Introduction

Over the past decade, the global security environment has undergone significant shifts. There is a noticeable downturn in political will to solve pressing issues collectively. There is a rise in state-centred politics that focuses on the notion of “taking back control—whether domestically from political rivals or externally from multilateral or supranational organizations—that resonates worldwide. It is therefore unsurprising that macroeconomic slowdown and geopolitical tensions dominate news headlines—a battle between sustaining globalism and an emerging nationalism. While this division is surmountable, the utilization of new technologies and social media as platforms to convey political messages to a greater number of people make it more pronounced. Many established, new or emerging democracies have not yet dealt with the political fragmentation and polarization they now face, which makes consolidated and effective governance difficult. These domestic political and economic challenges have made global and regional efforts to govern transnational and non-traditional security issues more difficult. This has led to disproportionately negative effects on marginalized communities both within and across borders.

In South and Southeast Asia, displacement has three major causes— disaster, development and conflict. Disaster impacts have remained localized areas of vulnerability within countries for short periods of time in general. The impacts of development on the displacement of people are harder to monitor with the main driver being rapid urbanization and large-scale infrastructure projects. Finally, but most significantly, conflict as a driver tends to lead to more protracted displacement both within countries and across international borders. Across Southeast Asia, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre identifies the new displacements in 2018 as an estimated 365,000 disaster displaced and 3,000 conflict displaced in Indonesia; 3,800,000 disaster displaced and 188,000 conflict displaced in the Philippines; 82,000 disaster displaced in Malaysia; 315,000 disaster displaced and 57,000 conflict displaced in Myanmar; 50,000 disaster displaced in Thailand; and 633,000 disaster displaced in Vietnam.

From this broad overview of 2018, Southeast Asia as a region remains significantly impacted by disaster displacement over the short term. The numbers of newly displaced by conflict remain relatively low in Southeast Asia in 2018. More broadly, the world also saw numbers of civilian casualties in conflict plateau in 2018. However, there were three notable global developments that have implications and reflections in Southeast Asia.