HIKMA SUMMIT
OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

POVERTY AS THE BIGGEST LIMIT TO ACCESSION

The annual “Human Development Index (HDI)”, which is a summary measure of human development around the world, collects key information about countries’ well-being and poverty rate, mainly highlighting the three basic dimensions of human development: health, education and income. By looking more closely at the significance of this Index, it is possible to state that the analysis is not conducted for the sake of measurement: the HDI wants the world to focus on the importance of development, instead of considering just the income.

What’s remarkable is that the “Human Development Report” tackles inequality in a very accessible way, using the so-called “user-friendly” methods for the analysis of development, both at local–regional and international level: that is because people don’t need the United Nations to be cryptic, they need it to be clear.

According to the data provided by the HDI, Timor-Leste was entangled in a poverty trap, and as of 2015 it seemed almost impossible to meet the “Millennium Development Goals”; moreover, in 2002 something had changed, considering that, after gaining independence from Indonesia, the country had started to fully commit to working with both the international community and civil society to “reduce poverty in all sectors of the Nation”. Despite the efforts, the 2006 military crisis between soldiers destroyed what was being defined as one of the “United Nations nation-building success stories”, according to the UN analyst Peter Van der Auweraert (2012).

In 2025, the UN Development Program (UNDP) has allocated significant public funds to concretely help Timor-Leste with its quest to access clean water, whose management was, at this point, the most critical issue within the country: as some local Timorese interviewed by the UN said, “there were times when it was extremely difficult to have even a jerrycan of water to wash the food and vegetables that we were going to cook”. To overcome these challenges, the Government of Timor-Leste has been pushing to join ASEAN since 2011, and the efforts were aimed at dealing with extreme poverty rates stretching around the country: 14 years later, Dili is taking its first steps into ASEAN.

Nowadays, poverty remains a major issue for the country, but its rate has significantly dropped: despite this progress, Timor-Leste still relies heavily on petroleum revenues, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability of its economic model.

GROUNDS FOR ASEAN MEMBERSHIP

Southeast Asian nations have the roots of their quest for mutual friendship in the “Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC)”, whose purpose is to “promote perpetual peace with countries that would contribute to the strength of the region”. The TAC boasts some significant signed agreements that shape the projection of the region worldwide: in 2009, both the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the European Union’s ratification of the Treaty marked a significant turning point for the relationship between the ASEAN and the Western world.

Focusing on Timor-Leste, that joined the organization on 26th October 2025 during the 47th ASEAN Summit, it is necessary to underline what it means for the region to include the “smallest GDP country in Southeast Asia”: first of all, according to Article 6 of the ASEAN Charter, the only major point of contention for the Timorese was the “ability and willingness” to join the alliance, which has finally been unanimously recognized by the members; despite this milestone, the path to the Timorese accession was largely blocked by member countries like Myanmar, that used their veto as a sort of “revenge” against Timor-Leste for having abstained from voting against the military coup occurred in 2021 during a UN General Assembly.

Accepting East Timor in the organization means both enlarging the regional cooperation and embarking in new economic processes aiming to unify the internal market of the region: often described as a “burden”, Timor-Leste is expected to benefit from ASEAN funds for new infrastructures, such as hospitals and water-cleaning systems, but it will mostly use the money for national literacy, whose rate has declined to an average of 72%, according to the World Bank.

ASEAN also delayed Timor-Leste’s admission because several member states questioned its administrative capacity to meet the organization’s obligations, including participation in more than 1,000 annual ASEAN meetings.

A STRATEGIC PROJECTION INTO THE INDIAN OCEAN

As Truston Yu, a journalist from “The Diplomat” stated, “It is in ASEAN’s strategic interest to admit Timor-Leste NOW”: the Timorese accession will allow the organization to develop new grounds for cooperation with the United States, whose interest lies under the vision of “Timor-Leste as a new US bulwark in the Indian Ocean”. The concept of “Manifest Destiny”, to which the Americans have always been so devoted, consists in the soft-imperialist vision of exporting the “American way” in developing countries, mostly to draw them under the US strategic umbrella, and to reinforce the shield against “enemies” like China.

It is worth noting that nowadays Timor-Leste is far more developed than it was after its independence in 2002, and the United States is keeping an eye on how they could benefit from strengthening their bonds with the eastern part of the island; on the other side, China has always had interests as well in establishing forms of cooperation with ASEAN, which led the country to be the first commercial partner of the organization since 2020. Because of that, the Chinese government had started to consider allocating large funds for Timor-Leste’s development, and some analysts judge this move as a pretext to broaden the country’s influence in the Southeast Asia region, excluding that Xi Jinping had real humanitarian interests from the beginning. China’s engagement is also linked to its ambition to secure strategic maritime routes connecting the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

Senior US Bureau Official O’Neill highlighted that the United States remains the “top source of foreign direct investment for the ASEAN region”, and “supporting Timor-Leste’s accession to ASEAN” seems to be the perfect opportunity for them to unify the international projection of the regional market. For Washington, a deeper engagement with Timor-Leste also complements a broader strategy of strengthening ties with Pacific Island nations to counter China’s expanding influence.

Furthermore, the “Macau Business Daily”, a newspaper from the former Portuguese colony of Macau, describes China as “an alternative to ASEAN membership”, considering that, while Timor-Leste was waiting for the ASEAN Council to accept its accession, Dili was conducting key dialogues to move towards China: looking at the situation, ASEAN members, under pressure of the United States, pushed to accelerate the process of the Timorese accession. In addition to this, considering that Timor-Leste itself was an ancient Portuguese colony, Macao served as an observatory in the region to monitor Chinese movements, pushed by the strong bonds of friendship that the country still maintains with the Western World and the United States.

WHOSE FRIEND?

From now on, it is necessary to detect what will be the main consequences of Timor-Leste’s accession to ASEAN: international public opinion is (maybe for the first time) realizing how an extremely small country’s geopolitics can directly affect the international market and political alliances.

In the scenario of a “Second Cold War”, which side will Timor-Leste align with?