The IUC is the biggest bi-annual gathering of academics and social scientists in Southeast Asia. Backstopped by its Regional Secretariat based in the National University of Singapore, the IUC has helped advanced the understanding of the human condition in all its dimensions in Southeast Asia. It is able to enlist the participation of leading scholars and researchers from different centers of learning all over the region, including those coming from outside the region.

As a backgrounder, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in its Leaders’ Summit in 2003 in Bali, adopted a historic vision to transform the region into an ‘ASEAN Community’. Based on Bali Concord II, ASEAN shall be an integrated community by 2020 built on three integration pillars – economy, socio-cultural and security. Since then, ASEAN, which is marking its 40th year in 2008, has advanced the economic integration program to 2015 and is now drafting an ASEAN Charter that will dramatically transform the ASEAN into a rules-based institution.

The academe, with its intellectual resources, can contribute a lot in

• Sharpening the vision of an ASEAN community,
• Fleshing out the plans and programs of regional integration,
• Identifying problems and prospects in the integration process, and
• Insuring a human-centered ASEAN integration.

However, the 8th IUC is introducing another innovation. It has accepted the formal involvement in the IUC of ASEAN working people as participants. The newly formed ASEAN Service Employees Trade Union Council (ASETUC) based in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and the Union Global International Asia Pacific Regional office shall participate as a co-sponsor. Through the ASETUC, other trade unions and civil society organizations (CSOs) or non-governmental and private voluntary organizations from the region (such as the Fair Trade Alliance and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung) shall be invited.

The University of the Philippines, Diliman Campus through the College of Mass Communication and the School of Labor & Industrial Relations, and in collaboration with the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, will take its turn in hosting the Conference.

The conference features plenary and parallel sessions, including two dialogues among participants for the formulation of resolutions, research agenda and future plans. Selected papers shall be published after the Conference.

About the logo

The colorful sarimanok of the Philippines, hybrid of rooster and phoenix, may well symbolize the collective identity of ASEAN. It signifies Asia's diversely rich cultural heritage, and resurrects in its flight the spirit of a shared union. The globe hanging from its beak represents how ASEAN is now poised to take great initiatives in discussing and responding to global trends in social development.

The avian motif is shared among many Southeast Asian nations. Indonesians have their garuda, the Dayaks of Borneo their hornbill, and the Vietnamese and Thai their epic designs intently similar to the sarimanok. All such birds are carriers of respect and good news.

This year, allow us to introduce the sarimanok not only as the bearer of unity in diversity but also as focal symbol of Southeast Asia as a nation.