In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

Ninety-two percent of poor Cambodians live in rural areas and depend on rapidly-depleting natural resources such as fish and traditional agricultural products for their livelihoods.  Access to these resources is tenuous, and most rural Cambodians have limited ability to influence local authorities on their rights and face fierce competition over resources from developers and private [...]

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Afghans are set to vote in the country’s second parliamentary elections on September 18, when close to 2,500 candidates will contest the 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of parliament. In Asia speaks with Rand Corporation Senior International Policy Analyst and Truman National Security Project Fellow Olga Oliker about what’s at stake, [...]

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With an average annual growth reaching nearly double digits in the decade leading up to the recent global financial and economic crisis, Cambodia’s economy has performed well. Many national and international economists and organizations, including the World Bank, predict that the country is on its way to a faster recovery than initially expected, and could [...]

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For the past few months, the capital of Timor-Leste, Dili, and indeed many parts of the rest of the tiny island nation, have experienced an increase in a particular kind of traffic. For the second-time, avid mountain bikers took to the streets in preparation for the 500-kilometer “Tour de Timor” mountain biking event from September [...]

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This article, originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, profiles The Asia Foundation’s Senior Advisor for Governance and Law and Stanford law Professor Erik Jensen, who along with his students, launched the Afghan Legal Education Project to write law textbooks for Afghan students. In fall 2007, Afghanistan had a new Constitution and eager students lining [...]

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Despite a growing manufacturing sector, roughly 92 percent of poor Cambodians still live in rural areas and depend on rapidly depleting natural resources like land, fish, forests and clean rivers for their livelihoods. Access to these resources is tenuous, and most rural Cambodians have limited ability to influence local authorities on their rights, and face [...]

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The dust has settled from two general elections in Sri Lanka this year. In the presidential election on January 26, incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) defeated former army commander Sarath Fonseka, who was the common candidate put forward by opposition parties including the United National Party (UNP), Sri Lanka’s [...]

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Wars are difficult to be dispassionate about, but the Afghanistan war is further complicated by questions over human rights and what is the most principled course. At the vanguard of peace-making and nation-building efforts in Afghanistan are women who are often used as a symbol for both sides of the debate: why coalition forces should [...]

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In 2010, an estimated 70 million Indonesians will vote in more than 250 local elections being held across the archipelago. For only the second time in the nation’s democratic history, citizens are now voting on a rolling basis for district-level executives. The importance of local elections is directly linked to decentralized governance, with local governments [...]

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Today is International Literacy Day, an occasion to acknowledge that, despite advances in education worldwide, there are still hundreds of millions of people who do not have the ability to read and write. In fact, Asia is home to 75 percent of the world’s illiterate population. Faced with such a shocking statistic, it is natural [...]

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