Social development

Open, close, open, close – not the instructions for a particularly fiddly front door, rather it is the pattern that schools in Cambodia have followed as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic continues to throw the system into limbo, forcing educators to rip up the textbook and adapt ...

Myanmar plans to start providing COVID-19 vaccines to about 20 percent of its 54.4 million population in April under the global Covax affordable medicines program, according to health minister Dr. Myint Htwe. Myanmar on Dec. 7 submitted its request to the Covax program at the World ...

A four-year project on the prevention and elimination of violence against women was launched on Thursday, which was International Human Rights Day. The project aims to strengthen national capacity for the effective, systematic and accountable prevention of, and response to, violence against women in Laos. The Lao ...

A new World Bank report links declining student performances in reading and stagnation in maths and science scores to inequality and inefficiency of investment across Thai schools. School closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic may accelerate these trends, warns the report released on Wednesday (December 9). ...

The fast-approaching Christmas and New Year celebrations are supposed to ignite a sense of joy among the public, but such enthusiasm has long been curbed by the pandemic crisis that has sunk economies and hopes around the globe. With a feeling of unease in the air ...

Over a hundred participants from various sectors, which have been working on development issues in the Mekong Basin, attended the two-day seminar held in Chiang Rai’ Chiang Khong district, where has been one of the locations which have long suffered from development projects in the ...

After almost two decades of campaigning against hydro-dams and water projects built on the Mekong River, local civic groups and conservationists finally launched the “Mekong People’s Forum,” with the hope of moving their campaign to a policy level. The forum was held on Dec 1–2 in ...

Motivated to build a green industrial zone in Cambodia, the newly-established NGO Environmental Protection Industry Associations of Cambodia (Epiac) will work with Chinese-owned industrial park developer and operator QiLu (Cambodia) Special Economic Zone Co Ltd to set a new precedent for environmentally-friendly design and construction. On ...

The second wave of COVID – 19 in Myanmar has had a significant impact on incomes, with a rising number of households now living below the poverty line compared to before the pandemic, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Myanmar. In September, ...

It was a Saturday morning and several people have started to gather around small stalls lined up along Nat Mauk Street near Yangon’s Kandawgyi Lake. There is nothing unusual seeing a weekend market packed with shoppers, some of them fresh from their early morning walk, ...