Parliamentarians from Southeast Asia called on Indonesia, the only G20 member in Southeast Asia and its president this year, to “give voice to the aspirations of the Global South.”
The legislators urged Indonesia to also bring to the table “issues that particularly affect the region” at the G20 Summit that will be held in November this year in Jakarta.
The G20 or Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union. It aims to address major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stability, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development.
In a position paper published on Thursday, June 9, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) urged Indonesia to advocate for stronger and more creative global responses to the devastation caused by conflicts like that of Myanmar, a “substantial increase in global financial support for a sustainable energy transition,” and to find ways “to reduce the impact of the world’s digital transformation on human rights and democracy.”
“We are urging the Indonesian government to use its preeminent position to promote at the G20 a form of collective and inclusive collaboration among nations to address challenges that, having a specific resonance to our region, affect humanity as a whole,” read the APHR Position Paper.
APHR suggested that new creative ways are necessary to prevent the human and economic costs of crises such as those devastating Myanmar, Ukraine, Yemen or Syria.
“As international organizations like the UN, or regional groups like ASEAN, have often failed to prevent atrocities, Indonesia should propose a new Working Group at the G20 to discuss responses from the largest economies in the world to those crises,” said the group.
The group said that on the climate change front, it has become evident that current pledges from states to reduce carbon emissions will not be sufficient to slow climate change, and the necessity to transition to renewable sources of energy is more urgent than ever.
APHR urged Indonesia to lead the G20 to agree to accelerate the phasing out from coal and fossil fuels, but it must also substantially increase global financial support for such a transition.
The group called on the G20 to discuss and identify measures that can be adopted to regulate the digital marketplace along democratic lines, put an end to invasive use of people’s personal data, and hold online platforms accountable for their harmful business models.