Ethnic minorities and indigenous people

A 30-month study by Vietnamese researchers on the impact of 11 proposed hydroelectric dams in the Lower Mekong Basin has found that the economic damage to Cambodia alone will be worth some $450 million per year. According to the researchers, the Mekong River at Kratie could, ...

Many local farmers in Laos’s Phongsaly province are shifting to plant cardamom, after earning lucrative income from growing this crop and selling it to Chinese traders. Some families earned as much as 40 million kip per year from growing cardamom, which enabled them to send their ...

Physical, sexual and emotional violence against women is “common” in Ratanakkiri’s ethnic minority communities, and mostly committed by the victims’ husbands, a new gender-based violence report by CARE Cambodia has found. The new $1.17 million program, launched by CARE, will target 11 lower secondary schools in ...

Well-known Thai actor Saharat “Kong” Sangkapricha and actress and model Priya “Pu” Suandokmai have joined a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) fundraising project that highlights the plight of Myanmar’s displaced in Thailand. The campaign, called “Namjai for Refugees,” aims to assist over 120,000 Myanmar refugees currently living ...

Fighting flared in northern Shan State on 7 February and while tensions remain high between the belligerents – the Restoration Council of the Shan State/Shan State Army-South (RCSS/SSA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Tatmadaw – clashes have only been sporadic in the ...

Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has said there needs to be a complete update of the mechanisms and policies to spur socio-economic development in ethnic minority-inhabited regions. Phuc made his statement at a conference held by the Government’s Committee for Ethnic Affairs and the ...

An umbrella organisation of ethnic armed groups has formed a five-member team to help negotiate an end to fighting in northern Shan State that has forced up to 5000 people to flee their homes. The United Nationalities Federal Council formed the team at a four-day emergency ...

Refugees from fighting between two ethnic armed groups in northern Shan State are still flowing into the government-controlled town of Kyaukme amid reports that the Tatmadaw is stepping up its presence in the conflict zone. Relief workers are sending vehicles to war-torn villages to help civilians – ...

Two young women who were the focus of a Myanmar Times investigation this month into mass abductions of civilians by ethnic armed groups have been freed by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Ma Nang Htwe Yin and Nang Kyan Kham, both 20-year-old ethnic Shan pre-school teachers, were ...

Indigenous peoples fighting economic land concessions (ELCs) in Cambodia are more likely to get results with violent protest than lodging their complaints through legitimate channels, a controversial study published this month argues. The paper, published by Young Sokphea in the Asian Journal of Social Science, concludes ...