Southeast Asia Globe

Drugs in Cambodia

Growing up in a rough neighbourhood rife with gambling and prostitution, peer pressure drove 31-year-old Oun* into using drugs while he was a teenager.  Addiction soon followed, leading to him quit school during his third year of junior high. Later, as his strained relations with his ...

Thim Rachna

Winning the battle, losing the war?

Going by the sometimes breathless reports about how well Vietnam has done out of the US-China tariff joust, a reader would be forgiven for thinking that an authoritarian single-party state where farmers make up 40% of the workforce has been transformed into a kind of ...

Simon Roughneen

When the river runs dry

Cambodia’s silent heartbeat is slowing. On the banks of Cambodia’s largest lake, fields that would normally be flooded with rich water lie fallow under the sun. Inches from the stagnant water, painted eyes stare from the prows of garish boats, their pilots sifting through baskets ...

Evie Breese

No justice in Rakhine

Abdullah keeps track of each time he has nearly died. When asked to introduce himself, he begins to list each brush with death with the same practised air of one listing the experiences on their resume. A Rohingya refugee living in Cox’s Bazar for the ...

Robin Spiess

Love in the time of genocide

Three transgender men living in secret under the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime share their stories of love, loss and betrayal WHY WE WROTE THIS: Because Cambodia’s LGBT community has endured through even the harshest moments of history. Looking out of the car window, rumbling down a bumpy dirt ...

Tabitha Payne

Hunting the hunters

On a cliff overlooking the southwest plains of Cambodia, there is a bullet-ridden casino. Built in the 1920s, when Bokor was a hill resort largely reserved for wealthy French colonials, during the 1970s and 1980s it became the front line in the battle between the ...

Cambodia for sale

This week, Cambodia has come together in mourning for the deaths of 28 people trapped in the wreckage of an illegal development in the coastal city in Sihanoukville. The collapse came at the height of more than a decade of unchecked and often unregulated development ...

Cathy Scott-Clark, Adrian Levy, and Peter Harris

Fishing for DNA

Scientists are rapidly developing new DNA-methods to identify what kind of life is present in rivers, lakes and the ocean. Advocates of the method claim that it has the potential to revolutionise the way environmental monitoring is done. Enter the Mekong giant catfish. When scientists and ...

Uffe Wilken

A new method to help track the Mekong’s rare wildlife

Scientists are rapidly developing new DNA-methods to identify what kind of life is present in rivers, lakes and the ocean. Advocates of the method claim that it has the potential to revolutionise the way environmental monitoring is done. Keep reading ...

China and Japan’s power struggle is good news for Southeast Asia

The Japan-China rivalry in Southeast Asia is good for the economic development and strategic autonomy of Southeast Asian states. This is particularly so for the poorer countries of the region that harbour the greatest fears of becoming solely dependent on China. Keep reading ...

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