Social development

ADB President Takehiko Nakao on 4 April met Lao Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, Minister of Finance Dr Lien Thikeo and Minister of Planning and Investment Mr Somdy Douangdy, to discuss how the ADB can support the country’s infrastructure, private sector, skills development, and health services to enable ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications has defended the controversial new Telecommunications Law following a biting legal analysis by rights group Licadho, which says the legislation is a veiled tool to silence critics and potentially criminalize private expression. Keep reading ...

Some 80 delegates from 11 countries in the East Asia-Pacific region gathered in Viet Nam yesterday to discuss gender integration in rural transportation. The World Bank (WB) workshop, hosted in Ha Noi, is part of a regional Gender Capacity Programme for Rural Transport projects, including exchange ...

Many local farmers in Laos’s Phongsaly province are shifting to plant cardamom, after earning lucrative income from growing this crop and selling it to Chinese traders. Some families earned as much as 40 million kip per year from growing cardamom, which enabled them to send their ...

Ethnic Shan communities in northern Shan State have called for an end to four planned hydropower dams on the Namtu River, an Irrawaddy tributary, citing irreparable damage to the environment. More than 100 people gathered in Hsipaw Township to hold a prayer service on the bank ...

The government has granted itself pervasive snooping powers to effectively monitor all electronic communication and punish anything deemed to have caused “national insecurity”, a legal analysis of the recently passed telecommunications law has warned. In a briefing paper released on 31 March, rights group Licadho ...

Health officials have placed Yangon Region on high alert as a deadly meningitis outbreak appears to have spread from Mandalay. The Department of Public Health is monitoring all 44 townships following the death on March 18 of an 8-year-old girl in South Dagon township. Meningococcal meningitis ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia on 27 March promised villagers in Stung Treng province who are set to be displaced by the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 hydropower dam for the massive energy project that she would raise their plight with the ...

The six Mekong Basin countries convened in Vientiane on 23 March to discuss ways to increase their cooperation in disease surveillance, especially in border areas, to curb the spread of infectious diseases. Representatives from Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam attended the Mekong Basin Disease ...

With the threat of eviction hanging over businesses on Sihanoukville’s O’Chheuteal and O’Tres beaches, land rights advocates congregated in Phnom Penh this week to give voice to thousands of families locked in land disputes with powerful firms turning swaths of coastline into tourism destinations. Keep reading   ...