People and government

Domestic violence is one of the issues that might be brought up now that the number of female representatives in Mandalay Region Hluttaw has risen from one to four. The election of three new female members in last week’s election – all members of the National ...

Draft changes to a law outlawing prostitution have been sent back to committee after an upper house MP objected and argued that the law should be amended to protect, rather than punish, sex workers. Yangon Region parliamentarian U Phone Myint Aung urged MPs to look past ...

Myanmar’s political parties will meet on 21 November to select 16 representatives to take the lead on the peace process, but it remains unclear how they will be chosen. The 16 will sit on the 48-member Union Political Dialogue Joint Committee, which is drafting the framework ...

The 10th Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party – the country’s top political congress is expected to convene in January next year to elect a new Party leadership, discuss and adopt national development roadmaps for the next five years. The Central Committee of the Party’s ...

President U Thein Sein appears to have delayed indefinitely a meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to discuss the transfer of power to a new government following her party’s landslide election victory. A representative of the president says talks with the National League for Democracy ...

Internally displaced persons living in camps on the outskirts of Sittwe have expressed hope the National League for Democracy’s election landslide will pave the way to ensuring their human rights and ending discrimination against them, saying little has improved in the three years since the ...

President U Thein Sein’s outgoing government has submitted a supplementary budget request to parliament of K2.464 trillion (US$1.92 billion) with the defence ministry in line to receive the largest allocation, while health and education spending remain close to the bottom of the list. If approved by ...

Within seven days of being treated at Binh Chanh District Hospital’s paediatrics ward, a 13-year boy diagnosed with dengue fever was able to return home, fully recovered, a testament to the hospital’s improved capacity to treat the disease. Dr To Thi Kim Phung, the ward’s head, ...

The UN refugee agency criticised Thailand on 17 November for deporting two refugees who were about to be resettled in a third country. Rights groups identified the two as Chinese pro-democracy activists, although the Bangkok office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees did not give their ...

The Cambodian government’s budget transparency score has fallen to its lowest measure on record, according to a recent survey, but officials remain optimistic that the score will improve in the future. Cambodia’s score of eight out of 100 in 2015’s Open Budget Survey put it near ...