Social development

Vietnamese parents are worried about sending their children to the US to study because of US President-elect Trump’s attitudes toward immigration. Tran Hoang Hoa, a parent in Hanoi, said she and her husband have reconsidered their plan to send the daughter to the US for university. “We ...

Test results are expected on November 18 or tomorrow on a suspected Zika virus case, according to the Department of Public Health. A six-year-old child from Lanma­daw township is the latest to undergo testing after exhibiting symptoms commonly seen with the Zika virus, said Dr Than ...

The Yangon Region government is in the process of arranging low-cost housing for “real squatters” in the commercial capital, Yangon’s security and border affairs minister told the regional legislature on November 16.  He was responding to a question from lawmaker U Kyaw Zeya (NLD; Dagon ...

The Swiss-Lao Hospital Project has provided medical equipment worth about US$1 million for Lao hospitals, aiming to improve conditions for new mothers and newborns around the country. Deputy Director General of the Mother and Newborn Hospital, Dr Sivanesay Chanthavongsouk, said this week the equipment would help ...

Prison reforms currently being considered in Myanmar fall short of meeting international human rights standards, Amnesty International said on November 10. New draft prison legislation represents a significant improvement on laws currently in effect that are more than a century old, but it still fails to ...

The government and international organisations with a presence in Laos have held a pre-consultation on the Sustainable Development Goals in preparation for the 2016 Round Table Implementation Meeting to be held from November 24-25 in Vientiane province. The 2016 Round Table Implementation Meeting SDG Pre-consultation took ...

The masons tasked with rebuilding hundreds of crumbling pagodas in Bagan will receive training from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Bagan Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library later this month, department director U Aung Aung Kyaw told The Myanmar Times.`A 6.8-magnitude earthquake near ...

The United Nations is standing behind Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights country representative Wan-Hea Lee after a letter signed by Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon accused her of failing to respect Cambodia’s sovereignty. Sokhon had taken umbrage at Lee’s public request for an ...

Malaysia has proposed to raise the minimum age for marriage to 18 for Muslim girls in a bid to reduce teenage pregnancy rates and enhance social protection for minors. The Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development has engaged stakeholders, including various state religious affairs ...

Poverty reduction has slowed a little but the government will strive to reduce the number of poor families from 6.56 percent in 2016 down to 6.09 percent by 2017, the government has told the National Assembly. There are four main reasons for the slower rate ...