Across Southeast Asia, there is a kind of theft that does not appear in any ledger. It is committed daily, in the currency of hours, and on the very roads meant to bring order.

The mathematical understanding of time is its divisibility into units, such as years, months, days, and so on. Scientifically speaking, time is relative, depending on the speed of the subject or the strength of the gravitational pull it is moving in. But while these are all generally accepted truths, a less-examined reality of time is its dependence on the conditions through which it is lived. And in nations with poor transport infrastructures, the universal twenty-four hours are not felt uniformly.

Improvisation as infrastructure

Southeast Asia is characterized by close proximities, not only on the map but also on the clock, running on time zones that barely differ across borders. It also runs, quite literally, on similar wheels. Across the region, the same categories of informal, small-capacity vehicles operate, only under different names. There are shared minibusses like the Philippines’ jeepney, Timor-Leste’s mikrolet, and Thailand’s songthaew; motorcycle-based carriers like Thailand and Cambodia’s tuk-tuk, Cambodia’s remorque, Indonesia’s bajaj, the Philippines’ tricycle, and Vietnam’s xích lô; and bicycle-powered variants like Indonesia’s *becak* and **Malaysia’s beca, among others. Their similarities stretch even further in their cultural significance, each synonymous with the country that made it.

Though products of different circumstances, these vehicles also find common ground in the conditions they stemmed from: domestic instability caused by post-war destruction, colonial rule, or political upheaval that left formal infrastructure underdeveloped or in ruin. They were improvisations, evidence of each country’s capacity to adapt, and though they have outlasted the circumstances that created them and were not meant to be permanent fixtures, most continue to be in mass usage today.

Nevertheless, the persistence of these vehicles is not, in itself, the problem. They are tangible proofs of each country’s resilience, and have since become fixtures of cultural identity and tourism. Rather, the issue lies in the continued dependence on them to meet transportation demands for Southeast Asia’s rapidly growing urban populations. Instead of meeting those demands through the expansion of formal infrastructure, many cities have instead multiplied the vehicles themselves. And where even these informal carriers fall short, private vehicle ownership fills the gap, a response to the absence of reliable alternatives. Inadequate formal transit pushes commuters toward both small-capacity carriers and personal motorcycles and cars; volume, then, becomes the substitute for infrastructure, and volume, on roads inherited from an era that did not anticipate this scale of population, becomes congestion. While the degree of dependence varies across the region, the nations that do continue to heavily rely on small-capacity carriers and private vehicles, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, rank among the most congested countries globally.

This reliance is less a matter of preference than of absence. Singapore, once dependent on the trishaw during the Japanese occupation, has since built a Mass Rapid Transit system dense enough that many residents live within walking distance of a station, complemented by bus networks that run on fixed schedules. For most of Southeast Asia, meanwhile, this level of efficiency remains out of reach. In many cities, trains and buses cover only so much ground, and everything beyond their reach falls to the informal carriers and the private vehicles that have quietly become the default.

The problem, then, is at a gridlock. The urban road networks across much of the region were largely shaped during an era of significant foreign influence, whether through direct colonial rule or the external political pressures that touched even those nations that retained formal independence, and naturally, the layouts that emerged from that reflected the needs and logics of their time. When that era ended, the physical skeleton of the city remained, but the sustained investment needed to evolve it did not follow. Cities grew around their inherited frameworks rather than beyond them, and those frameworks are now costly and complicated to restructure. Reform is not impossible, but congestion and the political and logistical weight it carries make it perpetually difficult to act on, and this inaction carries consequences that reach beyond inefficiency alone.

Time as a dimension of poverty

Poverty is most often described as a scarcity of resources. A resource far less discussed in that context, however, is time. Unlike food or shelter, problems that money can, at least in principle, solve, time cannot be bought or fully controlled, and in countries where transportation systems are not adeptly built for convenience, it cannot even be reliably managed. And this inefficiency is a paradox: on one hand, it is a symptom of bad governance, a consequence of poor economic handling and misplaced priorities. On the other hand, it is precisely what sustains the stagnancy it exemplifies. The hours spent by workers in transit are time spent not working, resting, or pursuing personal growth, which are all equally prerequisites for productivity.

Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, a labor economist at Rutgers University who has consulted for the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Asian Development Bank, writes that individuals may be “living above the official income-poverty line, but they do not have enough time to fulfill their unpaid work demands” — these are the “hidden poor,” whose deprivation only becomes visible once their time deficits are accounted for. A key determinant of this, she argues, is poor physical infrastructure.

While this dynamic can be observed across Southeast Asia, Metro Manila stands as one of its clearest illustrations. It is where the nation’s economic output is heavily centralized, and as the capital, the government’s ambitions are most visibly on display. Thus, there is the assumption that it would be the Philippines’ most developed city in every measurable sense, infrastructure included. Manila is no exception to that logic, but it does remain an exception to the result. The country’s best attempts at transportation development can be found here, yet they do not quite reflect the image of the robust economy that the Philippines projects on the global stage.

The existing rail network — the LRT-1, LRT-2, and MRT-3 — covers the city’s main arteries, but does not sufficiently absorb the volume of people moving through them daily. Operations cut off at around ten in the evening, which means the bulk of the city’s commuters are funneled into the same morning and afternoon windows. Breakdowns are also frequent, and the number of trains in service has consistently lagged behind ridership. When the rail system cannot be counted on, commuters spill into jeepneys, shuttle services, point-to-point buses, and ride-hailing platforms like Grab and Angkas, all of which compete for the same lanes as private vehicles and feed the traffic all the same. All forms of transit, therefore, exist in a sort of symbiosis, each compensating for the others’ inadequacies, while the commuters bear the cost of losing time.

The arithmetic of an ordinary commute

The lived reality of Manila’s commute cuts across economic lines. The inefficiency of public transit does not simply stay contained within the jeepney or the cars of the LRT or MRT, spilling onto the roads and causing traffic that burdens everyone who uses them, including those with the luxury of a private vehicle.

One such reality is my own. I reside in the heart of Manila, only an eight-minute walk from the nearest train station and three minutes from a jeepney terminal, so in theory, commuting should not pose much of a problem. Moreover, the university I attend is only around two kilometers away. If I take the train, the ride itself is only three to five minutes, but the interval between trains can stretch to ten, and with no fixed schedule, it all becomes a matter of luck. From the station, I would still need to board a tricycle to reach the university, adding another five to ten minutes. So, what should be a ten-minute commute ends up taking thirty.

The calculus worsens with distance. Getting to other, busier districts such as Makati, which is around eight kilometers away, takes roughly an hour: the walk to the station, twenty minutes to Cubao, ten minutes on foot to transfer lines, then another twenty to Ayala. All this, from someone who lives close to the city’s main transport systems. For those who must first take a jeepney or tricycle just to reach a station, or those who forgo the rail entirely, the time lost is worse still.

The collective cost of lost hours

Manila, of course, is only one city. And for all of the Philippines’ shortcomings, it is not the most underdeveloped country in Southeast Asia, yet the time consumed by such a system is already detrimental. So in countries where infrastructure lags further behind, where roads are fewer, and railways are less extensive, the hours lost to transit compound into something far more corrosive than inconvenience.

And the consequences of that are not felt by the individual alone. What is lost in transit is not only personal time, but collective capacity, the culmination of hours that, if redirected, could have compounded into skill, into output, and into the kind of sustained participation in economic life that development actually requires. Poverty, in this sense, feeds itself: the less time people have, the less they can do to escape the conditions that took it from them.

This is not to say that infrastructure reform alone resolves the broader conditions that produce poverty across the region — income inequality, wage stagnation, urban sprawl, and land use policy all determine whether development actually reaches the people it is meant to. But infrastructure remains the precondition that makes the rest of those efforts legible.

