The paper, an initiative of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, is timed to coincide with the second ASEAN-UN Summit in Thailand at the end of February, and it is our hope that it offers constructive suggestions and ideas for taking this important relationship forward.

The briefing paper is intended for policy makers and officials and will not be made public, at least for now. We do hope that it prompts a constructive debate and to this end plan a series of small group discussions in some ASEAN capitals on the paper’s key themes.