“What is really important… is the fact that [the Burmese people] are being seen, right?!” exclaims Lilianne Fan, a long-time Myanmar policy expert who serves as a member of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar and as an adviser to the ASEAN Special Envoy on Myanmar. She frames ASEAN’s regional response to the post-2021 crisis as one that has often been misunderstood from the outside. Drawing on her decades of work experience, Fan explains that what appears to many Myanmar observers as paralysis or indifference has in fact involved significant internal shifts in how ASEAN understands legitimacy, inclusion, and its own institutional limits.
She anchors her analysis in ASEAN’s structure, noting how it operates through consensus. Its public statements reflect only what all member states can agree upon, not the views of its individual, constituent governments. Fan acknowledges that this policy frequently results in language that feels inadequate when measured against the scale of violence and civilian suffering in Myanmar. Yet within ASEAN’s political culture, even modest consensus can mark a substantial departure from precedent, and she insists that ASEAN’s response to Myanmar after the coup has represented just such a departure: it resolved to exclude the Myanmar military leadership from ASEAN meetings at the highest levels, a step the organization had never taken before. She characterizes this decision as both innovative and strategically consequential.
For example, Fan unpacks the Five-Point Consensus, which many observers felt was a weak, or even pro-military response by the organization in the wake of the 2021 coup. She explains that it was never designed as a peace agreement per se, or a comprehensive solution to Myanmar’s crisis, even if others wanted it to be. ASEAN recognized both its limited leverage over the junta and the need to navigate its own internal dynamics and competing interests among member states, and therefore could not impose punitive measures or enforce compliance. Instead, she says the Consensus functioned as a diplomatic framework that allowed ASEAN to maintain limited, conditional engagement with Myanmar’s military authorities at a moment of acute uncertainty, while simultaneously withholding political legitimacy. Agreed in April 2021, the Five-Point Consensus articulated five broad areas: an immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar; inclusive dialogue among all stakeholders; mediation by an ASEAN special envoy; the provision of humanitarian assistance; and the envoy’s visit to Myanmar to facilitate these efforts.
The implicit consequence of rejecting or ignoring this framework was not sanctions or suspension, but deeper political exclusion – namely the denial of ASEAN-level representation, voice, and institutional access – something ASEAN already moved to impose early on by excluding the junta from representing Myanmar at summits and high-level meetings. In the end, the junta neither reduced its violence nor engaged in dialogue, and its continued non-compliance reinforced ASEAN’s decision to maintain that exclusion and to narrow engagement to the Special Envoy and humanitarian coordination rather than normalize relations. In sum, while the Five-Point Consensus did not resolve the crisis and was widely seen as insufficient, it preserved ASEAN unity and prevented the military from claiming regional legitimacy by default, even as some individual member states continued bilateral dealings outside the ASEAN framework. In this sense, Fan views the Consensus as a success overall, given the limitations within which ASEAN was operating.
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