In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

While a lucrative deep-sea fishing industry places Thailand among the world’s leading exporters of sea products, a grim specter of human rights abuse lurks below the surface of an industry whose contribution to the national economy is estimated to exceed $4 billion a year. A combination of factors – including a shortage of labor in this dangerous…

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For much of the past two decades, many Southeast Asians have expressed frustration that U.S. policy treated their region with benign neglect or indifference, and that the United States’ attention was episodic rather than consistent. In 2011, the Obama administration announced that the U.S. needed to make “a strategic pivot” in its foreign policy…

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Internal conflicts are a widespread and enduring problem for Asia – Afghanistan, Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar, among others. Ten of the 18 countries in South and Southeast Asia have protracted internal conflicts, and in a few, there are several. These internal conflicts last a very long time…

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On Earth Day 2010, Asia has much to be thankful for. While the recent global financial crisis hit Asia hard, most of Asia’s governments acted swiftly and decisively and succeeded, against prevailing expectations, to limit the impact of the financial debacle. They had learned the hard way from the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Intertwined with [...]

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The Mekong River, the longest in Southeast Asia, is at its lowest reported water level in 20 years. The river runs through six countries – China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam – but the highest percentage (35 percent) of the river’s overall water flow runs through Laos. The dramatic effects of the low water [...]

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At the 15th ASEAN summit, held this past October, ASEAN inaugurated its Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR).  The announcement was met with criticism from some quarters, but ASEAN called it a “historic milestone” in its 42-year history of community-building in the region. During the summit’s concluding statement, ASEAN said that the AICHR “gives concrete [...]

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On November 15, after the APEC Leaders meeting, President Barack Obama will meet with the leaders of all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the first-ever U.S.-ASEAN summit. For the past 12 years, both the Clinton and Bush administrations resisted calls for a U.S.-ASEAN summit over concern that because Burma [...]

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Thinking about World Water Day this Sunday, March 22nd, and the 2009 World Water Day theme of Transboundary Water, “sharing water, sharing opportunities,” I am reminded of “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost’s 1914 poem in which he asks why two neighbors must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. Today, the unwritten rule – [...]

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There is a phrase I hear over and over as I travel around the Irrawaddy delta in Burma (also known as Myanmar): “We have nothing left.” Six months ago, Cyclone Nargis made landfall in this region and roared across the flat and vulnerable lands of the delta, bringing with it a massive storm surge of [...]

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Rangoon, Burma – One month has passed since Cyclone Nargis hit Rangoon and the Delta region of Burma. Electricity is back on at the house where I am staying in Rangoon, though the phone-line is still down. Monsoon season has begun and it rains heavily almost every day ” dark and angry storms that threaten [...]

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