Beyond Boundaries:Evaluating ASEAN’s 2021-2025 Work Plan on Youth

T Malini, Bryan Pak, Dylan Pon and Chevelle Chiong
22 hours ago
11 min read

Credits to Unsplash: Hannah Busing (https://unsplash.com/photos/person-in-red-sweater-holding-babys-hand-Zyx1bK9mqmA)

In this Explainer, find out...

What are the priorities of the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2021-2025?
How will the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2021-2025 be implemented?
What are the strengths and limitations of the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2021-2025?

This Policy Explainer was written as a collaboration between MAJU and guest writers Dylan Pon and Chevelle Chiong.

Introduction

In a region where one-third of the population is under 35 years old, the future of ASEAN depends heavily on youth as key drivers of regional development. To develop the region’s youth, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has introduced the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2021-2025, which guides youth programmes through coordinated activities.

By investing in the priority areas that it has identified, ASEAN aims to empower its youth and prepare them for emerging regional challenges, thereby strengthening its socio-economic and environmental development. This article will explore what the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2021-2025 is, how it will be implemented, and the strengths and limitations of this Work Plan for various stakeholders.

Foundations of ASEAN’s Youth Development Agenda

Background to ASEAN Youth Cooperation

Over the past 10 years, ASEAN’s youth policy framework has gradually shifted under the direction of long-term regional visions and recurring work plans that coordinate youth initiatives among member states. These documents serve as blueprints, outlining priority areas, identifying needs for capacity building, and directing cooperation among ASEAN bodies, governments, and youth organisations.

For example, the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2016-2020 established mechanisms for cross-border programmes and collaborative capacity building. It had a focus on youth entrepreneurship, volunteerism, leadership and resilience. By incorporating sectoral organisations like the ASEAN Youth Programme Fund and the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Youth (SOMY), it also improved institutional partnerships. A more organised approach to youth development in the region was made possible by these earlier frameworks.

Evolving Priorities and Emerging Regional Needs

The current 2021-2025 framework, which builds on the lessons learned from the 2016-2020 Work Plan, reflects ASEAN’s Post 2020 Vision for Youth Cooperation. It prioritises 21st-century competencies, digital literacy and ongoing youth participation in policymaking to develop “future-ready” youth.

It addresses significant regional and global changes, such as digitalisation, climate change, and post-pandemic recovery, acknowledging that young people will be essential in overcoming these challenges. Through instruments like the ASEAN Youth Development Index (YDI), which tracks youth outcomes in the areas of education, health, employment, and civic engagement, the Work Plan further strengthens accountability and progress tracking. The updated youth agenda of ASEAN essentially aims to integrate youth perspectives into larger regional cooperation and development strategies, on top of empowering youth as leaders.

Key Priority Areas of the Work Plan

Education

The Work Plan seeks to increase youth involvement in ASEAN’s platforms for human resource development so that youth can influence regional educational systems. Important initiatives build youth capacity to promote innovative and lifelong learning environments, while involving national youth councils and youth organisations in reviewing education and human resource development policies.

A core focus is the development of 21st-century digital competencies, aligned with ASEAN’s Digital Transformation Declaration. This includes improving digital infrastructure, strengthening educators’ training, and enhancing youth digital literacy. These efforts aim to prepare young people for a fast-changing digital economy while enabling them to participate effectively in online civic spaces.

Health and Well-being

The goal of this priority area is to ensure that ASEAN youth have access to health services, are health-literate and are prepared to handle issues related to their physical and mental well-being. Programmes aim to empower youth with accurate health data, raise awareness of mental and physical health, and create training materials on disease prevention and healthy lifestyles.

The effects of medical emergencies, especially COVID-19, on mental health are also addressed. ASEAN encourages the exchange of best practices and provides youth with training in First Aid, Psychological First Aid (PFA), and psychosocial support through interregional conferences and youth empowerment initiatives. These programmes improve community-level responses to future crises and foster youth resilience.