This is the contradiction at the heart of Southeast Asia’s “time race,” where nations spend decades positioning themselves as the next frontier of global growth while the very infrastructure meant to support that pursuit continues to erode the hours available for it. Development is not only a matter of output, but a matter of the conditions under which output is produced, and time poverty quietly undermines both. It does not appear in GDP figures, nor does it register as a policy emergency; it accumulates in the body and in the hours, its weight carried by even those least equipped to bear it.

Infrastructure, then, is not something to be sorted out once growth has arrived, but rather what growth arrives on. The road to development is, in a very literal sense, the road itself, and a nation cannot run a time race when its own systems are the ones setting the pace. Until that changes, the cycle does not.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Author

Jodi Chrystelle Robiños is an Asian Studies student whose interests lie in society, identity, and the forces that shape communities across Asia. Through research and writing, she explores diverse perspectives and seeks to contribute to informed and meaningful discussions on contemporary social issues. She currently serves as the Society and Identity pillar lead for the Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier.

On 2 April 2026, the French National Assembly voted to reject the government’s proposal to reform New Caledonia’s status within the French state. This decision followed the signing of the Bougival Accords in July 2025 and represents the latest development in the protracted contest over New Caledonia’s right to self-determination, led by its indigenous Kanak population. The vote heightened tensions throughout the archipelago and highlighted persistent questions regarding sovereignty and identity.

The French Parliament voted 190 to 107 against proposed changes intended to replace the Nouméa Accord, which has governed New Caledonia for over 25 years. The Bougival Accords sought to establish a “State of New Caledonia” within France and introduce a “new Caledonian nationality” for French citizens. The proposal further included provisions to grant New Caledonia certain diplomatic powers previously reserved for the French state. This development marks another chapter of New Caledonia’s struggle for independence, following multiple referenda and peace agreements between the pro-independence camp and the French government.

New Caledonia’s Troubling Unrest

The Bougival Accords were signed after six months of unrest involving pro-independence Kanak protesters and French security forces. This period of instability occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the 2021 New Caledonian independence referendum. The 2021 referendum was the last of three scheduled referendums under the 20-year transition period established by the May 1998 Nouméa Accords between the Kanak people and the French government. Referendums took place in 2018, 2020, and 2021. French loyalists narrowly prevailed in the first two referenda. In 2021, following a boycott led by Kanak leaders, 96.50% of voters opposed independence, with a turnout of 43.87%. The defeat intensified grievances regarding self-determination, culminating in six months of unrest in 2024.

The political deadlock resulting from the unrest has complicated negotiations between French loyalists and pro-independence factions. Some parties have refused to recognize the Bougival Accords, arguing that they fail to address longstanding grievances related to independence and concerns about voting rights for non-Kanak residents. The recent unrest signals the fragility of the political settlements established by the Nouméa Accord. Although peace mechanisms exist to de-escalate hostilities, the island’s political leadership cannot dismiss the possibility of future violent unrest.

New Caledonia’s Legislative Election

New Caledonia is scheduled to hold legislative elections before the end of June 2026. The Bougival Accords and the 2024 riots led to the postponement of these elections, which were originally planned for 2024. Authorities delayed the elections due to concerns about further unrest and societal division. This caused significant damage to businesses and perpetuated an atmosphere of fear among residents. The unrest contracted New Caledonia’s GDP by 13.5%, compounded by a drastic decline in Nickel prices and uncertainties caused by the unrest. The forthcoming elections represent a critical juncture between pro-independence and French loyalist factions, reflecting tensions inherent in New Caledonia’s distinctive voting system established by the Nouméa Accords.

The French government has proposed reforms to New Caledonia’s voting system under the Nouméa Accord. The proposal would extend voting rights to non-Kanak residents born in New Caledonia after 1998 who currently hold French citizenship, potentially enfranchising 10,000 individuals, as supported by the French Senate. This is contrary to the past voting system that favored Kanak people, who make up around 41% of the island’s population, as part of the Nouméa Accord’s agreement to preserve the political weight of the Kanak people and restrict voting rights for residents born after the accords. Kanak leaders have consistently opposed such reforms, arguing that they would diminish Kanak representation in the legislative body. Pro-independence Senator Robert Xowie (FLNKS) has stated that these changes could further radicalize provincial elections.

The Kanaks have maintained that the current voting system upholds the Noumea accords and remains a fundamental pillar of decolonization in New Caledonia. They argued that protection is still an important component because the French settlement and migration have altered New Caledonia’s demographic composition, reducing the relative political weight of the indigenous Kanak population. On 26 May 2026, the French Parliament approved voting rights for 10,500 “native” voters from all ethnic groups for the upcoming elections. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu stated that the voting reforms were made to rectify “growing distortions” in New Caledonia’s electoral roll.

However, the reform excludes spouses of native voters and French citizens who do not meet the criteria. At present, unilateral voting rights for recently arrived French citizens remain unattainable. This compromise may help ease political tensions between French loyalists and the pro-independence camp. It could reduce hostile rhetoric ahead of the provincial elections, which some view as a confidence vote for the pro-independence factions and their mandate for independence.

During French parliamentary debates, pro-independence FLNKS MP Emannuel Tjibaou voiced his party’s opposition to the Bougival accords and electoral reforms. He stated that “a sovereign state cannot exist within another. This is a model of internal autonomy, not external decolonization.” Tjibaou added his concerns over the risks of New Caledonia’s partition that would devolve further into growing divisions among the three provinces of New Caledonia.

What’s Next for New Caledonia?

New Caledonia’s independence movement remains stalled following a series of referendum defeats, violence associated with the 2024 unrest, and the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the upcoming elections may alter mandates for independence, entrenched divisions over voting rights and representation persist. Loyalists argue that the current system marginalizes key stakeholders and risks deepening divides between Kanaks and non-Kanaks, casting doubt on the viability of such arrangements in a prospective independent state. In contrast, Kanak leaders maintain that the existing voting system safeguards decolonization efforts by preserving their political influence amid demographic shifts driven by French migration. These unresolved disputes over sovereignty and representation continue to impede progress toward independence or substantive devolution, leaving New Caledonia in a state of political uncertainty.

New Caledonia’s distinctive political status provides a model for other independence movements in the Pacific and informs global decolonization efforts. The archipelago’s trajectory is closely monitored by regional actors and major powers, particularly given the Indo-Pacific’s increasing significance in global geopolitics. The responses of France, Australia, and other stakeholders to New Caledonia’s demands will influence not only the territory’s future but also broader debates concerning sovereignty, resource management, and strategic influence in the region. Thus, New Caledonia’s ongoing struggle constitutes both a local and international issue, with far-reaching implications for self-determination movements throughout the Pacific and beyond.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Joshua Adrian Gumasing

Joshua Adrian Gumasing is a graduate of AB Asian Studies at the University of Santo Tomas. He previously worked at a security consultancy firm doing due diligence and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) research in Iraq and Syria. His special interests include field conflict resolution and peacemaking studies, geopolitics, and comparative politics.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nine of the ten most obese nations globally are in Oceania. Once a symbol of wealth, obesity here now starkly indicates the opposite: severe food insecurity and systemic poverty. This health crisis is the product of historical colonialism and modern economic structures failing island nations. The Pacific, once home to self-sufficient navigators, is now the epicenter of a metabolic crisis tied to structural dependency, reflecting a profound failure to respect Oceania’s fragile ecological and social balances.

A forced transition: From subsistence to dependency

Historically, Micronesians and Polynesians utilized advanced navigation techniques, subsisting on highly preserved, nutrient-dense foods like breadfruit and taro to survive arduous voyages. Their traditional diet and extreme physical demands favored a strong phenotype capable of efficiently storing nutrients—a survival mechanism for islands susceptible to food shortages. Islanders historically displayed high adaptability; in Tikopia, sustainable practices like rudimentary reforestation were utilized to maintain agricultural harmony, while strict social controls, such as Hawaii’s kapu system, regulated resource consumption.

