cultural integration, through the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, as outlined in the Bali Concord and the Vientiane Action Plan.

6. In view of this, ASEAN is now working towards an MDG-Plus concept whereby the MDGs will be transformed into the floor instead of a ceiling for human development. ASEAN Member States are now negotiating a roadmap towards achieving the MDGs-Plus which among others will include concrete activities to realise appropriately localised and adapted targets for narrowing the development gaps.

7. The MDG-Plus approach is the appropriate way forward for ASEAN, as the region on the overall, has been assessed to be on-track to meet the poverty reduction target by 2015. With respect to other MDG targets, ASEAN has a better prospect of achieving them compared to all other developing regions. Within ASEAN, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Thailand and Malaysia have already achieved many of the MDGs. Thailand and Malaysia for example exemplify how the MDGs can be a good development tool in middle-income countries in that they have already achieved most of the MDGs well in advance of the 2015 deadline. This is also true of the Philippines, Viet Nam and Indonesia although individual areas of remaining difficulty exist in each of these countries. To varying extents, special problems remain in Cambodia, Myanmar and Lao PDR especially in the areas of child nutrition and mortality, HIV prevalence and loss of forest cover.

8. The disparities within ASEAN in terms of achievement of the MDGs, offer great opportunities for cooperation among ASEAN Member States. The Initiative for ASEAN Integration or the IAI is one mechanism through which the more developed Member States assist the more needy ones in narrowing the development gap and enabling the process of achieving the MDGs. As ASEAN moves towards establishing an ASEAN Community by 2015, the IAI will be an important mechanism through which assistance can be given to the more needy states in particular the CLMV in complying to the agreements that have been signed in particular those that aim to crerate a single market and production base under the ASEAN Economic Community. Within ASEAN also there are sub-regional groups whose primary focus is to accelerate development in specific underdeveloped areas in the region.  

9. I would like to emphasize that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can only be achieved with the full involvement and engagement of all stakeholders in the region. We need to take ownership of the Goals and make use of their ingenuity and creativity for 2015. Promoting awareness and understanding of the MDGs and the effective mechanism to best achieve these goals are not only important but also necessary. It is in this regard that as Secretary General of ASEAN, I welcome the creation of the ASEAN Regional Centre of Excellence on MDGs at the AIT in Bangkok. It is my hope that when established the Centre will work closely with the ASEAN Secretariat in our community building efforts.

10. Finally, I would like to once again thank the AIT for giving me the opportunity to say a few words at this Roundtable. My vision is to make the ASEAN Secretariat a “networked organization” and all of you have a role to play in this effort and we look forward to all of you who are interested to be part of this networked ASEAN Secretariat.

Thank you.