The event underscored Vietnam’s proactive role, sense of responsibility, and leadership in fostering dialogue, connecting ideas, and strengthening regional cooperation.
By successfully hosting the forum, Vietnam further demonstrated its role as a bridge for dialogue, consensus-building, and mutual trust among regional and international partners.
ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn said Vietnam launched the future forum 3 years ago and has hosted three consecutive annual forums.
“This is a very important contribution to community building in terms of bringing leaders, policy makers, thought leaders, practitioners and, of course, people from the academic think tank sector as well as representatives and the young leaders together to discuss the future of ASEAN and the region as well. I think this is very important in terms of mobilizing all the new ideas and fresh recommendations,” said Hourn.
Many delegates praised Vietnam for creating an open and substantive platform for exchanges focused on long-term regional solutions.
Australian Ambassador to ASEAN Tiffany McDonald highlighted the organization of the event and the high quality of its discussions.
“There were at least five ASEAN leaders, foreign ministers here as part of the opening ceremony of the ASEAN future forum and I think that just demonstrates that quality of conversation, the caliber of participants at the future forum is extremely high and it continues to gather momentum and I think what this forum does under Vietnam's leadership is to provide a space for all those have a commitment and an investment in the success of assets.”
This year’s forum focused on long-term thinking in addressing regional issues, ranging from sustainable growth and digital transformation to non-traditional security challenges.
The discussions reflected growing international expectations for ASEAN’s central role and Vietnam’s contribution to shaping the region’s shared agenda.
Philippine Ambassador to Vietnam Francisco Noel R. Fernandez III said, “The ASEAN future forum is very important because we do not know what will happen 10 or 15 years from now, but with the input coming from the ASEAN Future Forum and it's going to be discussed by the leaders then we may be able to anticipate future challenges and come up with a regulatory framework or legal framework where the Asian member states will be able to share resources plan together and make sure that nobody is left behind.”