However, colonial eras dismantled these sustainable systems. Colonizers repurposed islands for extractive industries—phosphate mining in Nauru, sugar in Fiji, and various cash crops—displacing local agriculture and turning fertile grounds into export-driven monocultures. This forced transition from subsistence to a cash-based economy stripped locals of their means of production. Furthermore, modern overfishing by international fleets has put 11% of indigenous fish species at risk, eroding traditional protein sources.

Lacking healthy staples, islanders are forced to rely on global markets for basic needs. Obesity in this context is a survival strategy of the poor, who must consume the cheapest, lowest-nutrient calories to stave off hunger, resulting in a population that is overfed but tragically malnourished.

Structural traps: Spatial poverty and food dumping

The root causes of this crisis are deeply embedded in modern Pacific infrastructure. Decades of resource extraction have left many islands agriculturally unviable. In Nauru, strip mining for phosphate has turned the island’s interior into a wasteland of jagged limestone, forcing the population into crowded coastal strips where traditional farming is impossible and automobile-centric infrastructure discourages walking. Similar spatial constraints in Tuvalu and American Samoa leave little room for agriculture or exercise facilities.

Compounding this spatial poverty is the systemic “dumping” of low-quality food imports. Countries like Australia and New Zealand export mutton flaps—sheep bellies that are nearly 50% fat and deemed unfit for Western markets—to Pacific nations at extremely low prices. These cheap, high-fat meats, alongside refined sugars and white flour, become the primary food sources for impoverished families. Even humanitarian aid often arrives as processed canned goods, reinforcing an obesogenic environment that traps the Polynesian build in a cycle of severe obesity and compounding poverty.

Cultural nuance and the limits of the colonial narrative

While the colonial and economic narrative is powerful, viewing Pacific Islanders solely as victims erases local agency and cultural nuance. Historically, many Pacific cultures associated larger body sizes with high social status and health—a standard predating colonial contact. Though modern food marketing weaponizes this preference, it remains a distinct internal factor complicating a purely economic analysis. Additionally, local governments have sometimes failed to prioritize public health during economic booms.

The crisis is also shaped by internal migration and the challenges of small-scale island governance. Severe obesity and limited local opportunities have forced many to migrate to the US mainland, Australia, and New Zealand, where they face discrimination and high rates of depression and alcoholism, straining already fragile medical infrastructures. Acknowledging these complexities provides a holistic view. Solutions require synthesizing traditional wisdom with modern public health, rather than blindly adopting Western medical models or simply romanticizing a pre-colonial past.

Charting a path forward: Sovereignty and sustainable health

Combating this crisis requires systemic change and localized empowerment. Countries that historically extracted wealth from these islands bear a responsibility to fund infrastructure, nutritional education, and healthcare initiatives. Simultaneously, there is a positive grassroots trend toward fitness and community sports, such as youth basketball leagues in the Marshall Islands, which must be expanded.

To reduce reliance on foreign aid and imported food, islands must develop sustainable, non-extractive revenue streams. Tuvalu’s successful leasing of its .tv internet domain stands as a prime example of innovative economic development. Furthermore, governance must involve the wider populace through deliberative democratic processes, allowing communities to collaboratively design culturally appropriate health solutions. While geopolitical tensions complicate these efforts, the global shift toward green and healthy initiatives positions the Pacific as a natural focal point for progressive change.

Reclaiming health in Oceania

The obesity epidemic in the Pacific is far more than a public health failure; it is a profound symptom of historical and economic poverty. By dismantling self-sufficiency and forcing a dependency on low-quality global markets, colonial and modern governance structures created a crisis that the islands were unequipped to handle. Until underlying economic structures—trade imbalances, extractive land use, and food dumping—are addressed, health initiatives will remain temporary fixes. Obesity is a visible marker of a region struggling to reclaim its sovereignty.

Critical questions remain: Can Pacific nations achieve food sovereignty while integrated into the global economy? How can Western powers support sustainable development without imposing paternalism? Ultimately, can Pacific Islanders leverage their adaptive heritage to redefine “wealth” and “health” on their own terms? The answers will determine the viability of their nations in the decades to come.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Rocco Carmine B. Paragas Jr.

Rocco Carmine B. Paragas Jr. is a graduating Asian Studies student at UST, specializing in history and geopolitics. A versatile generalist with internship experience spanning HR to Knowledge Management across corporate and NGO sectors, he is currently writing his thesis on intergenerational gaps in Thailand.

The issue of Violence Against Women (VAW) is one that is pervasively unique, given that it requires an excessive amount of mental, physical, and emotional labor from its victims to prove that the crime committed is one that is valid in the first place. Based on statistics reported by UN Women (2021), Southeast Asia bears witness to a prevalence of 33% of married or partnered women between the ages of 15-49 experiencing sexual and/or physical violence at the hands of current or former male partners at least once in their lives. The ASEAN has established a specific plan of action, one that requires a multi-faceted and multidimensional approach that begins with addressing the root of the problem through implementing preventative measures that approach gender-based violence on a unit-level basis. Specifically, preventative measures against VAW focus on education and building on proven strategies of awareness and empowerment-building amongst both young men and women in how consciousness regarding VAW is framed, emphasizing the way cases significantly harm their victims. The development of protection services for survivors through improving post-harm support systems, including ones that go beyond medical and psychological services, as well as the strengthening of legal structures that provide an improved sense of justice for victims, including the institutionalization of quality assurance, are some of the other regional plans of action that tackle the elimination of VAW in Southeast Asia. While these frameworks present a comprehensive approach to eliminating violence against women, they often fall short in implementation, given that the burden of their execution falls on national governments, which often prioritize other countries’ interests, thus paying less attention to pressing VAW issues. This does not suggest that VAW is not considered a critical concern; rather, it indicates that recognition of a problem alone is insufficient without proper implementation tools.

Southeast Asia and violence against women, presented through statistics

To illustrate, Timor-Leste, as reported by CoWater International in 2024, reports a prevalence of 58.8% experiencing Intimate Partner Violence within their lifetime, reporting one of the highest frequencies of VAW globally. Comparatively, Indonesia reports a prevalence of 11.8%, with a study conducted in 2025 also recording a concerning number of reproductive-age women justifying marital violence, which is greatly influenced by educational attainment, socio-economic class, and cultural norms. These statistics do not imply that the women themselves are to blame for the perpetuation of such cultural norms, but are rather embedded in them in adapting to patriarchal norms reinforced by longstanding institutional structures.

In the cases of Vietnam and Cambodia, both boast an increasing decline in physical violence reports, but see a rise in sexual violence cases alongside it. This may be due to the fact that both countries have been somewhat successful in enforcing protections for victims of physical violence, due mostly to how visible a crime it is perceived to be, as opposed to how difficult it is to detect when sexual violence occurs. Rape kits are commonly utilized in the analysis of victims’ bodies to determine whether an assault has taken place, but these examinations also have their limitations in the way that samples are handled or retrieved. Specifically, there have been accounts of needed samples being collected from victims, but not being examined properly or at all.

In contrast, Malaysia reports significantly less cases when it comes to physical violence, but comparatively exhibits a higher prevalence of psychological and emotional forms of intimate partner violence, with these statistics relating significantly to lower educational background, lower socio-economic status, and exposure to substance abuse within the household. Similar to Vietnam and Cambodia’s rising sexual violence cases, emotional and psychological abuse are less detectable by a legal system, thus making it difficult to prove in open court, which goes along with socio-structural tolerance for gender based violence. Despite a lower prevalence in reported cases within Southeast Asia, Malaysia observes a concerning rise in reported VAW cases every year.