Employment and Opportunity

The Work Plan encourages inclusive access to internships, competency development opportunities, and skills training to help young people make the transition from school to the workforce. It enhances collaboration in technical and vocational education and training (TVET), broadens opportunities for young people to gain employability skills, and fosters youth leadership in community initiatives on developing industries, such as the green economy.

Participation and Engagement

This priority area empowers youth with 21st-century skills and motivates them to support community development through volunteerism, leadership and creative problem-solving. To mobilise youth volunteers throughout ASEAN member states, the Work Plan promotes cooperation with ASEAN dialogue partners and other organisations. It also offers avenues for information sharing, discussion, and celebration of youth accomplishments in leadership and volunteer initiatives.

Additionally, youth are also supported in spearheading community initiatives that use social and technological innovations to address local developmental issues. Youth-led projects are made possible by capacity-building programmes and financial assistance, guaranteeing that their contributions further the Sustainable Development Goals that ASEAN aims to achieve.

ASEAN Awareness, Values and Identity

Last, the Work Plan aims to strengthen a shared sense of regional identity while expanding knowledge of ASEAN’s common human rights and values. This includes using partnerships with ASEAN dialogue partners, media initiatives, leadership programs, and exchanges to increase youth exposure to ASEAN’s political and cultural landscape. It also aims to update the ASEAN youth data profile to support evidence-based programme planning.

How will the Work Plan be implemented?

This section will look at the implementation of the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2021-2025 from four perspectives: leadership, funding, partnerships, and monitoring and evaluation.

Leadership

The ASEAN Secretariat is the central administrative body of ASEAN. It aims to help ASEAN’s groups work together smoothly and ensure that projects and activities are carried out effectively. The ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Youth (SOMY) is a gathering attended by senior officials who are not ministers, and is a platform for member states to discuss important issues that influence regional youth development policies. It is convened at least once a year.

The Work Plan is led by the ASEAN Secretariat and the ASEAN SOMY, who will monitor its implementation and report up to the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Youth (AMMY). The AMMY is a gathering of ministers in charge of youth affairs from ASEAN member states, and is convened once every two years.

Each ASEAN member state will initiate or lead at least one activity listed in the Work Plan. For example, under Programme 4.2, Singapore is the lead country for ASEAN Youth In Action (AYIA) projects, which aim to develop design thinking skills among ASEAN youth. In so doing, ASEAN aims to allow youth to unleash their creativity, to address development issues through social and technological innovations.

Funding

The resources required to lead the aforementioned activities will come from a few sources. It could come from the leading ASEAN member state, collective funding from many ASEAN member states, ASEAN dialogue partners, partner organisations or think tanks. Different sources may also supplement one another through co-funding schemes.

When choosing which ASEAN dialogue partner or agency would fund the specific activity, ASEAN will look at three criteria: whether the dialogue partner has the right expertise, whether the activity matches the partner’s cooperation priorities, and the type of funding arrangements the partner prefers, such as long-term or one-off programmes.

Partnerships

ASEAN will work together with other organisations only if both sides share common interests and can benefit from the partnership, and when the collaboration fulfils the goals and priorities of the Work Plan. The ASEAN youth sector has teamed up with ASEAN dialogue partners, various partner organisations, ASEAN entities, UN agencies and youth-led groups affiliated with ASEAN to carry out these activities.

Monitoring and Evaluation

AMMY and SOMY form part of the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) pillar, which aims to to improve the quality of life of people living in the region and make them realise their full potential. They report all matters to the ASCC Council, and support the work of other ASEAN bodies.

The activities under the Work Plan also contribute to the ASCC Blueprint 2025, a set of policy frameworks that aim to achieve the goals of the ASCC. They also form part of its Monitoring and Evaluation Framework. The Framework is managed by the Analysis and Monitoring Directorate of the ASCC Department in the ASEAN Secretariat, and this directorate reports to the Senior Officials Committee for the ASCC.

Can the Work Plan bridge ambition and reality?

