Achieving the ASEAN Community Cooperation in the Field of Politics and Security, Social, Culture, and Economics

ASEAN Talks seminar is a seminar on International relations are regularly held in the Auditorium Prof. Djajusman London School of Public Relations Campus B each month. Asean Seminar Talks # 8 was held on Friday 16 December 2016, precisely at 10:00 am until 12:00 noon. The theme of the seminar is “Achieving the ASEANCommunity Cooperation in the Field of Politics and Security, Social, Culture, and Economics”. Each achievement field will be explain by three spokepersons who are experts and have enough experience on a myriad of issues around ASEAN. The seminar was attended by 50 LSPR students, the seminar was opened by singing ASEAN Community anthems by Raras and Emil. After ASEAN Community  anthems is complete, the seminar was followed by a short question and answer session about ASEAN.

Entering the core of the seminar who  were talking about the ASEAN Community achievement in three fields that have been mentioned earlier, the first session begins with a discussion of the achievement in the fields of politics and security. Cooperation in this field is organizing and making the rules and norms of security throughout the Asean region. In this session, the spoke person described the ASEAN vision that have the concept of “Foreign Ahead Together”, the beginning of the establishment of the ASEAN Community which began in December 2015, and Characteristics of state ASEAN countries. Participants also got explained about the importance of strengthening unity and centrality in the scope of the Asean region.
Proceed to the second session that discusses the achievement on the economic field. The cooperation here is more about the trades in goods and services. The Spokeperson explained the agreement among ASEAN countries that every time there is one of the ASEAN countries that doing export activities, these activities will not be subject to customs tariffs. However, there are certain goods that are still subject to customs tariffs, such as alcohol drinks, rice, and sugar. In the service sector, the agreed cooperation is facilitated work permit professional workforce who wish to work in other ASEAN countries. Some other achievements in this field include agreement on open sky, the amendment of the investment, and connectivity to the target of Asean in 2025 in the digital field.

The third session which is the last session of the seminar is to discuss the achievement in the field of social culture. The core of this cooperation is the work program which made by ASEAN leaders should be able to raise the level of welfare of ASEAN people. Many issues that are focus in this field is the protection of migrant workers, the case of trans boundary haze, the ASEAN countries cooperation in natural disaster management, education, and HIV AIDS. In this session also explained that the level of public awareness about ASEAN in Indonesia is still lacking, and the expected future Indonesian society will be more sensitive to information about the ASEAN. The seminar was followed by a question and answer session by the participants to the informant and ended with the closing by the MC. (Justin/Myra)