By Dr. Ann Hudock

Dr. Hudock is The Asia Foundation’s Deputy Country Representative in Vietnam.

In Malaysia, rural coffee shops offer Vietnamese brides alongside cups of coffee. In Singapore, a trade show displays a group of eligible young Vietnamese girls behind glass. In Taiwan, three Vietnamese women are put up for auction on e-Bay. In South Korea, five-day marriage tours to Vietnam allow men to choose wives from a line-up of Vietnamese women paraded at a karaoke bar.

And in Vietnam, one of the source countries for this relatively new but growing export, young women’s lives are shattered when these arranged marriages result in trafficking.
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Many Cambodians are locked into a cycle of poverty owing to poor natural resource management and a lack of effective policy and interaction between civil society organizations and commune officials. On Monday, The Asia Foundation launched Civil Society and Pro-poor Markets (CSPPM), a two-year, US$7.5 million program, which aims to foster greater participation by civil society groups in local policy and budget decisions, especially as they effect natural resource management. This program will help to ensure that local communities are the chief beneficiaries of local resources, and that those resources are managed sustainably. The program will be implemented in 13 provinces, mainly in the northeast and south of Cambodia where natural resources are at greatest threat of depletion.
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By Véronique Salze-Lozac’h

Véronique Salze-Lozac’h is based in Cambodia as The Asia Foundation’s Regional Director for Economic Programs.

Cambodia’s growing garment sector has defied expectations in the two years since the end of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA), a decade-old international quota system for textiles and apparel.  Last year alone, the garment industry experienced 20% growth. This impressive resilience in a restive global market augurs well for the short term.  But in Cambodia—where apparel, the country’s major industry, accounts for about 80% of all exports—past successes are entwined with present challenges that the garment sector can ill afford to ignore. 
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With increasing attention on critical global environmental concerns, improved coordination and dialogue between key stakeholders and decision makers will be essential in international efforts to safeguard natural resources. Recognizing the complex economic, social, and political challenges facing environmental professionals, The Asia Foundation has awarded two fellowships and a travel grant to three Southeast Asian environmental professionals to attend the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program (ELP), a three-week summer certificate course in Sustainable Environmental Management conducted by the Center for Sustainable Resource Development of the University of California, Berkeley.
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By Roderick Brazier

Roderick Brazier is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Cambodia.

Bokor Mountain is just 23 miles from the sleepy Cambodian riverside town of Kampot, yet the journey to the 1,000m peak takes more than two and a half hours. The steep winding road was built by French engineers in the 1920s and not an inch of it has seen a road maintenance crew since. The journey to reach the broad, boggy plateau at Bokor’s summit is a bone-jangling, exhausting journey.
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By William Foerderer Infante

William Foerderer Infante is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Mongolia.

Citizens across Mongolia are expressing increasing concern about water quality and water quantity accessible to them. Herding has been a Mongolian cultural and economic tradition for centuries, if not millennia, and many herders are community advocates. They commonly emphasize the need for conservation and responsible use of resources. Paradoxically, these herder-conservationists may exacerbate water quality and quantity concerns.
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By Thomas Parks

Thomas Parks is The Asia Foundation’s Assistant Director for Governance, Law, and Civil Society programs.

The last two weeks have not gone well for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. On May 30, the Constitutional Tribunal disbanded Thai Rak Thai (TRT), the political party that Thaksin established and rode to power on a wave of support from rural and working class Thai voters. The verdict also banned Thaksin and 110 other party officials - a significant portion of former ministers and MPs – from politics for five years. On June 11, the Assets Examination Committee, a special committee set up by the military appointed government to investigate corruption charges against the former Prime Minister and other TRT politicians, moved to freeze Mr. Thaksin’s assets in Thailand. Thaksin remains outside of Thailand, and with widespread speculation that he would be arrested soon after his return he is likely to remain in London for the time being.
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As one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, last year China had more than 400 million people affected and thousands killed by natural disasters. Annual economic losses account for 1-2% percent of GDP. While disaster management systems are well advanced in terms of physical structure and government processes, involvement of the private sector and non-governmental organizations has been limited.
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By V. Bruce J. Tolentino

Dr. Bruce Tolentino is the Director for Economic Reform and Development Programs at The Asia Foundation.

Economic policy reform is inherently political. Economic policies are codified into public laws, regulations, ordinances and other legal instruments that establish the “rules of the game” and allocate access and assets among various members of the body politic. Changes in economic policy affect the status or welfare of communities in varying ways, often evoking resistance from those whose welfare or status may be diminished by the reforms.

Economic policy reforms are often initiated as research activities, where technocrats – many of whom are trained economists, gather data, analyze the costs and benefits of current policies, and produce recommendations for policy reforms. However, in most of developing Asia, while economists perform policy analyses, policy makers are often politicians or civil servants – rare among who are trained in economics – and subject to the competing claims of policy stakeholders as well as the disciplines of public service. These powerful forces explain the large and persistent gaps found between the recommendations of professional economists and the policies actually enacted by policymakers.
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Although much of the physical damage from the tsunami has been repaired, thousands of Thais still face debilitating economic, legal, and psychological hurdles. Since February 2006, The Asia Foundation’s Tsunami Rights and Legal Aid Referral Center (T-LAC) program, with support from The World Bank and the Japan Social Development Fund, has provided free legal counseling and services throughout affected provinces in Thailand. Through its extensive outreach efforts, door-to-door canvassing is conducted to identify the needs of individual survivors as well as community groups.

In Ranong province, located along the Andaman Sea, the Foundation’s T-LAC team learned that hundreds of children and adults born there were not considered Thai citizens because they are not registered with Thai authorities.
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