Thailand and Singapore, on the other hand, report a significantly lower prevalence in VAW — this, however, does not make them exempt from having any cases at all. In Thailand, despite extensive collaboration with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, data from the Ministry of Public Health’s One Stop Crisis Center indicates that out of approximately 30,000 reported cases of violence, only 5,000 proceeded to police investigation, and just 1,500 resulted in arrests—illustrating a significant drop-off between reporting and legal accountability. Similarly, Singapore reports comparatively low prevalence of intimate partner violence, yet recorded an increase in reported cases, rising from 1,741 in 2022 to 2,008 in 2023.

A more complex case comes from the Philippines, where the Republic Act 9262: Violence Against Women and Children Act of 2004, characterizes intimate partner violence into four specific categories: physical, psychological, economic, and sexual. For physical violence, victims are required to submit a medico-legal form, issued by a certified doctor, or at the very least, detailed documentation with the victim’s identifiable face and injuries sustained from the abuse. However, for most cases, filing a case for VAW under physical violence without a medico-legal will result in the evidence being less credible. Additionally, psychological violence also requires a psychological report from an accredited mental health facility, which states that the victim undoubtedly has sustained mental trauma from the abuse. 17.5% of Filipina women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced intimate partner violence within their lifetimes, and even through addressing this concern, these numbers continue to grow.

What these patterns tell us

Finding the courage to report intimate partner violence cases is complex in its foundations. Considering the psychological turmoil that comes with retraumatization and a legal system that operates through patriarchal lenses, the process itself can be profoundly draining, both physically and emotionally. Often, the reporting of VAW cases to the proper authorities require complex processes that force victims to re-live some of the most devastating moments of their lives — these procedures include creating detailed written accounts of the abuse; rehashing these experiences verbally for law enforcement, lawyers, mental health practitioners, even before speaking before the court; and dealing with the risk of evidence not being sufficient enough on every level of the reporting process; to name but a few. In assessing the percentages presented above, one must take into account other limiting factors that contribute to the retrieval of this data, given also how not all cases of VAW are reported immediately or at all. This restricts accurate accounts for true frequency, as rampancy is, for the most part, higher than what is recorded. For lower-prevalence countries in VAW cases, their figures suggest that lower rates do not necessarily reflect lower incidence of violence, but may instead reflect variations in reporting mechanisms, institutional responsiveness, and survivor willingness to seek formal assistance.

Another element that complicates the reporting of these cases is how embedded modern society still is in patriarchal norms, which continue to show up even with significant development in women’s empowerment. These complications bleed into the way unit-level interactions address survivors, with subtle victim-blaming language being present even during the reporting process and earlier. Harmful questions such as “Why did you not choose a better partner?” or “Why did you not fight back?” place far too much responsibility onto the victim, overlooking the complexities of the abuse perpetrator and victim dynamic, which, most of the time, begin with the perpetrator projecting kindness before gradually displaying coercive and abusive tendencies. These small, subtle ways that victims find themselves discredited and shamed for actions that were committed toward them play a significant role in the dissuasion of participating in the reporting process, as survivors often anticipate further humiliation and fear that, despite engaging in formal mechanisms within the legal process, the outcome may still leave them vulnerable or at a disadvantage.

Additionally, the rampant rise of red pill content consumption amongst impressionable young men, on top of their engagement in actions that perpetuate rape and VAW culture through “locker room talk” and joking about domestic violence, plays a significant role in sustaining inequality and further victim-blaming behaviors. In this way, patriarchal norms are not only preserved but actively reproduced, undermining both prevention efforts and the effectiveness of existing legal protections.

What is the future of VAW policies in Southeast Asia?

The reality is, we can not reach the total elimination of Violence Against Women until society has reached a specific level of gender equality, where women’s issues are dealt with proper urgency and care. The issue with VAW frameworks does not just lie with policy, but a reflection of deeply entrenched social norms that continue to shape attitudes, behaviors, and institutional responses. The quest for eliminating all forms of VAW requires multiple phases of social reform, which should simultaneously proceed alongside sustained policy development. Significant effort must be directed toward challenging the normalization of abusive behaviors among women, while simultaneously reinforcing the unacceptability of such conduct among men.

This may be further advanced through strengthened policy measures, including the imposition of more stringent penalties for sexual violence and emotional abuse. Policymakers must also sustain collaboration with women-centered organizations to develop more responsive and adaptive frameworks, particularly those that address emerging forms of digitally facilitated abuse. These efforts should be complemented by the continued transformation of law enforcement institutions into safe, accessible, and survivor-centered spaces for reporting, grounded in sustained training that promotes trauma-informed and non-victim-blaming language. However, moving forward, a key question remains whether existing institutional reforms are sufficient to keep pace with the rapidly evolving methods of VAW. Equally pressing is the extent to which policy frameworks can meaningfully shift deeply embedded socio-cultural standards that continue to shape reporting behavior and institutional responses. As Southeast Asia continues to expand its legal and policy architecture on violence against women, future attention must be directed not only toward legislative strengthening but also toward assessing implementation gaps, vulnerabilities, and the persistence of cultural norms that mediate how violence is recognized, reported, and addressed.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Marianne Zabine Generoso

Marianne Zabine “Zabi” Generoso is a graduating senior under the Asian Studies program at the University of Sto. Tomas. She was the former Vice President for External Affairs at the UST Asian Studies Society, a position that allowed her to facilitate community development programs such as “Girl Talk,” and “Sagip Kita Kaibigan: A Disaster Risk Reduction Initiative.” She specializes in wartime feminist research, and has a special interest in the role of Gender in international politics.

In May 2022, one false claim on Facebook — that no critic of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was ever arrested during Martial Law — accumulated 187 million views and tens of thousands of likes before fact-checkers could mount a meaningful response. By then, it did not matter. The claim had already circulated through thousands of partisan feeds, reinforced by algorithmic recommendations, and absorbed into a political reality that many Filipinos experienced as simply true.

What made this episode significant was not only its scale, but what it revealed about the changing conditions under which political truth is produced and recognized. In this context, information no longer moves through a shared public arena where claims can be openly contested and evaluated. Instead, it circulates through segmented, algorithmically curated networks that privilege engagement over accuracy, allowing falsehoods to harden into belief before they can be meaningfully challenged.

Decades before social media platforms existed, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas was already asking the question that now sits at the heart of politics across Southeast Asia — what happens to democracy when the space where citizens form public opinion is captured, fragmented, or manipulated? This is no longer just a theoretical concern but a lived reality, as contemporary electoral politics increasingly unfold within digitally mediated environments shaped by algorithmic amplification, strategic communication, and unequal distributions of power.

Habermas and the public sphere

To understand what is at stake, it is necessary to first understand what a functioning public sphere is supposed to look like and why Habermas spent his intellectual life defending it.

In his landmark 1962 work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas argued that democracy is not simply about elections or formal institutions. It depends on the prior existence of a communicative space where citizens can freely assemble, debate issues of shared concern, and form public opinion through the force of reasoned argument rather than money, power, or coercion (Habermas, 1962/1989). He traced this ideal to 18th-century European coffeehouses, literary salons, and the early press: spaces where social rank was, in principle, set aside, and what mattered was the quality of an argument. His term for this was the “public sphere” — the arena between the state and private life where citizens constitute themselves as a political community through rational-critical debate.

For Habermas, this sphere operates on three fundamental conditions: open accessibility to all citizens, the bracketing of social status in debate, and the orientation of discussion toward common concerns rather than private interests (Habermas, Lennox, and Lennox, 1974). When these conditions hold, deliberatively formed public opinion becomes democracy’s check on power. When they collapse, what remains is what Habermas called “staged public opinion” — the manufactured appearance of democratic consensus masking its actual absence (Habermas, 1962/1989).

