Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bùi Thanh Sơn addresses the closing ceremony of ASEAN Future Forum 2025. — VNA/VNS Photo An Đăng

HÀ NỘI — Initiative, resilience and inclusivity remain central to ASEAN’s success, Việt Nam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bùi Thanh Sơn said as he delivered the closing remarks to wrap up the 2nd ASEAN Future Forum 2025 on Wednesday afternoon. 

Taking place in Hà Nội on February 25-26, the forum had an intensive agenda that addressed critical issues in the region, ranging from mega-trends to women’s role in digital peace, building from revisiting ASEAN fundamentals to the governance and management of emerging issues, especially technologies

Several areas of consensus have emerged from these insightful discussions, said Sơn, noting the profound transformations the world is seeing, marked by unprecedented uncertainties and complexities.

The intense competition among major powers, and especially major developments in the relationship among major powers in recent years and recent weeks, have served as a testament to this shifting landscape. 

“ASEAN navigating this uncertain transition in the global order may well be the defining challenge of our generation,” said the diplomat. 

These challenges also present clear opportunities to demonstrate ASEAN’s collective strength and enduring relevance, he said, adding that with unity and centrality as a core value, ASEAN can maintain its role as an honest broker, a strategic convener of dialogue and a ‘beacon of hope’ for sustainable development, open regionalism and rules-based order through the international law and the United Nations Charter.

In addition to the transformative and often unpredictable impact of technological advancement, the world is facing the growing significance and challenges of non-traditional security issues, the intensifying impacts of cyber threats, the extreme climate change, along with the profound socio-economic implications of rapidly ageing societies. 

These require innovative responses that go beyond national boundaries and resource mobilisation at the highest level. 

Underscoring the commitment to increase investment in critical technologies, the Vietnamese official said that the centre of development of the vision should take science and technology as its core instrument to move the whole region forward, with a special focus on human resource development and on cooperation with international partners. 

Sơn added: “Given that centrality must be earned and re-earned, we should strive to innovate in the way we assert our centrality in the regional architecture and manage our relations with external partners, including major powers.”

The results of the discussions from the ASEAN Future Forum 2025 will be compiled and submitted to the ASEAN Secretariat for further dissemination and reference by relevant ASEAN decision-making bodies and agencies. — VNS