Social development

Open data access and sharing in the Mekong is spreading. Open data can increase public participation, aid greater transparency in government, and improve resource governance, city planning or public health monitoring. A number of initiatives, both private sector and civil society, are emerging.  However, a ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) signed an agreement on 13 November for a $10 million grant as additional financing for a project that will enhance Lao PDR’s sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) capacity, and improve ...

Medical researchers are inching their way across the fringes of five Southeast Asian countries to test a triple combination therapy of antimalarial drugs. Results from the trial, being conducted in rural corners of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, are due by mid-2018, according to ...

Arabica could hold the key to escaping poverty for farmers in Vietnam’s province Quang Tri, but is it a sustainable option?[] The Mekong Institute (MI), an intergovernmental organization that supports sustainable economic and social development in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, came up with an initiative to ...

Cambodia has been accused of ‘killing off democracy’ after the country’s supreme court dissolved the opposition party and outlawed over 100 politicians ahead of a general election next year. Thursday’s ruling to disband the Cambodia National Rescue Party, in a Southeast Asian country visited by about 159,000 ...

Fake pharmaceuticals are continuing to flood into clinics and hospitals across Asia despite crackdowns by global counterfeiting hubs China and India, with suppliers simply crossing the border to less-regulated Mekong countries. The issue comes to light as global leaders descend on Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific ...

[] Sustainable development of the Mekong basin is too important to be persistently ignored. Approximately 284 million people, including around 400 ethno-linguistic groupings, live on the Mekong River. A majority of Mekong communities are considered “primary producers,” as they rely on the river’s ecosystems for their survival through ...

Climate change is already having an impact on our health, by exposing people to dangerous heat waves and more extreme weather, according to a new study. [] The report, called The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, is meant to track progress on health and climate change ...

In what scientists call a “sinister development,” a malaria parasite resistant to a widely used drug combination is on the march in Southeast Asia. It has rapidly made its way in an arc from western Cambodia, through northeastern Thailand, to southern Laos; now it has ...

Businesses in Southeast Asia are increasingly counting the cost of land grabs, more than half of which result in delayed projects and nearly three-quarters of which lead to lawsuits, according to a wide-ranging research report. Out of a sample of 51 major land disputes surveyed across ...