Health Resilience and the Recognition of Biological Risks
The ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) Strategic Plan, adopted at the 46th ASEAN Summit in May 2025 as part of the ASEAN Community Vision 2045, provides an important framework for advancing regional cooperation on health security and biosecurity. While the Plan is not designed specifically as a biosecurity strategy, it reflects ASEAN’s broader commitment to build a resilient, inclusive, and people-centred community capable of responding to future crises and long-term transboundary challenges.

Strategic Goal 4 is particularly relevant, as it focuses on achieving a healthy ASEAN population through strengthened health systems, improved well-being, and protection against communicable and non-communicable diseases. It also emphasises prevention, preparedness and response capacities, including through the One Health approach, and the role of regional mechanisms such as the ASEAN Centre for Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases (ACPHEED). In this regard, the Plan demonstrates that ASEAN has absorbed key lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the need for stronger regional coordination, surveillance, institutional preparedness and resilient healthcare architecture.

Strategic Goal 11 further reinforces this orientation by addressing the need for a more agile and resilient ASEAN Community in the face of emerging crises. Notably, it refers to strengthening health systems to prevent, prepare for, and respond to health-related hazards, while incorporating biosafety and biosecurity concerns. This marks a significant acknowledgement that biological risks are not limited to naturally occurring disease outbreaks, but also include broader concerns relating to safety, security, and preparedness in the management of biological hazards.

These provisions represent a positive development. They locate biosecurity within ASEAN’s wider socio-cultural agenda and recognise that biological risks have implications beyond the health sector alone.