Over the last two years, the Obama administration has executed what the president has termed the “Pivot to Asia” strategy, whereby the United States’ global military force posture is being reconfigured to focus on the Asia-Pacific region as Washington’s central front.
Movement has been rapid, with (...)
Last year the Association of Southeast Asian Nations celebrated its 43rd anniversary with fanfare, but cracks were visible in the organization.
Thanks to the lopsided development of the Greater Mekong Sub-region, propelled by China with the help of the Asian Development Bank, the area along (...)
It has been reported that just last week China ’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) halted dam construction on the Jinsha River, as the upper reaches of the Yangtze River is called. Ads by Google Vietnam Travel in Style?Local Full Travel Services Agency One Stop For Vietnam Holiday, (...)
Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines are all moving towards Chinese-style internet censorship
Governments across south-east Asia are following China’s authoritarian censorship of the digital world to keep political dissent in check, the Guardian can reveal.
Vietnam, Burma, (...)
From the Himalaya to Male, there are clear signs that climate change is real.
Namgye Chumbi was weeding his potato garden in the village of Phakding in Nepal’s Khumbu region below Mount Everest on the morning of 4 August 1985. Because of the monsoon season, there were not too many trekkers (...)
Review of Bill Emmott, Rivals: How the Power Struggle between China, India and Japan will Shape Our Next Decade, Allen Lane: London 2008, £20, hardback 314 pp, 978 1 846 14009 9.
The mass of recent literature on the ‘rise of Asia’ largely focuses on the implications of this development for the (...)
Asian values apparently don’t protecting individuals from exploitation
Asian governments variously proclaim commitment to Asian values, Confucian, Islamic or Marxist principles or the rule of statute law. Or all of them. But when it comes to human rights, to enforcing laws intended to protect (...)
WASHINGTON - US SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton left for Asia on Sunday for her maiden mission as the chief US diplomat after pledging to strengthen US ties with the region.
High among her priorities are finding ways to tackle the global economic crisis and climate change as well as prevent (...)
The new Asean charter will do little to improve the regional grouping’s human rights reputation as long as Burma continues to dictate the agenda
ONE Caring and Sharing Community”—that is how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), in its newly launched charter, envisions itself some (...)
A detested African satrap and his family take refuge in the east
Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong are becoming homes from home for Robert Mugabe and his family. In Hong Kong the government is ignoring its own laws to accommodate the despised African dictator.
While Zimbabweans, once citizens (...)
The months ahead will hold much peril and uncertainty for members of the press in Southeast Asia. The years 2009 and 2010 will be highly charged, for starters, anticipating national election seasons for most countries in the region. Even without the chaos and violence attendant to electoral (...)
The rhetoric of the Global War on Terror appears to have lost its old magic. In the aftermath of the horrendous Mumbai attacks, it seems there were just as many articles saying this wasn’t Mumbai’s 9/11 as there were efforts to raise the bloody flag of America’s catastrophe over the carnage. The (...)
Asean governments will be urged next month to call for a Commission of Inquiry on Burma by the UN Human Rights Council. But the new Asean Human Rights Body will face a wide range of problems and requests.
As soon as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) completes setting up a (...)
It is ironic that just as the much-heralded Asean Charter received its final approval through ratification by Indonesia, two Asean member states faced off across a disputed patch of land and started shooting at each other. It was an inauspicious start to what the Charter’s preamble refers to as (...)
The securitization of social life is becoming palpably evident in Southeast Asia. The events of 9/11 have ramifications for security-development dynamics of the region. Since then, the idea of “security” seems to have become a master narrative, a dominant discourse—if not, a political-economic (...)
The publicity over ASEAN’s failure of nerve about Burma obscures other troubles with its new charter.
While international organizations and regional blocs like the European Union are trying so hard to stay relevant, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) seems not to be bothering. (...)
Declaration adopted at the Third ASEAN+ Civil Society Conference (ACSC-III) 2-4 November 2007, Singapore. (Final Version).
1. We, about 200 participants from civil society organizations and trade unions across Southeast Asia gathered at the Third ASEAN+ Civil Society Conference (ACSC-III) in (...)
The acclaimed British-Pakistani historian, novelist, political campaigner and commentator Tariq Ali joins us with his analysis of the latest from Pakistan. Days after General Pervez Musharraf’s re-election in a boycotted contest, at least 250 people have been killed in clashes along the Afghan (...)
Hopes for increasing trade across South Asia founder as Pakistan puts Kashmir before cooperation
Our Correspondent,
Although the 14th summit of the eight-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in New Delhi last week raised hopes hope that finally the politics and (...)
All those factors that have traditionally hampered peace between India and Pakistan may be coming together for the sake of a peaceful and prosperous South Asia.
“We have a great desire to live in peace and harmony, like good neighbours. I can never understand why some forces do not want it to (...)
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