Disaster preparedness and emergency response policy and administration

What happens when the greatest threat to national security comes from a virus? What does that mean for defense spending, modernization, and civil-military relations? In Southeast Asia — where militaries have long had an outsized role in politics, economics, and society — the answers to ...

Officials at Suvarnabhumi Airport say they are awaiting more information from Chinese authorities before deciding whether to expand screening of passengers arriving from China to try to detect the new coronavirus that is causing worldwide concern. China, meanwhile, announced late Saturday that all group tours from ...

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has issued an urgent dispatch on preventing the acute respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus (nCoV) strain, which is developing complicatedly in China without specific treatment and preventive vaccine yet. The dispatch was sent to the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Foreign ...

The Mandalay Disaster Response Team has joined forces with other charitable groups in northern Myanmar to strengthen its ability to respond to emergencies in the region and neighbouring areas. The organisation was formed in 2016 with members of more than 20 charitable groups to assist people displaced ...

After a year of severe drought that hit the region, the inter-state agency Mekong River Commission (MRC) has laid out new measures to mitigate the effects of the crisis but experts have questioned the effectiveness of the plan. In its 2020-2025 strategy, adopted late last month ...

One of the significant but under noticed developments at this year’s ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-related (ADMM) meetings in Bangkok was Japan’s launching of a sequel to its defense initiative for Southeast Asian states, termed Vientiane Vision 2.0. The development once again put the focus on ...

Vietnam recorded 224 persons dead and missing and economic losses of nearly 20 trillion VND (859.5 million USD) in natural disasters in 2018, according to the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control. At a meeting in the southernmost province of Ca Mau, the ...

The recent media report on the Mekong River which contained false accusations against China ignores the joint efforts made by China, Thailand and other relevant parties to promote cooperation on Mekong water resources for the benefit of the people in the region. These accusations mislead ...

The Lao government is embarking on an plan to inspect all 55 dams in the country nearly one year after the collapse of a saddle dam that caused a disaster described as Laos’ worst flooding in decades. The disaster occurred on July 23, 2018, when a ...

Local communities impacted by flooding are benefiting under a ‘cash for work’ project as part of the collaboration between the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare and the United Nations Development Programme. The project began in 2018 to support the most vulnerable families, most of ...