6 FEBRUARY 2024 | Below is part of Reporting ASEAN’s February newsletter. Sign up here! Myanmar and the occupied Palestinian territory, which Gaza is part of, stand close to each other at the top of the lists of crises in 2024. Myanmar, which has just marked the third anniversary of the 1 February 2021 coup, is first in the list of 50 most violent countries in the ACLED Conflict Index (with “extreme, high, or turbulent levels of conflict”), shown in the screenshot below. Palestine is third, after Syria. In another crisis list, the 2024 Emergency Watchlist of the International Refugee Committe ..read more

5 FEBRUARY 2024 | REPORTING ASEAN ICJ provisional measures for Myanmar and Israel  The post A Look at the ICJ’s Orders on Myanmar and Israel appeared first on Reporting ASEAN - Voices and views from within Southeast Asia ..read more

31 JANUARY 2024 | REPORTING ASEAN Myanmar is entering its fourth year since the military coup of 1 February 2021. Its multiple crises continue, a mix of economic difficulties and a humanitarian catastrophe at a time when armed conflict and anti-junta resistance has now spread to most of its regions.  Many see the best chance thus far of a turning point in the battlefield in the large-scale Operation 1027 offensive that the Brotherhood Alliance launched in northern Myanmar in October 2023. At the same time, the external environment around Myanmar has shifted as well in the last f ..read more

MINAMIN, Indonesia This report is supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. As dusk settles on this sleepy coastal village in eastern Indonesia, Kristina Hoata and her husband set out for Kao Bay on a 150-horsepower fishing boat equipped with a lift net, a bamboo platform called bagan. The couple often sleeps on this boat, braving the cold wind at sea with down jackets. Rice, smoked fish, and a steady flow of black coffee keep them company. Upon reaching the fishing grounds more than three kilometres off the coast, they lower the net – part o ..read more

17 JANUARY 2024 This was originally published by the Probe Media Foundation Inc here. Healthcare for cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes – called non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – requires a change-up from treating disease to a more proactive prevention approach to health, and the media are part of communicating this shift. That role is what a group of 17 journalists from Cambodia, China, Fiji, and the Philippines explored during the ‘Unpacking NCDs’ media workshop, held on Dec 14-15, 2023 in the Philippines. This workshop was the first activity in the C ..read more

JAKARTA | 26 December 2023 “I bring a very big sack of delicious wheat for all of you,” Buto Trigo, a monster with a scary set of three eyes, told her audience of young people at an open-air theatre performance in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. “It’s good to fry or steam. Try it! Your homemade cooking will look beautiful,” she said, likening its beauty to that of the sinister queen she is allied to.  In a booming voice and aggressive tone, Buto Trigo, which translates into ‘wheat monster’ in Javanese, told the crowd: “Eat it for free! I bring this from a faraway land. Take as much as you can ..read more

TAKEO, Cambodia | 20 NOVEMBER 2023 “As long as the sun is up, there is always power to irrigate the curly wrap bok choy,” said Duk Da, a farmer who has been using a solar-powered, portable water pump to irrigate her rice fields and vegetable plots in Trapeangchok village here in Takeo province, some 100 kilometres south of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. “I heard of solar being used in the home, for instance to light up the house, but not for pumping water, so I was intrigued. I wanted to try,” said another small-scale woman farmer, Mang Oun, who also grows curly wrap bok choy and ot ..read more

The post Watch! Webinar: The Climate Story: Connecting the Dots appeared first on Reporting ASEAN - Voices and views from within Southeast Asia ..read more

BANGKOK | 13 November 2023 Welcome to the podcast of Reporting ASEAN, a space for talking about things that are truly Southeast Asian. Today’s conversation, though, is about an issue that is both local and global – the climate crisis – and how the media and journalists report on it. The takeoff point for my conversation with Kunda Dixit, publisher of ‘Nepali Times’, is the publication of the third edition of his book ‘Dateline Earth: Journalism As If the Planet Mattered’ (in our e-Library). The book first came out in 1997, when climate change and global warming were thought of as top ..read more

Talking about Southeast Asia’s haze means talking about its peatlands, most of which are in Indonesia.  Most of the fires that send clouds of polluted air over swathes of Indonesia – and at times over neighbouring nations too – occur in Kalimantan and Sumatra. Many of these fires rage across peatlands, or wetland ecosystems that are often cleared for plantations. Degraded peatlands often have declining water levels or are dried out, making them susceptible to fires.  These fires have been a recurring challenge over nearly three decades, typically occurring during the dry se ..read more