Multilateral development assistance

The United Nations on 15 December called on the government to do more to protect its homeless after years of so-called street sweeps and a lack of social care have left destitute Cambodians vulnerable to health risks and violence. “Cambodia is growing fast economically, and the signs ...

The pool of climate finances available to Southeast Asia is set to expand following an announcement by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that it plans to double its climate funding to the region by 2020 – a move welcomed by the Cambodian government and climate ...

Opium production in Myanmar has “stabilised” at stubbornly high levels, the United Nations said on 14 December, adding the government must address poverty and end the conflicts which drive farmers to grow illicit poppies. Myanmar, the world’s second largest opium producer after Afghanistan, has struggled to ...

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s latest opium survey for Myanmar and Laos, released 15 December, said poverty and conflict are the driving forces behind poppy cultivation, the second largest behind that of Afghanistan. In its latest production assessment, UNDOC said although Southeast Asia’s opium ...

Major hydropower projects like the large-scale dams under way in Cambodia’s waterways are a “false solution” to climate change, according to a global coalition of 300 NGOs who are calling on parties at UN climate talks in Paris (COP21) to bar such schemes from climate ...

Myanmar has come under renewed pressure to lift itself from the bottom rung of countries to have ratified key international human rights treaties. Speaking at an event in Yangon yesterday to mark International Human Rights Day, Andrew MacGregor, a senior official from the Office of the ...

With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) including China’s yuan in its elite reserve currency basket, impacts from the step on Vietnam’s economy will depend on its preparation, according to experts. The IMF’s decision will impact global finance and Vietnam is not an exception, especially when the ...

The UN World Food Programme will extend its current Myanmar operations into the end of 2017, despite a funding shortfall of US$40 million. The announcement comes as the organisation continues its early recovery missions in areas affected by the monsoon floods in August, as well as internally ...

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on 1 December declared in front of the world community that Thailand would slash greenhouse gases by 20-25 per cent within 15 years, but critics panned the plan, saying it was just for show, as it looked unrealistic. Prayut told the two-week-long United Nations climate-change ...

Thailand’s trade and investment will benefit in the long run from inclusion of the yuan in the special drawing rights currency basket of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), says a senior central bank official. Greater use of the Chinese currency would help to slim down foreign ...