Social development

Access Now, Article 19, Fortify Rights, and seven others are calling on authorities in Myanmar to immediately end criminal proceedings against, and release from detention, all those charged in relation to recent protests shining a spotlight on human rights violations and internet shutdowns in Rakhine and Chin ...

More than 20 years ago, when two Chiang Rai-based environmentalists, Niwat Roikaew and Somkiat Kuenwongsa, learned that the Chinese government were blasting rapids in the upper Mekong River from Yunnan to Myanmar and Laos to clear the way for large commercial vessels, they started worrying. Back ...

 Thai police unnecessarily used water cannons and teargas against peaceful democracy demonstrators outside the parliament in Bangkok on November 17, 2020, in violation of international human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said today. At about 2:25 p.m., police attempted to prevent a demonstration organized by the People’s ...

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the EU Delegation and the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI) last week launched a new project to boost food security and nutrition. The project on Developing Capacities in Agriculture Innovation Systems of Scaling up ...

Vietnam is forecast to face a severe gender imbalance by 2026, with an excess of 1.38 million males, according to the General Statistics Office. Speaking at a recent workshop involving nearly 200 women and collaborators in population affairs in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh, Dr Mai Xuan ...

Myanmar, a Southeastern Asian country roughly the size of Texas, houses almost 54 million people. In 2005, almost half of Myanmar’s population lived in poverty. However, a report released by the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) determined that Myanmar successfully increased its GDP and cut poverty to 24.8% ...

Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform, a senior official at the US social media giant told Reuters Facebook complied with a government request in April ...

A Cambodian newspaper publisher who made critical comments about Prime Minister Hun Sen on Facebook has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.  A Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday jailed Ros Sokhet for incitement and ordered him to pay a fine of $500 (2 million riels), said Sam Sokong, ...

For the first time in a year and a half, a confirmed human case of avian influenza A(H5N1) has been reported. The case involves a one-year-old girl from Salavan, aka Saravane province, in the south of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos). She became sick on ...

A multinational technology company recently held its annual “Seeds for the Future 2020” event in Bangkok to offer talented and motivated university students the opportunity to enhance their digital skills through a hands-on training program with leading ICT experts. A group of 15 students from Chulalongkorn ...