Habermas was already pessimistic by mid-century. Commercial mass media, he argued, had colonized the public sphere, replacing substantive political discourse with entertainment and ideological packaging and turning citizens into passive audiences rather than active deliberators. His most pointed warning, however, came much later. In his 2022 essay “Reflections and Hypotheses on a Further Structural Transformation of the Political Public Sphere,” he identified platform media as the critical new threat: algorithm-driven platforms generate “centrifugal forces” that fragment public discourse into self-enclosed bubbles, making it structurally impossible for “competing public opinions which are representative of the population as a whole” to form. His most recent work, A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (2023), extended this diagnosis: the digitalization of media is “radically altering” the structure of the public sphere, fragmenting it into countless “pseudo-publics” — communities of shared belief incapable of generating the cross-cutting deliberation on which democratic legitimacy depends (Habermas, 2023).

Southeast Asia is where this diagnosis has become most visible and most consequential. The region’s cases are not interchangeable; each illuminates a distinct way in which the Habermasian public sphere is being deformed.

When the algorithm chose a president

The 2022 Philippine presidential election was the fullest expression of what Habermasian fragmentation looks like when deployed by a single, well-resourced political machine. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s victory was not built primarily on policy platforms. It was built through a years-long, coordinated social media operation spanning Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, which had approximately 35 million Filipino users by early 2022. The campaign constructed a singular historical narrative — that the Martial Law era of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was a “golden age” of discipline and prosperity rather than one of authoritarianism and documented human rights violations — and seeded it systematically across non-political pages, entertainment accounts, and fan pages, reaching users with no prior reason to apply political skepticism to what they consumed.

Habermas theorized this dynamic, where well-resourced actors convert “social power” into political influence through professionalized communication strategies, thereby structurally disadvantaging ordinary citizens. Analysts at ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute described the result as “digital autocratisation” — the systematic undermining of democratic norms through digital technologies. Fact-checkers from the Tsek.ph coalition described the disinformation environment as a “firehose of falsehood” — designed not to convince but to overwhelm, collapsing the very possibility of shared factual ground.

By 2025, the disinformation machinery had fractured along with the Marcos-Duterte political alliance, turning inward ahead of the midterms. AI-generated deepfakes and coordinated bot networks amplified competing partisan narratives, while a record seven in ten Filipinos reported being more concerned about disinformation than at any previous point. As the 2028 election cycle approaches, the structural vulnerabilities that made this possible remain unresolved, including low digital literacy, with 51 percent of Filipinos struggling to identify fake news as recently as 2022, weakening independent journalism, and ongoing platform deregulation.

The cute grandfather

Indonesia’s 2024 presidential election offers a variation on the same Habermasian theme, but with a crucial distinction. Whereas the Marcos campaign deployed disinformation to rehabilitate a tarnished legacy, Prabowo Subianto’s campaign employed a different strategy, using emotional spectacle to render accountability effectively irrelevant.

Prabowo, a former general credibly accused of human rights abuses during the Suharto era, rebranded himself through TikTok into “gemoy” — Indonesian slang for “endearingly cute.” Viral videos of him dancing, playing with children, and engaging in light-hearted performances were amplified by TikTok’s engagement algorithm, generating 376 million interactions in a single week in January 2024. The correlation between platform exposure and voting behavior was significant: of Indonesians who accessed TikTok daily, 61.6 percent reported they were likely to vote for the Prabowo-Gibran ticket, reflecting the platform’s structural capacity to convert emotional resonance into political preference.

In the foregoing, the gemoy campaign represents a textbook instance of what Habermas described as the decline of rational-critical debate in a commercialized public sphere. It did not suppress competing viewpoints through disinformation; it bypassed the conditions for rational deliberation entirely. As one analysis concluded, the result was a public sphere dominated by “performative populism and sentiment-driven support,” in which emotional appeal, digital virality, and symbolic branding often outweigh historical accountability and policy platforms. Prabowo secured a first-round victory with approximately 58 percent of the vote.

The Indonesian case then produced what is perhaps the region’s most instructive Habermasian reversal. The same algorithmic platforms that served as Prabowo’s campaign infrastructure became, months later, the organizing infrastructure for mass civic opposition. When the Prabowo administration imposed sweeping budget cuts in early 2025, the hashtag #IndonesiaGelap (“Dark Indonesia”) mobilized hundreds of thousands of students into the streets in what became the largest sustained protest wave since the Reformasi era.

The government’s response was to flood the same digital space with counter-narratives, principally under the hashtag #IndonesiaTerang (“Bright Indonesia”). Research by the Monash University Data and Democracy Research Hub found that #IndonesiaTerang generated only 2,209 tweets compared to approximately 3 million under #IndonesiaGelap, drawn from fewer than 2,000 unique accounts versus 104,000 for the protest hashtag. This is precisely the communicative pathology Habermas described: a state deploying strategic communication to manufacture the appearance of public consensus while civil society actors attempt to sustain an autonomous deliberative space against it. The disparity in numbers suggests the state lost that particular exchange; the structural conditions enabling such manipulation, however, remain fully intact.

When the feed was not Enough

Thailand’s 2023 election presents a third and perhaps most sobering case. It shows what happens when a demonstrably robust digital public sphere generates clear democratic legitimacy, yet offline institutions refuse to recognize or uphold it.

Move Forward’s campaign was, by measurable standards, an instance of what an inclusive digital public sphere can achieve. Its organically driven social media operation dominated electoral discourse across Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. The party accounted for 56 percent of the most popular posts under the election hashtag #election23 on Facebook, generating more than 10 million interactions with over 80 percent positive sentiment. Its leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, grew his Facebook base by more than 200 percent in 60 days; each post averaged 59,000 interactions, 99 percent of which were positive. Move Forward won the popular vote, becoming the largest single party in the lower house with 151 seats.

In hindsight, the movement never formed a government. Under a military-drafted constitution that granted an appointed Senate a role in selecting the prime minister, Move Forward was blocked from assuming power despite its electoral mandate. The Constitutional Court subsequently ordered the party dissolved and banned its leaders from politics for ten years, ruling that its campaign to amend Thailand’s lèse-majesté law constituted an attempt to “overthrow” the constitutional monarchy.

Thailand’s case illustrates the sharpest possible gap between communicative power and political power. Move Forward successfully constituted itself as the dominant voice in Thailand’s digital public sphere, achieving in the online arena precisely the kind of open, accessible, cross-cutting deliberation Habermas describes as the normative ideal. It was shut out regardless. As one academic analysis concluded, the Thai case “demonstrates powerfully how autocrats might lose an election due to social media, yet still manage to hang on to power through entrenched authoritarian institutions.”

This represents the outer limit of the problem in Southeast Asia. In the Philippines and Indonesia, the public sphere is being reshaped from within by disinformation, algorithmic spectacle, and manufactured consensus. In Thailand, it was overridden from without. Both dynamics lead to the same conclusion. A functioning digital public sphere may be necessary, but not sufficient, for democratic outcomes.

Looking ahead

In retrospect, Habermas’ theory does not require every citizen to be trapped in a filter bubble to carry analytical weight. It requires only that the structural conditions for shared, cross-cutting deliberation be meaningfully weakened. Across these three national cases, the evidence suggests they have been, in three distinct ways: through coordinated disinformation that dissolves a common factual ground in the Philippines; through algorithmic emotional spectacle that bypasses the conditions for rational deliberation in Indonesia; and through institutional suppression of a public sphere that functioned largely as intended in Thailand.

