Asia Democracy Chronicles

In disaster-prone South Asia, a mental-health crisis is building up as people try to cope with the worsening impacts of climate change.

Rights advocates say that nickel-mining activities in the Indonesian island of Halmahera pose a threat to one of the country’s last nomadic hunter-and-gatherer tribes.

In the Philippines, red-tagging of activists and non-profits has escalated to terrorist-tagging, with authorities charging several groups and individuals under the country’s anti-terrorism legislation.

Rights advocates say that Pakistan’s frequent state-instigated Internet shutdowns and slowdowns are nothing less than rights violations.

Bangladesh’s export to India of a fish beloved by Bengalis has become the unlikely barometer of the state of relations between the two nations, but ecology experts want the focus to shift to bilateral cooperation to protect it.

Beijing has continued its relentless crackdown on human rights lawyers like Yu Wensheng, sending a message to present and future rights defenders that the cost of advocating for justice will be their freedom – and their families' future.

A Pashtun civil rights group successfully holds a massive jirga to tackle the community’s problems that range from land grabs to targeted killings. But few believe any of the demands it raised would ever be implemented.

Elections are supposed to offer opportunities for change, but there seems to be little chance of that happening in the 2025 Philippine general poll as political clans tighten their grip on power.

The death penalty is already an abhorrent concept for rights advocates, but they say that they find it even more upsetting to think about in countries like Vietnam, where wrongful convictions are believed to be rampant.

South Asian youths step up in the fight for democracy as opposition parties and civil society flounder under clampdowns across the region.

For decades, India has been the go-to destination of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal seeking treatment for serious medical conditions. But new border rules have now cut their access to Indian health facilities.

Dissenters who are already finding it hard to push back under the Widodo administration may not find critiquing state policies and actions any easier once Prabowo Subianto is sworn in as Indonesia’s President.

Despite suspicions of dirty tactics by the central government, voters eager for a chance to finally be heard went to the polling booths in droves during Kashmir’s recent legislative assembly elections.

A super typhoon has killed at least 300 people in Myanmar and rendered hundreds of thousands more without food and shelter. Yet the country’s junta seems more interested in flattening villages through airstrikes than helping flood and landslide victims.

A new law on defamation in Pakistan’s most populous province has journalists and rights advocates seeing yet another move by the state to control freedom of expression and the press.

The Wall Street Journal’s dismissal of a Hong Kong journalist for heading a journalists’ union may be setting a dangerous precedent that could lead other private firms and organizations to disregard rights in order to remain in the state’s favor.

Rights advocates say the international community, including the United Nations, is not doing enough to limit – if not stop – the moves of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to run roughshod on the rights of the country’s people, especially those of women and girls.

Bangladesh’s hijras have long realized that their being recognized legally as the ‘third gender’ does not automatically come with societal acceptance.

Myanmar’s raging civil war is no longer confined to the rural areas, and is now forcing even city dwellers to seek refuge elsewhere.

Mongolians now seem to be open to having women leaders participate in sacred rituals that used to be reserved for men only, but not enough women are being elected into office.