Introduction
Maritime Southeast Asia, comprising Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Timor-Leste, is a host to a myriad of disasters. According to data from the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management, these countries experienced more than 80 per cent of the disasters that occurred in the region between 2012 and 2018. Typhoons, floods, tsunamis, droughts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are among the disasters frequently striking maritime Southeast Asia. Worryingly, as a result of climate change, rapid urbanisation, population growth, and environmental degradation, these disasters have intensified in severity, frequency, and unpredictability.
Since most disasters are transboundary in nature, no single country can deal with humanitarian crises on its own. There has been widespread recognition of the need for cooperation in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (hereinafter referred to as HADR). This paper explores different cooperation mechanisms and evaluates their effectiveness. For a long time, Southeast Asian countries have adopted a multilateral approach through various mechanisms and agreements led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). However, critics assert that multilateralism has been slow-moving and less effective when it comes to crisis management. Therefore, there has been a call to accelerate minilateral cooperation to overcome the limitations of multilateralism. Given its informal and flexible nature, minilateralism is considered to be agile and more targeted. In this context, an important question arises: are informal mechanisms or formal mechanisms more efficacious in addressing HADR challenges in maritime Southeast Asia?
Notwithstanding its importance, studies examining cooperation mechanisms for HADR in maritime Southeast Asia have been limited in number. The majority of the existing literature focuses on ASEAN-led mechanisms. This paper, hence, seeks to bridge this gap and take a comparative look at the effectiveness of these two cooperation mechanisms.
Maritime Southeast Asia provides a relevant and interesting case study due to a variety of reasons. To begin with, these six countries are particularly prone to many types of disasters with different levels of frequency and intensity. Disasters have limited their growth, resulting in losses of lives and infrastructure. Furthermore, maritime Southeast Asian countries exhibit a wide range of political systems and levels of economic development. As a result, their preparedness for and responses to disasters vary significantly from one nation to another.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. It begins by outlining the current landscape of disasters in maritime Southeast Asia and the debate surrounding HADR cooperation. Key concepts and existing literature on multilateralism and minilateralism are then reviewed. This is followed by an analysis of ASEAN-led mechanisms and agreements on disaster management. The paper next examines minilateral cooperation in past disasters, namely the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami and the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan. It then discusses the effectiveness of multilateral and minilateral approaches for HADR operations. Finally, the paper concludes by revisiting the main arguments and highlighting theoretical and policy contributions. Potential limitations of this study will also be acknowledged, followed by suggestions for future research.
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