Social development

Laos will not host a meeting of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Southeast Asia on the sidelines of an ASEAN summit next year, a local official said, citing potential criticism by participants against governments in the region and inadequate resources as among reasons for the ...

The planned upcoming deportation of Montagnard asylum seekers back to Vietnam will include 13 already recognised as refugees in March unless the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) can find a third country to resettle them, the UNHCR and a refugee advocate ...

A progressive budgeting policy used by the Education Ministry has overloaded local administrators with paperwork for which they often lack the expertise, according to a new report, which found the system was less efficient in 2014 than the year before. Released by the NGO Forum, and ...

Millions of dollars of aid money granted to Cambodia by the Global Fund to combat malaria have been left sitting in a bank account for more than a year, official documents seen by the Post show. The money remains untouched because the National Malaria Centre (CNM) ...

Billions of dong have been poured into clean water supply facilities in the central highlands province of Dak Lak, but locals don’t see any clean water pouring out of their faucets. According to the Dak Lak Rural and Agricultura Development Department, the province has 133 concentrated ...

A top negotiator in Myanmar’s peace talks with ethnic rebels has accused neighboring China of derailing a nationwide ceasefire deal last week that would have brought Japan and Western nations in as observers to monitor an end to decades of conflict. Beijing has denied the accusation but ...

The wife of a jailed Polish citizen of Lao heritage has asked Poland’s justice ministry to request the Lao government to transfer her husband from a detention center in the Southwestern Asian nation to one in his European home country. Barbara Paklak-Thammavong told RFA’s Laos Service ...

Twenty-four Montagnards are set to return to Vietnam on 8 October, becoming the first group to volunteer for repatriation since the government last month ordered the asylum seekers to leave of their own volition or be forcibly expelled, officials said. Keep reading ...

A prominent Areng Valley activist joined three other environmentalists in jail on 7 October in Koh Kong after being questioned at the provincial court about alleged “forest crimes”. Ven Vorn, 36, a community representative and commune councillor with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, was arrested at the ...

Outside of Nai Soi village in northern Thailand, more than 14,000 refugees from Kayah State debate elections going on just across the border. While there will be no voting for those in Thailand’s largest refugee camp – most lack ID cards – that doesn’t mean they ...