Senior Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Statesmen
About Project
When the 1st ASEAN-COCI Oral History Colloquium met in Kuala Lumpur in June 1991 and again in Singapore in May the following year, the participants were conscious of the fact that in 1992, ASEAN would celebrate its 25th anniversary. A quarter century’s worth of development in regional cooperation was notably significant, and it seemed only fitting that the first joint ASEAN oral history project should aim to record the experiences of the organisation’s senior statesmen, as part of documenting the history of the Association itself. The Colloquium had asked Singapore to prepare a proposal for consideration by the ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information (COCI) and in October 1992, the 8th Meeting of the ASEAN Working Group on Literary and ASEAN Studies approved the proposal for the project.
By July 1993, a preparatory meeting had been organised in Singapore. With Singapore as the coordinating country, one expert from each of the ASEAN countries – Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – met to discuss the details of implementing this joint oral history project.
To begin with, the project’s objectives were defined: To collect and preserve information for posterity on the first 25 years of ASEAN’s development through oral history interviews with senior ASEAN government leaders and administrators; and in doing so, to define ASEAN’s collective memory. [see Mrs Lily Tan, Senior Director, National Archives of Singapore, Preface, Senior ASEAN Statesmen: A Catalogue of Oral History Interviews (1998)]
In 2025, 12 oral history interviews from this collection were inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register as part of The Birth of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) (Archives about the Formation ASEAN, 1967-1976) records, submitted by Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Further information about the other records in the inscription may be found on Archives Online at this link (https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/MOWAsean)
The UNESCO Memory of the World Register on The Birth of ASEAN can be found here:
(https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world)
Written by John Choo, Oral History Specialist (July 2025)
