RepAsean Desk

Reporting Asean is a homegrown, independent venue for the discussion and analysis of news and issues around regionalism, and for storytelling that highlights voices and views from within Southeast Asia. It encourages greater editorial investment by the media in the story of regionalism. This includes covering the idea of an Asean community, one that goes far beyond the regional association of states that is ASEAN.

JAKARTA | 29 DECEMBER 2025 *Visual: Cacao farmers in Indonesia and West Africa are far away from each other, but their livelihoods have been affected by climate change and unpredictable weather. (Illustration by Nadya Noor.) “I’ve got nothing this harvest season,” sighed cocoa farmer Ujang, speaking from his home in Merasa, a village in Berau district, located in Indonesia’s Eastern Borneo province. This is the first time he has experienced a crop failure in all his 30 years as a small farmer.

BANGKOK | 16 December 2025 The Trump show barrelled into town and hogged many headlines during the ASEAN summit in October 2025. But for ASEAN, the real main act was its formal admission of Timor-Leste – a country whose brutal 24-year occupation by Indonesia was a touchy issue that Southeast Asian governments used to tiptoe around.