News

Powering a conflict: the Kachin Independence Organisation's hydropower business

For nearly two decades following its 1994 ceasefire, the Kachin Independence Organisation built up a business empire that intertwined formally with the state. The vehicle for many of these businesses is Buga Co Ltd, which the KIO’s economic department registered with the Directorate of Investment and ...

Ye Mon

Mekong Delta needs logistics investment: officials

A trade representative has called for the construction of more deep-water ports in the Mekong River Delta to save money and time for seafood exporters. Nguyễn Hoài Nam, deputy general secretary of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), said the move would allow firms to directly ...

Vietnamese Facebook User Gets Six-Year Prison Term For ‘Negative’ Posts

Vietnamese democracy advocate Huyn Dac Tuy was sentenced on Wednesday by a court in southern Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province to a six-year prison term, followed by three years’ probation, for criticizing the country’s communist government in a series of online posts, according to state media ...

The right to community forest in Tanintharyi Region

When Charcoal burners began casting covetous eyes over the mangrove forest next to coastal Kanyin Chaung village in Tanintharyi Region, its residents joined forces to protect a natural resource that had served their community for generations. The threat emerged in about 2005 and it worried the ...

Kyaw Lin Htoon

In Myanmar, Better Oversight of Forests a Vital Step in Transition to Rule of Law

For the first time, the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (MEITI) has opened the books to share information with the public on revenue Myanmar’s government collects from harvesting timber. Last month, the MEITI released two reports juxtaposing statistics on production and tax payments from government ministries’ ledgers ...

Art Blundell and Khin Saw Htay

UNHCR Statement on Voluntary Repatriation to Myanmar

Through their bilateral Joint Working Group on repatriation, the Government of Myanmar conveyed to the Government of Bangladesh the names of 3,450 Rohingya refugees who have been cleared for return to Rakhine State, Myanmar. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, sees Myanmar’s engagement in this process ...

River of no return: Mekong faces grim future

The Mekong River is again striking record lows, threatening crop production, fish stocks and the livelihoods of 70 million people amid rampant over-development and dire warnings. But this year’s drought, the second in three years, could mark a turning point and a bleak future.Scientists, backed ...

Luke Hunt

Asian elephant footprints serve as safe spaces for frog nurseries

While wandering through northwestern Myanmar in 2016, a group of scientists stumbled on hundreds of huge tracks in the ground. According to a new paper in the journal Mammalia, these footprints, made by Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), have a lasting impact. Even when the giants that made ...

Nanticha Ocharoenchai

UN Warns Mekong River Is A Disaster Hotspot

The Mekong River basin was identified as a major disaster risk hotspot by the United Nations today. Poor people living close to the river suffer high exposure to flood and drought, according to a report released today. A UN official also called for the nations in ...

Information access law to be finalised next month

The Ministry of Information on Tuesday concluded the final revision by key ministries of the draft Law on Access to Information, without making any major amendments. It will be submitted to the Council of Ministers to be rubber-stamped by the end of September or beginning ...

Voun Dara

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