Video lectures and teaching materials will be freely available on the CIL website Teaching ASEAN Law and Policy section from 31 August 2020.

A new module will be made available every Monday for 11 weeks.

Dear academic colleagues and friends of ASEAN,

The Centre for International Law (CIL) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) welcome you to the Foundation Programme of the ASEAN Law Academy. This is a new addition complementing our annual CIL ASEAN Law Academy – Advanced Programme for Changemakers (policymakers and practitioners) and Educators (professors and scholars). taught by expert scholars and practitioners in Singapore.

This Foundation Programme is built as a comprehensive introduction to ASEAN. The rationale for its launch is borne out of our experience in running the Advanced Programme. ASEAN has for some time been an important political, economic, and legal reality in its ten Member States. The creation and development of the ASEAN Community lie in the hands of policymakers in government and regional institutions, practitioners in the private sector and civil society, and ASEAN’s external partners. As regional integration becomes more complex, it is a challenge for practitioners in the various sectors of ASEAN to keep abreast of broad developments and their contexts. There is a vital need for the ASEAN youth to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to develop our region into an ever more peaceful, equitable, and prosperous society.

The teaching of ASEAN at university and professional education levels is an imperative – first, as part of the general education we must impart to our students and, second, our response to the need for professionally-trained graduates who can operate within the ASEAN environment, both in the public and private sectors, with professional competence and an adequate skill set. Yet teaching ASEAN remains a challenge—a result of many factors among them the cross-disciplinary nature of the subject, the corresponding difficulty of creating syllabi of such and the lack of a tradition of ASEAN courses.

It is therefore with great enthusiasm that CIL shares a model curriculum to those who want an introductory course to ASEAN Law and Policy as well as to fellow educators to impart their knowledge of ASEAN at the university level. The more ASEAN Law and Policy is taught in ASEAN universities – and a teacher’s reach is immense given the number of students she/he teaches in a year – the greater and more profound development our region will enjoy in the medium to longer term.

The ASEAN Law Academy and its new online Foundation Programme aims to equip academics, policymakers, and practitioners with a fundamental understanding of ASEAN institutions and key developments in ASEAN’s economic integration, foreign affairs, and legal framework. More importantly, this programme enables professors in ASEAN to use the syllabus to conduct similar courses in their home universities.

Through 11 online modules, this Foundation Programme reviews the essential building blocks of ASEAN in its central areas of activity. Participants will receive a lecture video and syllabus outline uploaded online weekly for four months (spanning August to November 2020). This includes seminar questions and a reading list on each lecture topic that participants can use as further reference or, more practically, for teachers to facilitate class discussion.

Who should attend this programme:

• Lecturers in tertiary institutions currently teaching or interested in teaching ASEAN-related modules
• Academics with a research interest in ASEAN and/or regional integration
• Practitioners in government, international organisations and the private sector who wish to gain an overview of ASEAN’s institutions and policies and benefit from ASEAN integration.

We trust you will find our academic contributions useful.

Best wishes,

Tan Hsien-Li and Joseph Weiler
Co-Directors, The ASEAN Law Academy, CIL-NUS