Towards an ASEAN counter-terrorism treaty

The benefits for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members of a regional treaty to combat terrorism include improved coordination in mutual legal assistance and harmonisation of best practice legal approaches. The conceptual framework for a common definition of terrorism is set out in this paper. Precedent regional and multilateral treaties are analysed into legal formulae and their components, such as obligations to indict or to extradite, to provide mutual legal assistance, and to build regional implementation capacity, are assessed as potential models for inclusion in an ASEAN regional treaty. The paper concludes by considering ASEAN progress in adopting cooperative mechanisms to combat terrorism thus far.