One ASEAN One Response

business community to embrace continuity planning and business recovery planning. By smoothing out the local and national economic impacts of a disaster, such planning can reduce the demand for centralized financing of recovery. Moreover, by building networks via this continuity planning, ASEAN as a regional body can build a community to mobilize non-financial resources during an emergency.

The embrace of partnerships and innovation will not only ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches affected communities but also that communities build resilience. The AADMER Partnership Group (APG) is the flagship achievement on this front; this consortium of seven international organizations has been a contributor to institutionalizing AADMER, to expanding ASEAN-ERAT membership, and to building capacity. An expansion of APG membership is a clear goal of Vision 2025; however, building non-traditional partnerships will also promote innovation. Thus far, ASEAN has built ties with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Business Advisory Council, NTS-Asia Consortium, Council for Security and Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific, the Network of East Asian Think-Tanks, and the Digital Humanitarian Network, while also building the ASEAN University Network and Network of ASEAN Defense and Security Institutes. As in other elements of the Vision, the AHA Centre is viewed as the most likely locus for consolidating all partnership network information and management.83

ASEAN Leaders signed the Declaration on “One ASEAN One Response: ASEAN Responding to Disasters as One in the Region and Outside the Region” at the 28th ASEAN Summit in Lao PDR in September 2016. The “One ASEAN One Response” (OAOR) Declaration laid out strategic and political commitments to achieve faster response, mobilize greater resources, and establish stronger coordination during collective response to disasters by 2020.84 Moreover, the Declaration affirmed the AHA Centre as the primary regional coordinating agency on DM and emergency response, and the Leaders tasked the AHA Centre with operationalizing OAOR to develop necessary protocols, measures, procedures, and standards, and to strengthen engagements with relevant sectors and stakeholders in ASEAN.

At the strategic level, OAOR described the roles of the ASEAN Secretary-General, ASEAN sectoral bodies, ASEAN ministerial bodies, and the ASEAN Leaders. The ASEAN Coordinating Council (ACC) was tasked with ensuring successful implementation of OAOR with the support of the Secretary-General. AMMDM and the AADMER COP were to provide strategic guidance to the AHA Centre on operationalizing OAOR and to initiate a forum to promote dialogue among relevant ASEAN ministerial bodies in realizing the Declaration. Not only did OAOR task the Secretary-General with supporting the ACC to ensure implementation of the Declaration, but it also enshrined the Secretary-General’s role as SG-AHAC in times of disaster.

In the end, OAOR’s goal was for ASEAN to respond to disasters within and beyond the region as one. That is to say that, by 2020, ASEAN would have as many relevant stakeholders involved as necessary to achieve speed, scale, and solidarity during disaster response. The OAOR was intended to be an open and inclusive platform using ASEAN’s mechanisms at its core to help increase the effectiveness of humanitarian response, reduce the burdens of affected countries, and alleviate the suffering of the affected population. The underlying objectives were: • To swiftly provide all required support and resources to a disaster-affected country upon receiving the request for assistance or acceptance of the offer of assistance from the

NDMO of the affected country • To respond in a scale appropriate to the needs of the affected population and support requested by the NDMO by mobilizing assets and capacities within the AHA Centre,

ASEAN member-states, and partners; and