News
Yangon govt to offer low-cost housing to ‘real’ squatters
The Yangon Region government is in the process of arranging low-cost housing for “real squatters” in the commercial capital, Yangon’s security and border affairs minister told the regional legislature on November 16. He was responding to a question from lawmaker U Kyaw Zeya (NLD; Dagon ...
Report: prison reforms must respect human rights
Prison reforms currently being considered in Myanmar fall short of meeting international human rights standards, Amnesty International said on November 10. New draft prison legislation represents a significant improvement on laws currently in effect that are more than a century old, but it still fails to ...
Govt, int'l organisations discuss SDG strategies
The government and international organisations with a presence in Laos have held a pre-consultation on the Sustainable Development Goals in preparation for the 2016 Round Table Implementation Meeting to be held from November 24-25 in Vientiane province. The 2016 Round Table Implementation Meeting SDG Pre-consultation took ...
UN backs local OHCHR office in dispute
The United Nations is standing behind Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights country representative Wan-Hea Lee after a letter signed by Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon accused her of failing to respect Cambodia’s sovereignty. Sokhon had taken umbrage at Lee’s public request for an ...
Minister slams UN rep over alleged ‘prejudice’
Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon slammed UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights country representative Wan-Hea Lee for alleged “prejudice” in a two-page missive released on November 4. The letter was sent to UN Development Project resident representative Claire Van der Vaeren, blasting Wan-Hea ...
Kayin farmers criminalised for fighting land grabs: HRW report
Kayin State villagers are losing their land and are routinely persecuted through threats, arson and arbitrary arrest if they attempt to fight the unlawful seizures, according to a report released by an international rights group on November 3. Around 70 percent of the people in ...
Indigenous lands are even more critical to preserving the Earth than we thought
Nearly one quarter of the carbon stored above ground in tropical forests is currently in the care of indigenous and traditional communities. A new report suggests that keeping those populations on the land and guaranteeing their right to it could be the key to keeping ...
No back-up plan for Karenni refugees in Thai border camp as funds dry up
As the first wave of Myanmar refugees is repatriated from Thai border camps this week, returning to a home some have not seen for decades, others in the camps fear they will soon have no choice but to follow suit. Since the National League for Democracy ...
WJP study: Rule of law improves slightly, still 98th out of 113
Myanmar is failing slightly less egregiously to maintain rule of law this year, according to the World Justice Project’s annual Rule of Law Index, which was released on October 20. The slight bump, from an overall score of 0.42 to 0.43 out of 1, is largely ...
Scoring palm oil buyers on their sustainability commitments
2015 was supposed to be a big year for the palm oil industry — the year it proposed to reach a “tipping point” and begin predominantly producing and trading palm oil that was not responsible for the destruction of forests, abuses of human rights, and ...