However, Habermas argued that democracy’s deepest precondition is not a constitution or an election commission. It is a public sphere in which citizens can reason together, across difference, toward a shared political will. That precondition is under stress across Southeast Asia — not uniformly, but structurally, and in ways that are intensifying as AI-generated content, weakening institutional safeguards, and entrenched political disinformation networks reshape the terrain ahead of upcoming election cycles in the Philippines and beyond.

The algorithm does not care about democracy. And for now, those who understand that best are using it most effectively.

The question for policymakers is whether regional responses — cross-border platform accountability, independent media investment, and digital literacy infrastructure — can outpace the technology before the next election cycle forecloses the possibility of a shared public sphere. But the harder question, the one that no institution can answer on our behalf, is whether we as citizens are still capable of the critical distance that democracy asks of us: whether we can pause before sharing, question what we feel certain about, and hold open the possibility that the feed we scroll through is not the whole of political reality.

Habermas believed that rational-critical debate was not merely a procedural nicety. It was the act through which a society constituted itself as free. Across the region, the next elections will be, in part, a test of whether that belief still has any purchase here.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Timothy John Santiago

Timothy John Santiago is a graduate of BA in Philosophy from the University of Santo Tomas. Professionally, he works in risk intelligence AI, leveraging DaaS and SaaS platforms alongside open-source intelligence to support data-driven research. He is also active in public service, serving in various youth and policy initiatives.

In 2024, Asia and the Pacific recorded a staggering 24 million disaster-related displacements—accounting for over half of the global total. This figure, highlighted during the March 2026 International Organization for Migration (IOM) dialogue, is often framed by states as a logistical nightmare or a failure of border security. However, viewing these millions through the lens of cold statistics conceals a deeper, more corrosive crisis of human dignity. When migration is treated merely as a panicked flight from rising tides or scorched earth, the agency of the individual is erased.

While international bodies like the IOM provide the necessary high-level platforms for cooperation, they often operate in a vacuum of abstraction. The true “reality check” resides within the region’s (Civil Society Organization) CSOs, which are actively reclaiming the narrative of climate mobility. By grounding policy in frontline experience and indigenous customary systems, these organizations argue that migration should not be a desperate last resort of the vulnerable, but a proactive, dignified strategy for adaptation. Ultimately, the path to regional resilience lies in moving away from top-down management toward a framework in which the right to move—and the right to stay—are defined by the communities themselves.

The temporal gap

The climate crisis in Asia and the Pacific is not a single event but a spectrum of hazards that demands a sophisticated, dual-track response. On one end are sudden-onset disasters—the flash floods, heatwaves, and droughts that triggered over 24 million displacements in a single year. These are the headline-grabbing shocks that typically command state attention. On the other end, however, lies the more insidious threat of slow-onset processes: the creeping sea-level rise, shifting rainfall patterns, and gradual environmental degradation that erode the very foundation of habitability.

The structural tension within the region arises from a fundamental mismatch between political “short-termism” and cumulative reality. Government disaster responses are largely reactive, designed to manage the immediate logistics of temporary evacuation and emergency aid. Yet, for millions in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, climate mobility is a long-term, cumulative process in which the point of “no return” is reached well before a storm hits. When policy remains fragmented—focusing only on the next monsoon or fiscal cycle—it fails to address the permanent loss of ancestral lands and the total restructuring of local economies.

This creates a profound “top-down” disconnect. International frameworks and national mandates often prioritize bureaucratic efficiency over the indigenous customary systems that have governed mobility and land use in the Pacific for centuries. In nations like Fiji, these traditional systems are not merely cultural artifacts; they are the primary mechanisms through which communities negotiate risk and define belonging. When regional policies overlook these local realities, they inadvertently strip agency from the displaced. The analytical problem, therefore, is not a lack of data but a lack of integration. By ignoring frontline insights from civil society, top-down strategies risk treating climate migrants as passive victims of a “natural” disaster rather than active participants in political and social transformation. The stakes are clear: without aligning formal policy with indigenous resilience, the region’s response to migration will remain as dangerous as the coastlines it seeks to protect.

Practice-based resilience

The intellectual heart of the climate mobility debate is not found in the displacement statistics, but in the concept of “Dignified Livelihoods.” For too long, regional policy has viewed migration as a binary: a person either stays and suffers or leaves and survives. CSOs are dismantling this reductionist view by arguing that true dignity is rooted in choice. If a community is forced to move because of a total collapse of local opportunity, that is not “adaptation”—it is a failure of the state.

A primary example of this is seen in the work of Mars Ashir, Project Coordinator at the National Workers Welfare Trust in India’s Narayanpet district. By securing 125 days of guaranteed rural work annually, local initiatives have transformed the “Right to Stay” from a theoretical hope into an economic reality. This is a critical intervention against urban vulnerability. When rural workers are not forced to migrate to cities to work in often exploitative informal economies, they retain their social capital and community ties. Dignity, in this context, is the financial and structural power to resist unwanted displacement.

Simultaneously, for those who must or choose to move, the narrative is being rewritten through digital sovereignty. In Vietnam, Khanh-Linh Ta’s “Green Path Migrants” project demonstrates that the modern climate migrant is not a silent victim, but a digitally connected agent. With over 80% of its engagement coming from youth aged 18–34 and a significant majority of users being women, this platform uses “youth-focused language” to navigate the complexities of mobility. This digital shift allows vulnerable groups to share practical solutions and peer-to-peer insights, effectively bypassing top-down information systems that often fail to reach those most affected by shifting rainfall or saline intrusion.

The reasoning for this shift is that CSOs provide the “practice-based knowledge” that high-level frameworks lack. International agencies can model sea-level rise, but they cannot model how a mother in a rural household negotiates the risk of a drought against the risk of sending her child to an unfamiliar city. They cannot map the “informal and collective action” that sustains a community when a storm passes. Because CSOs operate at the household level, they understand that mobility decisions are deeply gendered and generational. By centering the experiences of women and youth, these organizations ensure that “resilience” is not just a buzzword in a synthesis brief, but a lived reality that prioritizes the dignity of the person over the efficiency of the policy. In the end, a dignified move is one made with a clear map, a full stomach, and a protected identity.

The limits of localism

While the argument for grassroots agency is compelling, it must be tempered by the sheer magnitude of the coming crisis. By 2050, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and Asian Development Bank project that up to 48.4 million people in East Asia and the Pacific could be forced to move. Critics of the decentralized approach correctly ask: Can a network of relatively small CSOs truly manage a human migration of this scale? The necessity of state-led intervention and massive top-down infrastructure—ranging from planned city expansions to international visa frameworks—cannot be ignored. Local resilience projects like those in India or Vietnam are vital, but they cannot build the cross-border legal protections or the multi-billion-dollar sea defenses required to protect tens of millions.

Furthermore, intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge the inherent limits of “localism” and indigenous customary systems. While these systems provide deep cultural continuity, they often lack the sustainable resources and formal legal standing in international law to protect migrants once they cross a sovereign boundary. A traditional land-tenure system in Fiji, for instance, offers little protection to a family that has relocated to an urban center in Australia or New Zealand. Without a high-level policy bridge, the “dignity” of local systems risks being lost in the friction of international bureaucracy.

Finally, we must confront the internal complexities within these communities—specifically the persistent gender gap. As Mars Ashir noted, migration decisions are still largely dictated by male household members, often sidelining the needs and voices of women and youth. If CSOs are to be the true “reality check” for regional policy, they must also act as internal disruptors of the patriarchal structures that silence vulnerable members within their own ranks. The challenge, therefore, is not to choose between top-down and bottom-up, but to create a symbiotic governance model where the state provides the massive structural “canopy” under which local, dignified, and inclusive agency can actually flourish.

