Despite Tsunami, Japan Resumes Aid to Myanmar

Japan’s plan to resume official development assistance (ODA) to Myanmar, announced this week, is problematic for a country faced with a dauntingly large disaster recovery budget for areas hit by the earthquake and tsunami last year.

‘Slum Cities’ Need Better Planning

Sri Lanka’s capital city Colombo, the vibrant economic and administrative heart of the bustling island nation, is rapidly turning into a city of slums. Home to over 30 percent of the country’s population, one in every two people living in the Greater Colombo Area is a slum dweller.

Tourism Goes Indigenous

As today’s conscientious travellers seek authentic experiences with the people of the lands they visit, tourism can be a vehicle for preserving ancient cultures, while socially and economically empowering marginalised or remote indigenous communities.

Maldivian Women Fight for Rights

Maldivian women, long used to taking a backseat in the Muslim-dominated Indian Ocean country, say they are determined to ensure that they are not deprived of their rights under the new regime of President Mohammed Waheed Hassan.

Afghan Women Victims Not Perpetrators of ‘Moral Crimes’

Mursal, a beautiful 19-year-old girl who has run away from home to escape a mentally ill husband, is just one of many Afghan women and girls who are now considered criminals under the country’s laws on ‘morality.’

Wind Turbines Bring Relief and Resentment to Pakistan

"I still cannot fathom how electricity can be produced by the wind," said a nonplused Mohammad Ahmed, a 55-year-old local baker, as he gazed up at a row of giant wind turbines.

OP-ED: Hope for Iran’s Youth

The vast majority of political power in Iran today lies in the hands of old bearded men in robes and turbans, plus the minor exception of a short cartoonish-looking man with a penchant for provocation and Members Only jackets.

Solar Panels Reflect Bright Future for Rural Papua New Guinea

In Papua New Guinea (PNG), which has no national power grid but large river systems and abundant sunshine, renewable energy has tremendous potential to transform remote rural lives with clean and sustainable electricity.

Landslide Victory Brings Limited Reach

The celebrations started even before the polls opened on Apr. 1. The mood has been festive in Yangon and surrounding districts for the past few days, with jubilant revellers, sporting National League for Democracy (NLD) logos parading on open trucks, motorbikes, rickshaws, chanting party slogans and blasting patriotic songs made especially for the occasion.

Malaysian Socialists on Bumpy Road to Revival

As Prime Minister Najib Razak prepares to dissolve parliament for snap polls, Malaysia’s socialists are seeing an opportunity to make a comeback after nearly five decades in the political wilderness.

Women Pay for Kashmir’s Water Woes

Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day.

Hindu Girls Targeted in Coerced Conversions

Bharti, a 15-year-old Hindu girl living in the Lyari area in Karachi, left home for her sewing class last December, never to return. Three days later, her father Narain Das was told she had converted to Islam.

Rights Group Criticises Afghan ‘Moral Crimes’

A new report from Human Rights Watch says hundreds of women and girls in Afghanistan have been imprisoned for 'moral crimes', including running away from home and sex outside marriage.

Women Lead Poverty Reduction in Bangladesh

Kalpana Rani Pal’s pottery business is modest by any yardstick but it is small enterprises like these that are helping reduce poverty levels in Bangladesh.

Learning Lessons From the Khmer Rouge

For four years, Wan Preung toiled in the fields under the Khmer Rouge, unable to speak his mind. But after the regime fell in 1979, there was still one sensitive subject the teacher could seldom broach with his students: the Khmer Rouge.

Former War Zone Produces Plenty

Most things in Sri Lanka are becoming expensive these days. In early February fuel prices were increased by margins ranging from eight to 49 percent, with the all-important diesel, used widely in commercial transport and power generation, going up by 36 percent. The Sri Lankan rupee that was trading at 107 rupees to the dollar in January surpassed 130 rupees per dollar last week.

Climate Change Threatens the Poor in Cities

India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts.

Development Deficit Compounds Indian Sundarbans Crisis

Sahara Bibi, a 47-year-old poor Muslim woman living on one of the climate- impacted islands of Eastern India’s fragile Sundarbans archipelago in West Bengal state, was forced to pull her two young sons out of school and send one of them to the Southern state of Kerala to earn a decent income.

Malaysia Weighs Minimum Wage Policy

Malaysia plans to introduce a national minimum wage for its workers against stiff opposition from employers and manufacturers who warn that such a policy would shut down nearly 200,000 small and medium enterprise (SME) units.

Myanmar ‘Reforms’ Elude Kachin Refugees

For thousands of ethnic Kachins who fled fighting between government troops and rebels and survived a bitter winter in the refugee camps that dot northern Myanmar (or Burma), another test of survival looms – gale force winds.

Tourism Woes Replace Terrorism in Kashmir

As separatist militancy peters out in Kashmir, the valley is beset by armies of tourists who bring in the dollars but devastate the fragile ecology of ‘Asia’s Switzerland’.