Radio Free Asia

The four member countries of the Mekong River Commission today confronted predictions of social and environmental disaster if damming and other development projects in the region are allowed to proceed as planned. The warnings, contained in a 3,600-page report prepared by the MRC Council, point ...

Myanmar’s agreement to receive a delegation from the United Nations Security Council is a positive step towards improving relations with the international community, which has been highly critical of the Southeast Asian nation for months over its handling of the Rohingya crisis, former politicians and ...

Owners of garment factories and other businesses in Laos are rejecting a proposal to raise the minimum wage by as much as one-third, saying the increase in expenses would force them to shut down operations, despite reports of workers seeking opportunities elsewhere due to low ...

An action plan agreed by the leaders of China and five Southeast Asian neighbors to step up industrialization and urbanization in their common Mekong River region has sharpened longstanding concerns about the environmental damage from Chinese dam-building on the key water source.Keep reading ...

Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, a lake known as the country’s “beating heart,” faces a more rapid decline than previously estimated, according to a new study. Experts say that urgent countermeasures are needed to save Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, which has served Cambodia for millennia. Millions ...

Myanmar’s Labor Ministry is seeking labor migration agreements with the governments of other Southeast Asian countries and territories to send women there to work legally as maids, a government labor official said Monday.Keep reading ...

More than 4,400 Lao families are being forced to relocate to make way for the U.S. $6 billion Lao-Chinese high-speed railway whose construction began nearly a year ago as part of a longer rail project that will link China to mainland Southeast Asia, a public ...

Hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of muddy water have flooded eight villages in central Laos’ Xaysomboun province after the reservoir of a dam upstream burst its banks last week following heavy rain, damaging infrastructure, farmlands, and water supplies. Keep reading ...

A break in a critical waterway shut down a hydro-electric dam in southern Laos and raised questions about the quality of construction at the facility that sends most of the power it generates to Vietnam. While officials said the Dec. 16 break in the Xekaman ...

Laos’ representatives attending a meeting of civil society organizations that is held each year during the ASEAN summit said little about human rights issues inside their own authoritarian country because they were selected by the government in Vientiane, sources tell RFA. “Most Lao representatives are selected ...