Napas Thein for ISP-Myanmar
Ultimately, the significance of Singapore’s chairmanship will depend not only on what benchmarks ASEAN can develop, but also on whether it can create enduring institutions that help people in Myanmar beyond its chairmanship.
For Myanmar’s resistance actors, the priority is to ensure that their perspectives become embedded in how ASEAN measures progress, delivers humanitarian assistance, and structures political engagement before the chair passes to Thailand.
In January 2027, the ASEAN chairmanship will pass from the Philippines to Singapore.
As Chair, Singapore will inherit the ASEAN Special Envoy on Myanmar and the Five-Point Consensus (5PC), which remains ASEAN’s central framework for addressing Myanmar’s political crisis.
This transition creates a new opportunity for engagement between Singapore and Myanmar’s diverse political stakeholders, especially resistance actors.
Singapore’s Foreign Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, has already identified three points the future ASEAN Chair would like to see “demonstrable progress” on when it comes to Myanmar: The permanent cessation of violence, particularly against civilians; The release of political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi; and humanitarian access throughout Myanmar regardless of political allegiance, through the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre).
This is happening amid growing bilateral normalization between the junta and various ASEAN states. As of this writing, Min Aung Hlaing has already visited five other ASEAN member states: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and most recently Malaysia.
In 2025, Malaysia, as chair, substantially expanded ASEAN’s engagement with Myanmar’s political stakeholders through formal diplomatic consultations and Track 1 and 1.5 initiatives.
The ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar engaged with the military, the National Unity Government (NUG), ethnic resistance organizations, and civil society.
The Philippines continued these engagements, and Singapore is now looking to move toward measurable benchmarks and their implementation. Resistance actors should consider shaping these benchmarks, whether they be humanitarian, security-related, or political.
Singapore’s previous ASEAN chairmanships offer some clues as to how it may address Myanmar’s current humanitarian and political challenges.
During Cyclone Nargis in 2008, Singapore helped facilitate the establishment of the Tripartite Core Group, which supported international humanitarian access at a time when Myanmar’s junta had severely restricted international assistance.
A decade later, Singapore chaired ASEAN during the Rohingya crisis. During its chairmanship, ASEAN backed a “Preliminary Needs Assessment” in Rakhine State to facilitate refugee repatriation.
However, critics argue that the resulting report, completed in 2019, whitewashed the military’s role and may have helped Myanmar authorities downplay the scale of violence in 2017.
Technical assessments can support humanitarian access and dialogue, but without inclusive participation they risk producing an incomplete picture of conditions on the ground. Worse, they may even be used to legitimize politically contested outcomes.
The AHA Centre remains the bloc’s principal humanitarian coordination mechanism for Myanmar.
As it currently stands, the centre is organized primarily around cooperation with central government authorities and faces significant practical limitations in areas outside of junta control.
ASEAN’s October 2025 discussion recognized the importance of nondiscriminatory humanitarian assistance and explicitly allowed for cross-border delivery where necessary.
They also called for relevant Myanmar stakeholders to participate in humanitarian efforts.
Real progress on humanitarian outcomes from ASEAN would require the AHA Centre to institutionalize humanitarian access to non-junta areas. Whether and when it happens in practice is another question.
With Thailand scheduled to assume ASEAN’s chairmanship in 2028, Singapore’s chairmanship gives Myanmar’s resistance actors a short window to reinforce priorities in the 5PC.
Thailand’s recent engagement with Myanmar’s military authorities hints at what Thailand would instead prioritize as chair in 2028: economic cooperation, border security, trade and regional relations.
The SCEF, NUG and other ethnic resistance organizations have an important role in providing Singapore with the information, political proposals and practical partnerships needed to translate its three stated priorities into measurable outcomes.
This includes demonstrating the capacity of existing resistance governance structures, identifying viable humanitarian pathways and contributing to benchmarks that measure political progress alongside reductions in violence and improvements in humanitarian access.
Ultimately, the significance of Singapore’s chairmanship will depend not only on what benchmarks ASEAN can develop, but also on whether it can create enduring institutions that help people in Myanmar beyond its chairmanship.
For Myanmar’s resistance actors, the priority is to ensure that their perspectives become embedded in how ASEAN measures progress, delivers humanitarian assistance, and structures political engagement before the chair passes to Thailand.
*The views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of ISP-Myanmar. Readers wishing to share reflections or offer counterarguments are welcome to write and submit a rebuttal article.
Napas Thein is a research fellow with the Myanmar Policy and Community and Knowledge Hub (MyPACK) based at the University of Toronto.
The post What should Myanmar expect from Singapore’s ASEAN Chairmanship? appeared first on DVB.