ASEAN Countries Meet to Discuss Social Development
In the National Development Agenda

Starting in June last year, a group of representatives from the ten ASEAN countries started to meet virtually, by video-conference, to discuss how they could improve the social development agenda in their respective countries. This week they all met face-to-face in Jakarta, Indonesia, at a high level Conference. The Meeting generated great enthusiasm, especially since many participants had met on-screen before, but had never actually interacted in person. And after all, according to Dr. Chamnan Wattanasiri, of the Ministry of the Interior in Thailand: “the meeting of minds virtually is not quite the same as a meeting of the minds in person.”.

The Conference, entitled Social Development in the National Development Agenda, brought together 60 delegates from Government Institutions, NGOs, academic institutions, and the private sector, to develop a regional action plan. This initiative is jointly organized by the WBI’s Community Empowerment and Social Inclusion (CESI) Programme, the EAP Environment & Social Department (EASES), and the Social Development Division of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

A key objective of these meetings is to strengthen participants’ ability to formulate and implement the Social Development agenda as a cross-cutting, indispensable ingredient of the overall development agenda, for, as Farrukh Iqbal, Lead Economist at WBI, put it in his three “lessons learned”:

• Growth is necessary but not sufficient: growth alone does not provide adequate safety nets;
• Growth alone does not generate the information systems needed for effective response to large scale systemic crises; and
• Growth does not necessarily provide the institutions needed to cope with crises.

The meeting provides ample opportunity for cross-country exchange of experiences with initiatives in Community Driven Development, decentralisation, and generally development patterns involving multiple stakeholders. Intensive dialogues and experience sharing which began during the video-conferences, are going on within and outside the conference room. Already, foundations are established for an East Asian community of Social Development practitioners which will continue to interact and exchange experiences after the Conference.

Within the framework of the three-pillars of the 2000 World Development Report – Opportunity, Empowerment, and Security - the meeting focuses especially on the themes of Poverty Alleviation & Security for Vulnerable Groups, Labour & Employment, Health, and Gender Mainstreaming.

The Conference format is a combination of face-to-face exchange of experience in expert panels, and small group work, and video-conferences with resource persons at World Bank Headquarters. During the first VC Robert Holzmann, Director of the HD Network’s Social Protection Department, briefed participants on Social Risk Management, while Farrukh Iqbal of WBI summarized lessons from the Asian economic and financial crisis. The second video-conference, planned for the end of the Conference, will bring participants together with Carl Dahlman and Bruno Laporte of WBI’s “Knowledge for Development” Programme, to discuss questions of the knowledge economy, and its implications for effectively implementing Social Development in the national development agenda.

Discussions during the Conference are contributing to a paradigm shift in Social Development. A Major conclusion, coming out of most papers and case studies presented is, that economic and social development can not take place separately, but need to be implemented in tandem, to meet development goals. Another important point which has been made repeatedly is, that economic development is a means, rather than a goal, and human/social development is the ultimate goal in the betterment of people’s lives and large-scale poverty reduction.

Papers and presentation from both the pre-Conference and Conference meetings are available on the joint ASEAN-WBI Website at www1.worldbank.org/gdln/asean.htm
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