Our origins go back to the tumultuous years following the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis and the first OECD mission to the region to examine first hand its scale and ramifications. In Indonesia the mission was invited, following meetings with key policy makers such as Radius Prawiro and Ali Wardhana, to present its findings to the United Nations/Donor group in early 1998. Satish Mishra, an Oxford economist, who led the mission, argued that Indonesia seemed to be on the verge of a systemic collapse and would face a twenty year transition comparable to what had been experienced in Post-Berlin Wall USSR and Eastern Europe. This went against the prevailing view that the financial crisis would be short lived and that strong economic fundamentals would generate a speedy recovery.

The following year the United Nations Resident Coordinator, Ravi Rajan, established a far reaching policy support project, funded by the United Nations Development Program, for the Government of Indonesia. This project Ins/2/99, better known as the United Nations Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery or UNSFIR was established in mid 2000. Its aim was to assist the Government of Indonesia in thinking through how best to manage this “systemic transition” from dictatorship to democracy and from highly crony ridden economy to a modern competitive economy, such as to keep social and political unrest to tolerable levels. Strategic Asia was therefore forged in the crucible of simultaneous emergencies and competing pressures. With the closure of UNSFIR in December 2005, the key members of its team established a private company to continue the philosophy and approach taken there. In more ways than one, Strategic Asia is a private company with a public vision and purpose.

By the time UNSFIR has closed it had left a considerable imprint on policy thinking in Indonesia. It produced Indonesia’s first Human Development Report in 2001 winning the UNDP’s global first prize for best analysis in a competition with 140 countries. It established a far reaching agenda for policy research and sequencing which integrated political, economic and social reform programs ranging from democratic consolidation to industrial policy, from regional inequality to violent conflict and from foreign aid and borrowing to Indonesia’s long term vision. It promoted a unique policy consultative mechanism called JAJAKI, meaning “to explore”, bringing together over fifty Indonesian institutions: from government departments to civil society groups, from universities and think tanks to media and political parties, from Jakarta and the regions, from trade unions to employer’s organisations, from the military to the large Islamic movements.

Strategic Asia aims to build on this early experience, on UNSFIR’s fierce independence, its network of very high level policy makers and analysts, its unique advocacy style and its persistent ability to read the future.