In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

With ongoing tensions in Northeast Asia – North Korea threatening war, pervasive struggles over island territory, and disputes over history and trade – there is a temptation to grow impatient with dialogue and diplomacy. But for more than 60 years, economic growth, peace, and stability in this region…

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Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced in late March that the nation was on target to move from the status of a low-income to a lower-middle-income nation by the end of 2013, ranking it the 15th country that obtained high economic growth in the world in the last 10 years.

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Late last month, gunmen opened fire on a mayor of a town campaigning for local elections, killing 12 people including his daughter, in what has been the bloodiest attack ever in the Philippines ahead of midterm elections which are scheduled for May 13. Local officials declared the attack to have been motivated by rido…

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Eastwood City in Metro Manila came alive on May 7 as top bands and artists came together, in front of some 200 persons with disabilities (PWDs) and more than a thousand fans for a free concert to encourage and inspire the audience to go out and vote in the upcoming midterm elections on May 13…

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Just months before Mongolia prepares for its 6th Presidential Elections on June 26, the capital, Ulaanbaatar, hosted thousands of delegates from over 100 countries for the 7th Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies. Among the impressive list of influential guests…

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Against the background of Mongolia’s famous blue sky, around 1,215 delegates from 104 countries gathered in Ulaanbaatar to participate in the 7th Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies (CD) from April 27- 29, 2013, organized under Mongolia’s Presidency of the CD, which started in July 2011.

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Cambodia announced two major bilateral trade agreements last month, with the Philippines and Thailand, that are expected to further expand the country’s rice export sector. Over the last few years, Cambodia has emerged as a major rice exporter in the region, due in large part to the Royal Government of Cambodia’s recent expansion of its agricultural sector.

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The conference in the Asian Approaches to Development Cooperation dialogue series convened in Seoul, South Korea, this month, and brought together development experts and senior government officials to discuss climate change mitigation, green growth, and adapting to and building resilience to natural disasters. This dialogue series, co-organized by The Asia Foundation and the Korea Development Institute (KDI), brings together both “emerging” and “traditional” development actors to discuss international development challenges. This year’s focus on effective cooperation for deterring the impacts of climate change was launched in Seoul, fittingly, as South Korea is playing a leading role in low-carbon development in the Asia-Pacific region.

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People were standing up and sitting down, intense negotiations were underway, funding decisions were being made, and a lot of commotion was coming from a crowd of over 300 policymakers, scientists, and practitioners from over 40 countries. We are gathered in Dhaka, Bangladesh…

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As discussions on the federal budget and sequestration continue here in Washington, D.C., The Asia Foundation’s Washington office sponsored an event
to discuss how various Asian nations are approaching and, in some cases, expanding their development assistance programs.

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