Social development

Diabetes is harming more people than landmines, a leading expert says. U Tint Swe Latt of the Myanmar Diabetes Association told The Myanmar Times that most amputations of hands and legs resulted from the disease, and not from the landmines that still litter parts of the ...

Fighting is spreading over larger areas of northern Shan State as the Tatmadaw and a newly allied ethnic armed group move in reinforcements, according to the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. Villagers forced to flee the conflict are reported to have scattered across five townships. The current round ...

Road deaths need to be cut by 2000 a year or they will exceed regional targets, a new traffic-safety NGO says. ASEAN has called on member countries to reduce road deaths by half over the next five years, and the Myanmar Organisation for Road Safety, which ...

Civil society organisations have called for more representation around the negotiating table when the government and ethnic armed groups launch the next stage of the peace process in early January. CSOs from across the country meeting in Yangon on 17 December complained that they had been completely ...

People duped into buying government-owned land beside the Yangon-Mandalay Highway on 17 December urged police to take action against those responsible, shortly after the authorities moved in and evicted thousands from the Hlegu site. More than 1600 acres had been subdivided and sold in 2400-square-foot plots since ...

Washington must withhold trade agreements and assistance from Laos until its government can demonstrate concrete progress on human rights and democratic reform in the one party communist country, the head of an advocacy group has recommended to U.S. lawmakers.Mutually beneficial trade arrangements and political exchanges ...

The number of mothers who died in labour has nearly halved over the past four years, down from 182 fatalities in 2011 to 100 this year, the Ministry of Health’s research commission into maternal mortality revealed on 17 December. The dramatically reduced death rate was largely ...

A primary school teacher’s complaint this week that his class numbers nearly 70 students in Oddar Meanchey’s Anlong Veng town has shed light on the broader issue of overcrowding in Cambodia’s rural schools. The Ministry of Education acknowledges a severe shortfall of teachers, and has tried to ...

Despite continuing its positive trend and rise through the ranks, Myanmar remains identified as a country with low human development in the annual United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Report, released on 16 December. The report – titled Work for Human Development ­– ranks Myanmar ...

Nonagenarians and centenarians are to receive their social pensions starting next month, the government says. The Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement will provide the annual K18,000 payment to 7754 elderly men and 15,619 elderly women aged from 90 upward, a total of 23,373 ...