Social development

Mr. Niwat Roykaew, founder of the Rak Chiang Khong Group in northern Thailand, has shared a letter he received on behalf of the Network of Thai People in Eight Mekong Provinces from Mr. Don Pramudwinai, the Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs, that confirms media reports in March ...

The ten signatories to the National Cease fire Agreement started a five-day meeting at Chiang Mai from May 14-18 to discuss about the agreement and how to move the peace process forward. It looks that having been brought into the “bag”, the smaller groups which have ...

Special Rapporteur, Rhona Smith, completed her seventh visit to Cambodia this week. In her final report on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Smith called on the government to improve its human rights record around freedom of assembly, inclusive development, press freedom and unlawful detention. At the ...

Twelve indigenous communities in Cambodia’s northeastern province of Ratanakiri scored a major victory today when the government announced it was returning to them 20 spirit mountains and dozens of other spiritually significant areas that had been grabbed by the Vietnamese agribusiness giant Hoang Anh Gia ...

Marie Puyessegur explores events in part one of a three-part series conducted as part of the MEMORY! Heritage Film Festival, an annual event in Yangon.  The festival’s 2018 edition focused on the theme of Freedom of the Press and Democracy in their representation through cinema, and was ...

The Dhanin Tawee Chearavanont Foundation today became the first private sector partner to support the Global Fund’s largest regional initiative to eliminate drug-resistant malaria in the Greater Mekong. With a contribution of US$2 million over two years, the Thai-based private family foundation will support the Global ...

Cambodia and Thailand yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding on strengthening the management of the repatriation and reintegration of human trafficking victims. The MoU was signed on behalf of the Cambodian government by Nhek Vannara, a Social Affairs Ministry secretary of state, who led a delegation ...

On Thursday, April 25, 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping will deliver the keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Second Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation in Beijing. Heads of state and other senior government officials from 37 governments will attend, including representatives from ...

When photographer Marieke van der Velden was asked by the Dutch charity Down to Zero to do an awareness-raising project on Thai children who had been victims of commercial sexual exploitation, she was uncertain how to proceed. For obvious reasons, her subjects’ faces could not be shown. In Thailand, Van der ...

Scores of Rohingya detainees inside a Saudi detention centre have gone on a hunger strike for the third time in recent months, activists told Al Jazeera. Almost 650 men, most of whom have been kept at the Shumaisi detention centre in Jeddah since 2012 for not having valid ...