Why this matters to Singapore and Singaporeans

Singapore’s prosperity is deeply intertwined with ASEAN’s stability and growth. With approximately one-third of ASEAN’s 682 million people being youth, the region’s development directly shapes Singapore’s economic partners, labour markets and regional security. As a small city-state dependent on regional connectivity, we benefit immensely when ASEAN youth are skilled and equipped to drive innovation, trade and cooperation.

Consider Singapore’s economic footprint in the region. As ASEAN’s largest foreign direct investor with over S$268 billion invested regionally each year, the quality of ASEAN’s youth workforce directly impacts the productivity of these investments.

As ASEAN convenes dialogues on digital skills and youth employability, Singapore’s economy stands to gain from a larger and more talented workforce that can fill labour and skill gaps in growing, high-demand sectors such as technology, healthcare and the green economy. Greater regional alignment in skills development and employability hence reinforces Singapore’s economic competitiveness and complements national efforts to deepen regional labour integration.

Beyond capital flows, the Work Plan can also promote broader strategic cooperation. ASEAN’s youth-centric platforms, such as regional workshops on peacebuilding, tolerance and community cohesion, foster mutual understanding of regional challenges and strengths and collaborative problem-solving skills among participants from diverse contexts. This strengthens social cohesion across the region and brings further opportunities for collaboration in the future.

Through partnerships and active participation in ASEAN programmes, Singaporean youths can benefit from greater awareness of regional issues while accessing more diverse opportunities to grow professionally and personally. By doing so, they are not merely beneficiaries of regional youth policies but also active contributors to ASEAN’s collective future. Sustained engagement by Singaporean youths will therefore be critical in transforming the Work Plan from a declaratory framework into meaningful and tangible outcomes on the ground.

Evaluating Policy Effectiveness: Does the Work Plan Deliver?

When examining whether the Work Plan has delivered on its objectives, it is essential to examine both its intended objectives and emerging outcomes. The Work Plan sets out a detailed set of priorities, from youth participation and civic engagement to employment, health and ASEAN awareness and understanding. It makes an explicit commitment to consultative and collaborative approaches involving young people themselves.

When Good Intentions Meet Implementation Reality

While the ASEAN Work Plan emphasises regional cooperation, the absence of clearly defined accountability mechanisms may limit its effectiveness in delivering meaningful and sustained benefits for youths. Additionally, specific consequences for non-implementation are not specified.

Furthermore, ASEAN member states have vastly different economic capacities and relying on leading states to fund the activities may result in uneven implementation quality and time lag to obtain funding. With each ASEAN member state leading different activities, ensuring coherent execution and avoiding duplication of activities may be a challenge, which may cause delays when launching programmes.

Sustainability Concerns

Given that projects in the pipeline are around one to two years long, the absence of a stable mechanism raises concerns about the durability of their impact. Short project cycles may be suitable for piloting new innovative approaches or responding to immediate needs (e.g., crises, pandemics), but without clear pathways for scaling or integration into national systems, their benefits risk disappearing once project funding or the timeline ends. As a result, the Work Plan may generate a series of discrete interventions rather than sustained structural change in youth development outcomes.

Furthermore, the lack of indicators of multi-year funding commitments or contingency plans if partners withdraw leaves uncertainty on whether the Work Plan programmes and policies will extend beyond 2025.

Taken together, these factors show that while the Work Plan provides a framework, its long-term effectiveness may hinge on whether short-term projects can be anchored within institutional arrangements. Greater clarity on sustainability mechanisms, including longer funding timelines, exit strategies and national adoption, will aid in ensuring that initiatives deliver benefits for a longer period of time rather than time-limited outcomes.

The Accessibility Question: Who Actually Benefits?

Another key challenge the Work Plan faces is accessibility. The Work Plan priorities on digital skills which may limit youths in areas with poor Internet connectivity from benefiting. A proposed solution to ease the challenge is to extend digital infrastructure and digital education to rural communities. This can help youths to learn how to use digital tools safely and responsibly while being able to benefit from ASEAN’s programmes.

Moreover, the Work Plan does not fully account for the diverse needs of youths, i.e., marginalised racial groups and youths with disabilities. Youths that benefit tend to represent urban, English-speaking youth rather than rural residents, ethnic minorities, or persons with disabilities. This uneven access risks having opportunities for leadership development, digital skills training and regional exchanges disproportionately reaching those already advantaged.

