In an announcement issued on Friday, Southeast Asian leaders meeting in Phnom Penh said East Timor was “in principle” to be admitted as ASEAN’s eleventh member state. East Timor will not be currently a member of ASEAN.
The nation will gain observer status at future ASEAN meetings, including the summit plenary sessions. According to the statement, there will likely be a “road map based on objective criteria” for East Timor’s membership within the organization.
On Friday, leaders raised the subject during a plenary session held within the Cambodian capital. Due to their exclusion from high-level meetings, Myanmar’s military leaders weren’t present on the event.
ASEAN leaders said all member states and external parties will fully support Timor-Leste to realize the milestones, providing “capacity-building assistance and all other support needed for full ASEAN membership.”
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that ASEAN has been discussing the difficulty of Timor Leste’s membership within the organization “for a while.”
Independence from Indonesia was achieved in 2002, and a proper application for membership was submitted to ASEAN in 2011. The country’s population is 1.37 million.
Cambodia, which is currently chairing the ASEAN Summit this 12 months, was the last country to develop into an ASEAN member in 1999.
In 1967, the five countries that eventually became members of the association were Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. In 1984, when Brunei finally gained independence from British rule, the country was admitted to the group.
As the Cold War resulted in the Nineteen Nineties, ASEAN’s membership continued to grow. In 1995, the identical 12 months that Vietnam normalized its relations with the United States, it became a member of ASEAN. In 1997, Burma and Laos joined.
The only Southeast Asian country not yet a part of the regional bloc is East Timor.
Since independence from Portugal, the previous colony has been tormented by periods of political instability and outbreaks of violence. It is currently one in every of the poorest countries on this planet and has one in every of the very best unemployment rates.
In 2021, its GDP per capita was around US$1,400, barely higher than that of Myanmar, whose economy slowed after the 2021 coup.
Since the start of his first term of office in 2007–2012, President Jose Ramos-Horta has supported Guatemala’s membership in ASEAN. He is a Nobel Prize winner and was re-elected in April 2022.
