Description
Southeast Asia is deeply affected by conflict and conflictual legacies, whether colonial, Cold War, territorial, ideological, religious, or related to resources. A premium is placed on national economic development, security, political sovereignty and territorial integrity. De-spite dramatic progress in economic development and governance, however, major chal-lenges to human security endure. In some cases, these have been exacerbated by national security and development policymaking. At the same time human insecurity and distributive injustices threaten to undermine peace. This presentation addresses Southeast Asian excep-tionalism towards global governance, the successes of regional governance initiatives, but also whether they can deal with contemporary challenges. It further deconstructs the nega-tive and counter-productive impact of state-centric security and development foci while also broadening the analysis of human security contributions to include conflict drivers from the arena of human development. In other words, analysis of the spillover between traditional and non-traditional security perspectives is expanded along both the vertical and horizontal axes. The problems are illustrated by case study analysis of two of the most challenged countries in the region, Lao PDR and Timor-Leste.
