While it is right to note that it is lack of capacity that explains why ASEAN was reliant on the secondment of staff from external agencies to fulfil its obligations, the reason why the Secretariat in 2008, some thirty-seven years after the establishment of the AEGDM, were incapable of conducting the assessment themselves is because of the informality norm. For the member states to invest such capacity in the Secretariat would give it the technical expertise to assume a primacy over how to implement the holistic disaster management approach advocated at Yokohama and Hyogo. Although this might not officially amount to instructing member states how to build resilient communities, with all the interference that entails from embedding DRR strategies in school circular, city planning and building regulations etc., the elite would leave themselves open to criticism of culpability if they ignored such expertise and their people consequently suffered from a major natural disaster. Increasing capacity in the Secretariat amounts to empowering the Association and that is not what ASEAN members have wanted to do.