Economic, social and cultural rights

Malaysia said on December 19 the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar was a regional concern and called for the Association of South East Asian Nations to coordinate humanitarian aid and investigate alleged atrocities committed against them. Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman was speaking at a ...

Myanmar’s military clearance operations in northern Rakhine State are being carried out “lawfully”, the investigation commission led by Vice President Myint Swe concluded after wrapping up a three-day field visit to Maundgaw. The announcement comes as Human Rights Watch released a report accusing the military ...

Cambodia is moving fast to provide millions of land titles to farmers in an effort to reduce conflicts over territory in the Southeast Asian nation, a senior government official said. About 770,000 Cambodians — more than five percent of the population — have been affected by land ...

In recent years, communities displaced by sugar plantations have attempted to reclaim their land by targeting the plantations’ investors and buyers overseas, but a study published last week in the peer-reviewed Journal of Civil Society suggests such efforts may disappoint. Author Young Sokphea notes that ...

Tensions are mounting between Yangon City Development Committee and the commercial capital’s street vendors, as a small contingent refuses to move stalls from their locations on Anawrahta Road. Following a recently announced ban on street stalls on Yangon’s 11 busiest roads, YCDC staff have been travelling ...

Relocating 26,000 households and clearing the slums along canals is one of the seven key projects of the HCM City gentrification program. A research work by Dr Le Huy Ba and architect Le Minh Thanh found that nearly 100 percent of rivers and canals in HCMC ...

As construction on the Don Sahong dam near the Cambodia-Laos border passes its halfway point, activists and locals are increasingly concerned over the disappearance of Irawaddy dolphins and incidences of illness they suspect are caused by the muddied water. “The waters downstream in Cambodia have ...

Laos needs to rethink its aggressive hydropower plans as new markets and technologies create an opportunity to change course. A report published in September by the Stimson Center, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, challenges prevailing notions about the future of hydropower in the Mekong subregion, an ...

Chea Sophat stood on the gravel embankment of a road as he pointed to what was once his rice field, an unfenced, 4,000-square-metre waterlogged plot with a handful of buffaloes wallowing in the mud. Across the Tonle Sap river, Phnom Penh was celebrating the festivities ...

Cambodia will support the Don Sahong hydroelectric dam planned to be built in south Laos less than two kilometers from the Cambodian border, while civil society groups continue to appeal to regional authorities to halt construction on environmental grounds. According to a post on Prime ...