Asia-Pacific Archives

Bangladesh Demands Climate Justice

Mosammet Monwara walks more than three km every alternate day to fetch water for her family of five in a heavy earthen pitcher.

PAKISTAN: Persecution of Ahmadis Spreads

By Zofeen Ebrahim and - -

"Hatred against us has now spread to small towns and villages," Saleemuddin, spokesperson of the persecuted Ahmadiya community in Pakistan, told IPS.

CAMBODIA: Delayed Justice Begins Unconvincingly

By Irwin Loy and - -

Kim Vuthy has walked inside this courtroom on the outskirts of Phnom Penh three times. But it never gets any easier looking at the men she holds responsible for the deaths in her family.

NEPAL: Community Forestry Unfazed by Political Turmoil

By Keya Acharya and - -

Nepal’s joint forest management system has taken such deep roots that the country’s prolonged political instability has had little effect on it.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Himalayan Nations Yet to Break the Ice

By Sudeshna Sarkar and - -

Chungda Sherpa, a former herder from eastern Nepal, has a warning tale ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Durban.

INDIA: Dangers of a Lax Nuclear Strategy

By Malini Shankar and - -

On August 26, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan resigned, taking responsibility for the disastrous meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was caused by the March 2011 undersea earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

PAKISTAN: Beating the Taliban on the Playing Fields

By Ashfaq Yusufzai and - -

An outbreak of sports fever has gripped the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Northern Pakistan, as increasing numbers of civilians and government officials latch on to team sports as their only armour against creeping militancy in the border region.

China Confronts its Own Greece

By Antoaneta Becker and - -

Europe has its Greece moment and China has its Wenzhou crisis. When European leaders were calling on China to step in and provide a lifeline to the eurozone by investing in its bailout programme, voices inside China were saying Beijing should save Wenzhou and forget about Europe.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Himalayan Task Ahead

By Vanya Walker-Leigh

Prime ministers of Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and India gather here on Saturday (Nov. 19) for the 'Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas', aiming to adopt an ambitious ten-year roadmap for regional adaptation strategies.

ASEAN Agrees to Let Myanmar Lead Bloc

By Correspondents and - -

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, have approved Myanmar's request to chair the Southeast Asian regional bloc in 2014, giving the country some long-sought international recognition.

Floods Leave Thai Economy Gasping

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -

No guns are needed in this battle. Only the muscle of Thai soldiers defending a sprawling industrial estate on the eastern end of this city from an advancing enemy - flood waters.

CHINA: Only Business Occupies Shanghai

By Antoaneta Becker and - -

As China's financial centre and a pinnacle of domestic wealth, Shanghai could have been in the forefront of a home-grown movement against income disparity of the like sweeping New York's Wall Street and London's City.

Rizana is a heroine for her elder sister, Rifta, as well others in Shafinagar. Credit: Aditya Alles/IPS

SRI LANKA: Alive or Beheaded this Maid is a Heroine

By IPS Correspondents and - -

Will Rizana Fathima Nafeek return to this poverty-ridden coastal village in Sri Lanka alive and in one piece? Or will the beheading sentence passed on her by a Saudi Arabian court in 2007 be finally carried out?

Singles looking for spouses at a match-making party in Shanghai. Credit: Nicola Davison/IPS

China Will Need Many More Singles Parties

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore and - -

In a country of 180 million single people and a growing gender imbalance, tens of thousands of people across China went looking for love on Singles’ Day Nov. 11. But events on the day may only have helped point to the continuing and growing difficulty of being single.

UNCCD's Dennis Garrity Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Q&A: “Grabbing of Drylands is a Serious Concern”

By Manipadma Jena and - -

Designated Drylands Ambassador, United Nations Convention for Combating Desertification (UNCCD), at its 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) in South Korea in October, Dennis Garrity is mandated to raise awareness of land degradation.

Fishermen's boats on the warlord-infested Mekong River in northern Laos. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

China Steps in to Patrol the Lawless Mekong

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -

China plans to send armed patrol boats down the Mekong River and assert its authority over a corner of Southeast Asia infested by warlords and drug traffickers.

Devastation from the Mar. 11 tsunami swept through Yotukura fishing village. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

JAPAN: Training Volunteers to Deal With Disasters

By Dennis Engbarth and - -

Seven months after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, Japanese citizens and relief organisations are working to learn from the tragedy in order to mitigate the fatal impact of future natural calamities at home and abroad.

Arzu Begum testifies at the climate hearings for women in the deltaic village of Char Nongolia. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

CLIMATE CHANGE: Bangladeshi Women on the Brink

By Naimul Haq

Char Nongolia village is a basket case when it comes to climate change impacts such as increasing salinity, frequent cyclones, tidal surges, erratic rainfall and extended droughts.

Strike Prolonged in Controversial Papuan Mine

By Correspondents and - -

Union workers at Freeport Indonesia's Grasberg copper mine said they could extend their strike by another month, which would make it the longest mining stoppage in the country's history.

ENVIRONMENT: Nepali Women Live With Climate Terror

By Sudeshna Sarkar

Suntali Shrestha wrings her hands in tension and despair as she recounts how she has been spending sleepless nights fearing that the flood alarm in her village would go off while she slept and she would be submerged.

Young girls in the village of Sonu Khan Almani in Pakistan

PAKISTAN: Wanted: A Revolution For Girls

By Zofeen Ebrahim

Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince the men in Malangabad – her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi – to treat women as equals.