AOIP REMAINS KEY TO ASEAN’S FUTURE ENGAGEMENT AND REGIONAL STABILITY
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 15 (Bernama) -- The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) will remain a crucial mechanism for ASEAN in the future to further strengthen its engagement with partners, achieve better economic integration, as well as preserve the region’s ecological and maritime commons.
ASEAN-Malaysia National Secretariat director-general Datuk Zanariah Zainal Abidin said the AOIP serves as ASEAN’s basis for cooperation with subsequent Indo-Pacific strategies to ensure the region remains peaceful, stable and prosperous by promoting cooperation in four priority areas – maritime cooperation, connectivity, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and economic and other possible areas of cooperation.
“The AOIP reminds us that regional stability must be nurtured with dialogue, mutual respect and a shared understanding that peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific must go hand in hand,” she said in her opening remarks at the AOIP Forum 2025, here on Saturday.
Zanariah said that amid growing geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts in the Indo-Pacific, ASEAN has opted for constructive engagement rather than confrontation or complacency, with AOIP as a platform to bridge strategic and economic interests, ensuring that the future of the Indo-Pacific is shaped from within, without undue influence from external powers.
She highlighted that when AOIP was launched in 2019, it articulated ASEAN's own vision for the region, one that is anchored in the principles of openness, inclusivity, transparency and respect for the rule of law.
She noted that as Malaysia nears the conclusion of this year’s ASEAN Chairmanship, the forum also forms part of the country’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the AOIP.
“The AOIP Forum symbolises our (Malaysia’s) continued faith in cooperation, inclusivity, peace and shared progress -- the same values and principles that embody ASEAN,” she said.
Meanwhile, chairman of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, Datuk Prof Dr Mohd Faiz Abdullah, in his remarks, emphasised on economic security, stating that ASEAN’s interests today are deeply entangled with increasingly uncertain geoeconomic and geopolitical dynamics in the Indo-Pacific region.
He added that the bloc is becoming a cornerstone of the Indo-Pacific’s overall security.
The AOIP Forum, he said, underscores the need for dialogue and strong collaboration with the bloc’s neighbours and strategic partners to give new energy to ASEAN’s centrality.
“The AOIP must be driven by a clear and reinvigorated sense of ASEAN’s centrality. Without this, the AOIP risks becoming another guiding framework without the weight of conviction behind it,” he said, adding that the AOIP is now embedded in the strategic goals of the ASEAN Community Vision 2045.
The AOIP Forum 2025, themed “Towards An Inclusive and Sustainable Indo-Pacific,” is jointly organised by the Foreign Ministry and ISIS Malaysia.
-- BERNAMA