Without targeted measures to address the linguistic, cultural and infrastructural barriers, the Work Plan interventions may not be able to reach all youth. Strengthening outreach, providing multilingual resources and investing in accessible digital and physical infrastructure can promote inclusivity in both programme design and implementation.

Learning from Others

The European Union: Structure and Resources

The European Union’s Youth Strategy 2019-2027 differs from ASEAN’s approach in several significant ways. It involves multiple cycles of consultations annually, with youth delegates from across Europe directly engaging with policymakers in a more systematic manner than ASEAN’s approach, as an embedded feature of the policy cycle.

The EU commits substantial dedicated funding through the Erasmus+ programme, which allocates €26 billion specifically for youth mobility and education from 2021 to 2027. ASEAN’s Work Plan on Youth lacks comparable dedicated funding, instead relying on member state and partner contributions that may fluctuate based on political priorities and economic conditions.

While the EU Youth Strategy includes specific key performance indicators of success, such as 50 per cent youth participation in EU elections and over 70 per cent of young people engaged in decision-making processes, ASEAN’s outcomes are comparatively vague. The EU’s specificity about targets creates accountability and measurable standards against which performance can be assessed.

South Korea: Institutionalising Youth Voices

South Korea’s Framework Act on Youth, as of its 2020 revision, takes a different approach. It mandates youth quotas on government advisory committees and allocates a portion of the national budget to youth programs. Backed by law and dedicated funding, this institutional commitment demonstrates that when youth participation is embedded in governance structures, it can produce sustained engagement.

Applying Lessons to Singapore: What Can We Do?

Engaging Constructively with the Region

Singapore’s National Youth Council has developed structured consultation processes through youth panels, focus groups and surveys that feed into policy discussions. As one of the more established youth councils in the region, there may be opportunities to share these experiences with counterparts in other member states. This is less about positioning any one approach as superior, but rather about fostering mutual learning among national youth councils across ASEAN as each country has unique strengths and contexts that others can learn from.

Singapore could explore supporting the development of stronger coordination mechanisms for the Work Plan through enhanced administrative support or knowledge-sharing platforms that could benefit all ASEAN member states equally.

Contributing to Regional Skills Development

Singapore’s experience managing programmes like SkillsFuture and digital learning platforms, particularly during the pandemic, could offer insights for the Work Plan’s technical and vocational education and training goals. There may be value in exploring how micro-credentials and certifications could be recognised across ASEAN borders, making skills more transferrable throughout the region.

However, any knowledge-sharing must be thoughtfully adapted to each ASEAN member state’s unique circumstances. What works in Singapore’s context, with our specific infrastructure and resources, will need translation rather than direct replication to suit the diverse needs and capacities across all members.

Strengthening Monitoring and Evaluation

Singapore’s experience with data-driven policy evaluation could contribute to strengthening the Work Plan’s monitoring framework. Having more granular data collection through the ASEAN YDI, such as tracking outcomes by gender, ethnicity or location, would provide a clearer picture of which populations are being reached and which require additional support. Greater transparency in implementation progress through shared reporting mechanisms could help all countries learn from each other’s success and challenges.

Conclusion

The ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2021-2025 is an ambitious framework addressing critical development priorities. For Singapore, it represents both opportunity and responsibility: an opportunity to access a more skilled, connected and innovative regional youth population and a responsibility to actively engage, contribute best practices and support the implementation of initiatives that promote inclusivity and sustainable impact. Singaporean youth and institutions play a pivotal role in ensuring the Work Plan moves beyond policy statements to reap tangible benefits, not only for our country but for the wider ASEAN community.

This Policy Explainer was written by members of MAJU. MAJU is a ground-up, fully youth-led organisation dedicated to empowering Singaporean youths in policy discourse and co-creation.

By promoting constructive dialogue and serving as a bridge between youths and the Government, we hope to drive the keMAJUan (progress!) of Singapore.

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