In February 2026, ASEAN’s latest member, Timor-Leste, opened authorized proceedings beneath common jurisdiction in opposition to Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing for conflict crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity. Myanmar responded inside weeks by expelling Dili’s chargé d’affaires. A small, younger democracy drew a line that the bloc’s founding members have refused to attract for 5 years. If Timor-Leste can act on precept, the query ASEAN should reply is: what’s stopping the remainder of us?
As ASEAN leaders convene in Cebu for the forty eighth ASEAN Summit, the area is as soon as once more referred to as to exhibit that its cooperation delivers actual outcomes for its peoples. For Myanmar, 5 years after the adoption of the 5-Level Consensus (5PC), that promise stays unfulfilled. Though adopted with coup chief Min Aung Hlaing’s participation, none of its 5 factors – ending violence, inclusive dialogue, humanitarian entry, appointment of a particular envoy, and a go to by that envoy to all events – have been meaningfully applied.
From the thirty eighth to the forty seventh ASEAN Summits, the junta was barred from political illustration at high-level conferences – ASEAN’s one constant act of strain. It was procedural, not substantive, and the junta absorbed the exclusion with out altering course.
On the forty seventh Summit in October 2025, ASEAN leaders declined to endorse the junta’s deliberate elections, said that cessation of violence should precede any electoral course of, and tasked senior officers to think about a longer-term particular envoy, implicitly acknowledging that the rotating annual system had failed. They launched, for the primary time, language on cross-border humanitarian entry. Leaders additionally formally acknowledged “deep concern over the shortage of considerable progress” in implementing the 5PC. ASEAN then reaffirmed the consensus anyway.
The junta proceeded with its sham elections regardless. It initiated so-called “peace dialogues” to venture willingness for political decision whereas imposing martial legislation throughout 60 townships in April 2026 beneath a 90-day emergency ordinance, the newest in a sequence of martial legislation expansions for the reason that 2021 coup.
What the proof reveals is apparent: the 5PC, designed as leverage, has change into a defend for the junta. By reaffirming the 5PC summit after summit with out benchmarks, timelines, or penalties for non-compliance, ASEAN has given the junta precisely what it wants: the looks of diplomatic engagement with out accountability. ASEAN’s insistence on a “Myanmar-owned, Myanmar-led resolution” – a precept with real advantage — has in follow change into institutional permission to attend for a political will the junta has no incentive to provide.
The junta misplaced the final election it couldn’t rig. It then seized energy, detained the opposition, and rewrote the foundations. ASEAN has spent 5 years participating this dropping facet. Myanmar’s folks, in the meantime, haven’t been silent. They’ve boycotted the junta’s elections within the thousands and thousands, sustained a civil resistance motion throughout years of brutal suppression, and constructed parallel governing constructions from the bottom up.
As the present ASEAN chair, the Philippines inherits each that file and the accountability to alter it.
The Philippines has not acknowledged the electoral final result, with Overseas Affairs Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro stating that ASEAN is not going to acknowledge the army’s election. However credibility calls for greater than non-recognition. Her January 2026 go to to Naypyidaw, the place she met Min Aung Hlaing with out said conditionality, drew condemnation from civil society organizations in Myanmar and the Philippines as conferring legitimacy on a junta accused of conflict crimes. Following Min Aung Hlaing’s inauguration as president on April 10, Manila reaffirmed that it “will proceed to interact related authorities and stakeholders in Myanmar” whereas worldwide companions rejected the electoral course of outright.
Beginning with the forty eighth ASEAN Summit in Cebu, the Philippines’ chairship might be outlined by what it selected to do when it mattered most.
That reply should start with readability: ASEAN can’t acknowledge the military-led authorities in Myanmar no matter any change in title or institutional association. So long as Myanmar is de facto dominated by the army, illustration should stay suspended throughout all ASEAN conferences. Engagement should shift to professional representatives – the Nationwide Unity Authorities, ethnic revolutionary organizations, and the civil society actors the 5PC was ostensibly designed to guard.
The 5PC itself have to be formally reviewed – to not produce one more diplomatic assertion however to actually account for 5 years of non-implementation in opposition to the realities on the bottom. Humanitarian assist should attain all affected communities, together with the Rohingya, by means of cross-border channels that don’t rely on army cooperation or gatekeeping. And ASEAN member states should actively assist accountability circumstances introduced beneath common jurisdiction.
ASEAN’s ideas of peace, stability, and respect for the rule of legislation can’t be upheld if ambiguity persists within the face of ongoing violence and repression. Relatively than allow the masking of the junta’s army violence as state features, ASEAN formations should unequivocally present solidarity with the Myanmar folks’s need for true liberation from oppressive regimes.
5 years of consensus have produced nothing. It’s time for penalties.
