In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

The horrific collapse three weeks ago of an eight-story garment factory building in Savar, just outside of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, took the lives of more than 1,100 people, and was followed just last week by a deadly fire in another garment factory that left at least eight dead. The tragedies have left a nation in mourning, shining a spotlight on the lack of safety for garment sector workers in Bangladesh. These incidents have drawn international attention on the urgent need for better working conditions for workers, starting with safer, more secure buildings.

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Last Wednesday night, in a ballroom packed with a who’s who of west coast movers and shakers at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Pacific Council on International Policy (PCIP) presented its inaugural Warren Christopher Public Service Award to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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When we hear about the current slow pace of negotiations between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, we can lose sight of the many concrete achievements made over the years. As peacemakers on both sides of the negotiating table try to learn lessons from past peace efforts…

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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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As Mongolia makes final preparations to host the 7th Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies from April 27-29, 2013, an air of excitement and buzz is palpable here in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Among the hundreds of high-level delegates from the government…

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Last week, the Asian Development Bank released its annual “Asian Development Outlook” report for 2013, with Asia’s success story of unprecedented growth in the last decades forecast to grow by 6.6 percent in 2013 and 6.7 percent in 2014.

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