On January 4, 2026, ten days after the junta announced the third phase of its elections in the region, a military gyrocopter attacked a hospital in the village of Ma Taunt Ta, Sagaing. The attack killed the 40-year-old chief doctor, Dr. Aung Thel Htut, a doctor who had joined the civil disobedience movement since the first days of the coup and had devoted himself to treating residents in remote areas along with two other medical staff. This is not the first attack on the hospital. ASEAN did not respond at all.
This is no longer an anomaly. This is a pattern, and it is getting more intense. Since December 2024, more than 135 paramotor and gyrocopter attacks have been reported across Myanmar’s central lowlands, hitting schools, hospitals, monasteries, and civilian villages. On March 5, 2026, a junta airstrike in Pale Township, Sagaing, killed at least seven civilians, including an elderly man and a child. ASEAN’s inability to move beyond statements of concern has been its hallmark in the five years since the February 2021 coup.
The question now facing the members of this bloc is no longer whether ASEAN needs to change. Unless they are willing to accept what the change requires. The answer depends on which path is chosen: a partial “partial break” from the bloc’s consensus norms or a radical “fundamental break” that will force a fundamental reconstruction of what ASEAN values really mean.
The Five-Point Consensus agreed at the special summit in April 2021 should be ASEAN’s answer. The document calls for an immediate cessation of violence, inclusive dialogue with all parties, and unimpeded humanitarian access. Five years have passed; none of its five points have been substantially implemented. The junta has killed more than 6,000 civilians since the coup, displaced nearly 3.6 million people, and, in the months leading up to the December 2025 elections, intensified airstrikes against civilian infrastructure across Chin, Kachin, and Kayah states.
Yet the bloc continues to negotiate within the framework of engagement set by the junta itself. ASEAN’s comprehensive review of the 5PCs in September 2023 still affirms the document as a “key reference” despite almost no concrete progress. According to the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, ASEAN’s strategic failure lies in its fixation on the 5PCs without attempting to design a stronger complementary framework.
The Myanmar junta has understood something that ASEAN reformers do not realize: the bloc’s procedures are not neutral, but it is a battleground. Article 20(2) of the ASEAN Charter explicitly allows summits to determine how decisions are made when consensus cannot be reached. However, this provision has never been formally enforced. An organization that relies on consensus gives each member a functional veto over the collective conscience.
The comparison between ASEAN and the EU is often criticized as a categorical error. The EU was born out of the ruins of two world wars, with decades of dense economic integration preceding its political architecture. ASEAN is built on sovereignty, not solidarity, which is a vehicle for regional stability among governments that are, in many cases, far from democratic.
This comparison remains instructive as a diagnostic. The EU’s response to Myanmar since 2021 has consisted of eight consecutive sanctions packages. On November 27, 2024, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan filed an arrest warrant application for Senior General Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity against the Rohingya population. The EU explicitly supports the jurisdiction of the ICC and encourages the referral of third-party countries.
ASEAN does not enforce any of this. Its geographical, economic, and diplomatic leverage far exceeds Brussels’s in relation to Naypyidaw. However, this block chooses not to use it, because the block architecture makes collective coercion structurally unacceptable. The EU’s enforcement power comes from a shared normative foundation. ASEAN membership, as set out in the 2007 Charter, is not conditional on anything but sovereignty.
This is the core asymmetry. This is not just a matter of political will. It’s a matter of institutional design. ASEAN was not built to do what the EU did. The question is whether it can be rebuilt or whether a partial solution is a more realistic ambition.
FIRST OPTION: PARTIAL BREAK
A partial break does not leave the ASEAN Way but rather creates an exception in it. The most immediate actionable step is the activation of Article 20(2) of the ASEAN Charter, which allows summits to determine how decisions are taken when consensus is not reached. This provision has never been officially enforced. If the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore push for it collectively, it would mark the first time ASEAN has formally acknowledged that unanimity is not the only mode available.
The related reform is the restructuring of the AICHR from a consultative body to an investigative body. Analysts from the ISEAS have long argued that giving the AICHR limited investigative functions without requiring a full revision of the Charter would create for the first time an internal regional accountability mechanism that has teeth.
Third, the formalization of ASEAN arrangements for Myanmar allows willing member states to act collectively, including coordinated sanctions or NUG recognition, without the need for full consensus. The precedent for differential implementation already exists in Article 21(2) of the ASEAN Charter for economic commitments. Extending that logic to security and human rights would be politically charged but procedurally feasible.
The honest limitation of the partial break is that it still relies on the Junta’s goodwill and China’s leverage. While nearly 20 million people in Myanmar will be in need of humanitarian assistance by 2025, that number cannot be overcome by symbolic measures alone.
OPTION TWO: RADICAL BREAK
A radical break departs from a different premise, that the Myanmar crisis is not a test of ASEAN procedures but a test of its values. And that if values such as peace, stability, and people’s welfare are truly upheld, then the procedures that hinder their realization must be changed, not circumvented.
At the heart of the radical break is the introduction of a certain majority threshold for decisions involving extraordinary crimes defined under the Rome Statute’s categories: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Under such a threshold, seven of ASEAN’s eleven members would be sufficient to activate a collective response, diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, or formal referral to international accountability bodies. This requires amending the Charter, a difficult but not impossible process.
The radical break also requires formal recognition of the NUG as Myanmar’s legitimate political partner. According to the OHCHR January 2025 report, the junta has killed more than 6,231 civilians, including 709 children. Engaging with the NUG formally will not resolve the war. This will signal that ASEAN has chosen a side and that the party it chooses is the one that does not bomb hospitals.
A radical break requires ASEAN to act as a facilitator of international criminal accountability. Timor-Leste as a party to the Rome Statute is in a position to submit Article 14 references to the ICC. ASEAN can push for this move rather than maintaining calculated silence so that ICC jurisdiction can be enforced without the need for action from the Security Council that China and Russia will veto.
The political cost of a radical break is real. It will result in open disagreement in ASEAN. But the alternative would continue to give legitimacy to a military that has committed systematic crimes and brought with it another kind of cost: the slow erosion of ASEAN’s moral credibility and its move away from the diplomacy that really matters.
A CHOICE THAT CANNOT BE POSTPONED
Partial breaks and radical breaks are not equally risky. A radical break requires a confrontation with established interests within ASEAN itself. But partial breaks carry their own risks: that they become a permanent substitute for real action, a way to appear to move while remaining still.
Nearly 20 million people in Myanmar are now in need of humanitarian assistance. The junta has no incentive to negotiate because it does not face any costs. ASEAN still has leverage, but unused leverage is lost leverage.
The people of Myanmar are not waiting for ASEAN to find the ideal procedural formula. They are waiting for this block to decide, finally, what the true value of the values that have been heralded so far is. In the end, ASEAN needs to reform the ASEAN Values in order to create the realization of the values that have been sought to be achieved in the region.
