By Brooke Shull

Brooke Shull is The Asia Foundation’s Environment Program Officer. She can be reached at bshull@asiafound.org.

Only a few hours’ drive from Laos’s capital of Vientiane, Vang Vieng is a small but growing port town, and one of the country’s most popular ecotourism destinations. Here, the Nam Song River is the center of life. People from around the globe travel to Vang Vieng to enjoy kayaking, tubing, fishing, caving, and trekking along the river and its surrounding limestone cliffs. While local tourism and agriculture businesses thrive off the pristine waters of the Nam Song, villagers rely on the river for their main sources of protein: fish and aquatic insects. Local communities’ livelihoods and the success of the ecotourism industry in Vang Vieng are inextricably linked to the river’s health and surrounding ecosystems.
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By Tommy Koh

Tommy Koh is Ambassador-At-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore, and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies and the National Heritage Board. He was one of the three Asian co-chairs for the recently released book, America’s Role in Asia: Asian and American Views. Below is an excerpt from his chapter, which provides recommendations for a new U.S.  administration’s foreign policy towards the Southeast Asia region.

The peoples of Southeast Asia are following the 2008 U.S. presidential elections with great attention and admiration, given the open and transparent primary processes. America’s real and vibrant democracy is reflected in the competing candidates’ travels to every corner of the country to win the hearts and minds of voters. This illustrates that the highest office of the land can neither be secured by wealth nor pedigree and, this year especially, neither race nor gender is an insurmountable obstacle. Consequently, in some parts of the world, including Southeast Asia, anti-Americanism has been balanced by a respect for America’s current exercise of democracy.

Thus, every region of the world wants America’s attention; the only question is whether American attention is positive or negative. Washington’s nature is to focus attention on the largest countries, regions, and economies, which can pose a threat to American interest or to international peace and security. By these standards, Southeast Asia ” a region largely at peace ” does not receive the positive attention it deserves. Read More…

By V. Bruce J. Tolentino and Gretchen Kunze

With its GDP growing at an average of 6-7% annually since 2000, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is a country on the move. Not very fast when compared to its rapidly-burgeoning neighbors China and Vietnam, but fast when compared to its historically languid pace.

In meeting after meeting with senior Government officials and representatives of the international community during a recent visit to Laos, our hosts often stressed that Laos is no longer an isolated, landlocked country; rather, “Laos is a ‘land-linked’ country!” they enthusiastically declared.

Historically, being landlocked has been regarded as a disadvantageous position. Landlocked countries are cut off from sea resources such as fishing, and more importantly, have no access to seaborne trade, which makes up a large percentage of international trade. Thus, coastal regions tend to be wealthier and more heavily populated than inland areas. In the case of Laos, this disadvantage is strikingly apparent, as Laos is the only landlocked country in the whole of Southeast Asia.

Yet the Lao government is determined to transform this traditional limitation by promoting the perception that Laos is a land bridge, providing the most direct overland transport routes between its seaboard neighbors.
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Lao citizens have a limited understanding of laws, citizen rights, the legal system, and the role of lawyers in their country, especially in remote areas and among ethnic populations. With a total of only about 70 laws currently on the books, the Lao government has given increased attention to improving the rule of law.

In response, The Asia Foundation recently launched a new effort to help the Lao Bar Association — a professional organization that represents lawyers throughout Laos — improve its services for poor and rural citizens and educate the public on laws and rights in Laos (click here to read more about this project).
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By Thomas Parks

Thomas Parks is The Asia Foundation’s Regional Director for Conflict and Governance Programs. He is based in Bangkok and can be reached at tparks@asiafound.org. To read more about The Asia Foundation’s Programs addressing violent conflict, click here.

Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand ” For more than 800 km, the muddy brown waters of the Mekong River divide Thailand and Laos. Here at Khong Jiem, the easternmost point of Thailand, the Mekong drifts slowly into Lao territory, leaving Thailand for the last leg of its journey to the South China Sea. In this remote corner of Thailand, the economic and political ties with Bangkok are relatively recent, but growing quickly. By contrast, the links with the Lao across the river are ancient. While the Mekong today divides these two places across an international border, for most of the past 600 years, it was a unifier.
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By Gretchen Kunze

Gretchen Kunze is The Asia Foundation’s Deputy Country Representative in Thailand and Laos. She can be reached at gkunze@asiafound.org.

The annual New York Times’ feature on hot travel destinations named Laos as number one on its list of “Places to Go in 2008.” The spotlight is now on Laos, and a recent spate of articles has been written about Lao tourism, notably Tuesday’s International Herald Tribune article by Seth Mydans and one a few weeks earlier by Denis D. Gray for Associated Press. These and other commentaries lament the cultural changes arising from the huge influx of tourists. What these changes mean for the overall development of Laos, and whether the country is ready for the rapid growth that the tourism industry is bringing, are issues receiving less attention.
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Women make up 25 percent of the National Assembly in Laos, but only two percent of local level government leadership. The Asia Foundation helped put on a workshop for women parliamentarians in an effort to increase women’s representation in public office and to help put women’s priorities on policy agendas. The training covered women’s constitutional rights, public speaking, and presentation skills and participants included women members of the National Assembly, the Lao Women’s Union, and high-ranking government officials. Soon after the workshop, participants put their training to practical use by uniting to advocate for laws that protect the rights of women and children. Their efforts resulted in extending the legal age at which women can retire to 60 years (the same as men), approving a Child Protection Act, and revising the labor laws in favor of workers’ rights.

In recent years, the Lao government has given increased attention to improving the rule of law. Yet the public still has a limited understanding of existing laws, citizen rights, the legal system, and the role of lawyers. This is especially true in remote areas of the country and among ethnic community populations where there is very little awareness about the formal justice system or how it can help people in their daily lives.

In Laos, people tend to consult relatives and friends, rather than lawyers, regarding legal matters. While this may be useful in small civil conflicts, it has not proven effective when confronting larger legal issues, especially those that involve criminal charges. In many such cases, even though there are laws to protect the rights of the accused, violation of rights still occur and many people do not know they have any form of redress.
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By Gretchen Kunze

Gretchen Kunze is The Asia Foundation’s Deputy Country Representative in Thailand and Laos.

A quick look through the Vientiane Times or other local newspapers in Laos reveals help-wanted ads for all sorts of professional positions, from engineers to managers to financial officers. With few exceptions, the ads clearly state they are looking for “Lao nationals only.” Work permit restrictions, the need for Lao language capability, and tremendous bureaucratic hurdles regarding hiring foreigners all come into play, as does the fact that it is substantially cheaper and less time-consuming to hire a Lao citizen than a foreigner with an expatriate salary and benefits.

One interpretation is that this is another sign of Laos’ remarkable economic growth. The economy has been booming at over 7% growth for the past two years, due largely to massive foreign investment in hydro-power and mining. But, in reality, demand for the level of professional employees needed to maintain this economic growth — and to build institutions to support and sustain it — well surpasses the supply. Laos is facing a skilled labor shortage with no remedy in sight.
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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.

“While great advances have been made in reducing poverty in Asia, there remain stubborn pockets of deprivation,” said Dr. Arsenio Balisacan, speaking at a recent economic and reform seminar organized by The Asia Foundation in San Francisco.

Dr. Balisacan is a noted poverty analyst from the Philippines, the current Director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).

The statistics expressed in terms of Asia-wide averages gloss over wide disparities in per-country growth. China, Vietnam, and Thailand show major decreases in poverty between the early 1990s and the early 2000s ” largely explaining the fall in the proportion of people living on US$1 per day or less from as much as 80% to only 20%. However, poor people continue to dominate the populations of Cambodia, Laos, and Timor-Leste.
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