The legislative litmus test

As the March 2026 IOM dialogue concludes, all eyes turn toward the forthcoming synthesis brief—a document that must be more than a record of shared grievances. For this dialogue to transcend mere rhetoric, its “Common Principles” must undergo a rigorous transition from high-level advocacy into the hard reality of national budgets and international law. Analysts and citizens alike should watch closely: will the proactive strategies be codified into state-funded resilience planning, or will they remain marginalized as “best practices” while top-down infrastructure continues to dominate the fiscal landscape?

The true test of regional cohesion lies in whether governments can move past reactive disaster management toward a framework of Climate Sovereignty. This requires a fundamental shift in how we define success in the face of environmental collapse. In an era where 48 million lives hang in the balance, we must confront a final, existential provocation: does the future of the Pacific and Southeast Asia depend on the height of the sea walls we build, or on the strength of the legal and social protections we afford to those forced to move beyond them? The answer will define the dignity of the region for generations to come.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Cyril Karl Carandan

Cyril Karl Carandan is a dedicated humanitarian worker with a bachelor’s degree in Diplomacy and International Affairs from De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. He formerly served as the Secretary-General of the 1st Benilde Model ASEAN Meeting. Cyril specializes in MEAL frameworks, research, and ASEAN.

In the humid, bustling common areas of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG), the premier university of the Pacific, I stood as a young woman commanding a crowd of hundreds from diverse backgrounds. I was not just speaking; I was articulating a vision for student welfare and national development that cut through the noise of corruption, culturally ingrained mindsets, and the repeated systems that constitute a disease affecting our people.

In that moment, I felt like a confident and capable leader until I was hit by a sad reality that broke my confidence as a female and had me question my passion for leadership in my future endeavors the very moment I stepped my foot in the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea (PNG) - the largest Island Nation in the Pacific and the world at large home to thousand tribes, diverse cultures and more than 800 languages.

This experience reflects what can be described as the “Pacific Paradox”: our universities are laboratories for female leadership, but our national parliaments remain guarded fortresses of patriarchal political culture.

My visit to PNG’s National Parliament should have inspired hope, but instead, it revealed a gap that demands urgent attention. I expected to witness leadership in action, but instead, I was confronted with a silence that spoke volumes. In 15th of December 2025 after contesting for 2026 UPNG Female Vice Presidential seat, I was selected as one of the top 60 successful Youth applicants among 430 applicants across PNG for an annual event known as the PNG National Mock Youth Parliament Program (NMYPP) - a weeklong event fully sponsored by international institution such as United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA), European Union (EU), United Nation Development Program (UNDP), and United Nations Human Rights in partnership with National institutions like PNG National Youth Development Authority (NYDA), National Capital District (NCD) Commission, and PNG National Parliament.

It was an eye-opening experience and a wake-up call for me during our tour of the PNG National Parliament as a female student, exclusively involved in student politics, pursuing my passion for leadership. Many thoughts and questions ran through my mind as I studied the building structures, artifacts, the hidden meaning behind the symbols, the number of seats, and the elected members of parliament who represent us as the voice of our people in PNG.

It was a sad reality check for me to learn that, out of 118 seats in Parliament, only 3 were represented by women. I sat there hopelessly imagining my future fast-forward some years later, working a quiet desk job with my political ambition discouraged by a reality I did not face on the school campus, while my male peers were contesting provincial seats with massive war chests. The near absence of women in the space meant to represent us all forced me to question the true inclusivity of our nation’s leadership and whose voices are truly being heard when women (half of the population) are underrepresented.

Student politics to national governance

The transition from student politics to national governance is a broken bridge. Across the Pacific region, Women remain significantly underrepresented in political leadership. According to UN Women, women hold less than 8% of parliamentary seats across the Pacific, the lowest regional average globally. Pacific countries are grouped into three main regions - Melanesia (Black Islands such as PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji), Micronesia (small Islands including Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Marshall Islands, Nauru and Kiribati) and Polynesia (many Islands namely Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands and Niue) because of our geography, culture, language and history.

In PNG, the situation is even more concerning: as of early 2026, only 3 women sit in a 118-member parliament. Since PNG’s national independence day on 16 September 1975, only 10 women have been elected to parliament. This represents our current average for women’s representation at 2.7%, which is far below even the Pacific region’s already low average of 8-9%, placing PNG among the countries with the lowest representation of women globally.

While countries like Fiji and Samoa have made progress, the broader region, including Vanuatu and Tuvalu, continues to struggle with near-zero or single-digit representation, with the overall trend reflecting persistent gender inequality in political leadership. This suggests that while the Pacific accepts women as student leaders in academic settings, it rejects them as legislative authorities in the national arena.

Thus, the gap between student leadership and national governance raises an important question: “Why does this disparity exist?” The answer lies in the merit-based environments rather than the culture-based “Big Man” politics. In student politics, leadership is often judged on communication skills, ideas, competence, policy, and the ability to unite diverse student bodies. However, national elections in PNG and the wider Pacific are governed by the “Gift Economy” and deeply rooted Patriarchal norms, traditional beliefs, or mindsets that often position men as natural leaders, while women are expected to take on supportive or domestic roles. These perceptions influence public attitudes and voting behavior, making it difficult for women candidates to gain trust and support.

Women also face other underlying factors or barriers, such as financial limitations, political violence, intimidation, harassment, and lack of institutional support. On the school campus, debate is regulated, while in national elections, women face psychological and physical violence. A 2025 study found that over 75% of female politicians in the Asia-Pacific reported experiencing psychological abuse. Also, national general elections campaigns require immense capital for gift giving, “mumu” feasts, compensation, and logistics—resources women rarely control compared to their male counterparts. Moreover, the Student leadership is often seen as a “learning phase”, but national leadership is viewed as a “customary” domain for men. These challenges create an uneven playing field, limiting women’s participation in national politics.

Beyond student politics

The issue is not about women’s lack of ability to lead, but rather the structural barriers, cultural expectations, patriarchal systems, lack of resources, trust, and financial support for women. Student leadership provides the skills but fails to offer the institutional support or a safety net pipeline needed for women to transition from student politics into the “real world”. Addressing these challenges requires collective effort from government, institutions, communities, and individuals to challenge existing norms, thereby creating opportunities and conducive environments where women can thrive as leaders.

Also, to change this, the Pacific region must move beyond Temporary Special Measures (TSMs) and implement them by reserving seats for women in Parliament to bridge the gap between the school campus lecture hall and the floor of Parliament, enabling women to equally participate in national decision-making processes and politics.

We also need to start asking questions like: “Is student leadership a pipeline or a ceiling?” We must reflect and ask ourselves: “If we trust women to lead our students today, why do we fear them leading our nations tomorrow?” Ultimately, true representation in parliament should reflect the nation it serves. Until women are equally represented, the question remains—whose voices are truly being heard in our national parliaments?

This is an externally contributed piece. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, policymaker, or practitioner — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Alice Francis

Alice Francis is a final-year Business Management student at University of Papua New Guinea, driven by leadership, gender advocacy, and empowering Pacific youth. She has held key roles including SBPP Female Representative, BMSU Vice President, and Welfare and Gender Officer for the Komo Mt. Sisa Nationwide Tertiary Student Association. Alongside her leadership journey, she contributes to youth career development through PNG Career Development Inc.

The irony of speaking English in the Philippines is that proficiency only gets you in the door, but sounding a certain way grants you access to the room.

The Filipino accent has long occupied an ambiguous cultural space. For one, the Philippines has been consistently ranking among countries having the most proficient English speakers in both the world and the region - a distinction that has naturally brought upon Philippine English, complete with its own vocabulary and inflections. From this emerged a distinct Filipino accent, and with it, an identity marker that travels with the diaspora.

However, recognition has not meant acceptance. Unlike hierarchies based on name and wealth, the Filipino accent is subject to a different system—one rooted in pride, humor, shame, and discomfort in sounding distinctly Filipino. This tension is perhaps most visible when comparing Filipino-American comedian Jo Koy’s use of the accent to English teachers’ experiences in the Philippines.

Jo Koy built much of his early career on the impression of his Filipino mother. The structure of his sets follows a familiar and simple diasporic formula: He would start with a childhood anecdote, his mother’s “Filipino-ness” set against American norms, and a punchline that lands on the exaggeration of her accent. What is worth observing here is not just that the jokes worked, but who they worked for. His special Coming in Hot holds a 7.4 on IMDb, and the material was received warmly by both American and Filipino audiences as a form of representation. But representation of what, exactly? The accent in Jo Koy’s sets becomes a comedic shorthand that is legible, repeatable, and affectionate on the surface, especially in callbacks to his mother, but it still positions the Filipino accent and “Filipino-ness” as the thing being laughed at. He is not alone in this; creators before and after him have built punchlines on the same foundation. It’s important to note that the humor is rarely cruel, but it consistently frames the accent as a deviation from an unnamed norm.

English educators in the Philippines, however, tell a different story from a different pressure point. Research from the International Journal on Multilingualism found that English teachers in the Philippines feel increasingly compelled to suppress their Filipino accent in favor of a more “neutral” tone. Notably, the teachers in the study did not deny the cultural significance of their accent, as many acknowledged it as a part of their identity and their teaching of Philippine English. Yet their professional and social networks consistently pushed them toward a more “neutral” register, treating their natural accent as something to be managed.

These two examples reveal the complex negotiation at the center of this piece. Filipinos themselves actively participate in and shape this dynamic — the accent functioning simultaneously as a vehicle for self-deprecating humor, a marker of cultural identity, and a source of professional shame. What makes this particularly difficult to untangle is that it operates on the same axis as English proficiency itself, a skill long measured against standards of class, intelligence, and social worth.

That is why, for Filipinos, speaking English with an accent is not merely about pronouncing words differently, but about being located within hierarchies of value and credibility.

English in the Philippine social order

When the Americans replaced Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines, one of their first steps was to institutionalize English. In 1901, over 600 American teachers and volunteers, boarding the USAT Thomas, arrived in the Philippines and established a public educational system with English as the medium of instruction.

This effort extended beyond the capital Manila to far-reaching provinces throughout the first two decades of the 20th century, and its effects on the country were sweeping. English came to occupy almost every aspect of Filipino life, from governance to science, mass media, and more.

Filipino media reflects this hierarchical sorting. The familiar “rich versus poor” narrative in Filipino dramas frequently assigns more English lines to wealthy characters, while working-class characters speak predominantly in Filipino or broken English. Consider Bobbie Salazar in Four Sisters and a Wedding: her polished English, professional demeanor, and New York cosmopolitan confidence are not presented as incidental details. They function as signals of education, of refinement, of a certain kind of belonging. Characters who are less cosmopolitan, by contrast, are written with heavier local accents and less code-switching. The message consistently pushed forward in these dramas is that English, and a particular kind of English, marks who has arrived.

This association does not stay on screen. It also shapes how English is spoken in real spaces, including among young people. The “conyo” accent, a Filipino English heavily inflected with a Western tone, has become closely associated with elite universities like De La Salle and Ateneo de Manila. While it has drawn its share of mockery, it has also solidified into a distinct sociolect, a recognizable register of inflection that signals class affiliation as much as it does language preference. To speak conyo is, in part, to signal where you studied and with whom you belong.

In professional settings, this logic becomes formalized and even an economic decision. In the business process outsourcing industry, where 1.3 to 1.8 million Filipinos work today, accent training is standard practice. “Neutralization” programs aim to minimize the natural features of the Filipino accent and replace them with an American English register, specifically to appeal to North American clients. The demand for this kind of training has become an industry in itself, with American English training centers operating across Manila and on online platforms. Here, the pressure to sound a certain way is literally written into the job.

Over time, these patterns, habits, and professional requirements do change, but continue to have consequential cultural work. They reinforce the idea to associate English, and often a certain kind of English, with intelligence, refinement, and authority. And they also reinforce its complete opposite: that sounding distinctly Filipino when speaking in English is, at best, charming, and at worst, a liability.

The pressure here is not merely to speak English, but to sound a certain way while doing so.

The politics of belonging

Linguist Braj Kachru mapped English into three concentric circles. The inner circle comprises countries where English is historically native - the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The outer, expanding circles represent countries where English functions as a second language or as a global lingua franca.

Notice that Kachru’s model was descriptive, not hierarchical. It was meant to explain how English circulates globally, not to rank its speakers. Yet in the Philippines, these circles operate as if they were ranked. Proficiency matters, but so does the accent you use to speak the language. Where you fall in this framework, or how closely you mimic the inner circle’s “standard”, determines your place in the social order and your prospects for mobility.

Rosina Lippi-Green, in English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States, argues that the so-called “standard” is simply the accent of a white, upper-middle-class, educated speaker. She argues that no variety of a language is inherently superior to another. Institutions that push for a “standard” do not merely teach a register. They construct a hierarchy, one that sorts English speakers by perceived intelligence, professionalism, and belonging. This happens in schools where students are pressured to conform, in workplaces where employers use accents as a proxy for competence, and in media where “non-standard” accents mark the villain, the comic relief, or the uneducated supporting character. The analysis is uncomfortable precisely because it describes the Filipino setting with such accuracy.

But the persistence of this hierarchy raises a deeper question. It is not an argument against learning, adapting, or code-switching. Language is fluid, and people shift registers for practical reasons every day. The issue is not the act of modification but the expectation underneath it. The expectation that professionalism, class, and intelligence must sound a particular way reveals a hierarchy of legitimacy, one that the Philippines did not author but has nonetheless internalized.

For many Filipinos, modifying their accent is an economically rational decision. Migration, outsourcing, and transnational labor markets reward this kind of adaptability, and the incentive is real and material. It would be too easy, and frankly unfair, to frame every instance of accent modification as capitulation. People navigate systems they did not design, and doing so skillfully is its own form of agency. But there is a difference between adapting strategically and adapting because no other version of yourself feels credible. Again, the deeper issue is not accent modification itself. It is the absence of a framework that allows Filipinos to define legitimacy on their own terms.

The global hierarchy of accents did not emerge in a vacuum. It followed economic and political power. For decades, the United States set the standard not only in markets and media, but in sound. To speak like the center was to signal proximity to it, and proximity to it meant access. That logic made sense when American cultural and economic dominance went largely unchallenged.

But power shifts. Southeast Asia is no longer peripheral to the global economy. It is central to supply chains, manufacturing networks, and long-term growth projections in ways that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago. The geography of influence is changing, but the geography of linguistic legitimacy has not caught up. Until the Filipino accent is treated as fully legitimate on its own terms, sounding “standard” will continue to function as a shortcut to credibility.

On whose terms?

The same study that documented Filipino English teachers’ pressure to adopt a neutral accent also documented their response to it. Neither teacher simply complied. Over time, both adapted their classroom practice to incorporate other varieties of English. Their classrooms became small sites of negotiation, and then of redefinition.

The Filipino accent does not need rehabilitation. What it needs is for the structures around it to stop treating it as a problem to be corrected and minimized. That means policy in how schools train teachers, in how BPO companies use accent neutralization, in how Philippine media writes its characters. It means being honest that the pressure to sound neutral for legitimacy is not neutral. It is a pressure with a deep history.

But legitimacy is not only granted from above. It can also be claimed. And the decision to keep a Filipino accent in certain spaces can, in itself, be a deliberate act.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Matthew Parra

Matthew Parra is a student at the University of Santo Tomas and the founder and Executive Director of The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier — an independent analytical platform dedicated to rigorous, evidence-grounded analysis of Southeast Asia and the Pacific across economics, society, and geopolitics.