Despite Brunei's restrictive environment for LGBTQIA+ individuals, a new report reveals queer activists are creatively contributing to social change through active engagement in advocacy work, where they find pockets of acceptance and spaces to push for incremental progress.

As queer expression is heavily policed in Malaysia, LGBTQIA+ activists in civil society work learn to carve space and build solidarity in quiet resistance while amplifying voices.

Singapore's LGBTQIA+ activists are putting skills to good use as they navigate a fraught civic space to champion other rights including those of women and migrants.

Japan’s longer sizzling summers pose a deadly risk to the country’s growing elderly population and disproportionately impacts the poor.

Villages in Kashmir that are along the India-Pakistan Line of Control have their fragile peace shattered by the recent violent tit-for-tat between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Deported from the U.S. to a homeland that won’t take them back, Bhutanese refugees now find themselves trapped in a legal and emotional limbo. Once victims of ethnic cleansing, they face a second exile—this time, with no country willing to claim them.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Sri Lanka – particularly those in the garments and apparel sector – are getting increasingly anxious as the U.S. tariff pause nears its end.

India’s new criminal law has been in effect for almost a year now, but the country’s transgender community is finding it hard to feel protected under it.

Yearly candlelight vigils in Hong Kong remembering the Tiananmen victims may have been extinguished. Yet the embers of activism through commemorative events elsewhere in the world are still glowing.

The author delivered this speech in honor of a Chinese dissident and Nobel laureate during the commemoration of the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown at the National Diet Building in Tokyo, Japan, on June 3, 2025.

Queer civil society actors across Southeast Asia persist in quiet resistance in non-queer spaces even as government restrictions and societal stigma seek to dull their glow.

Permanent or not, the sudden disappearance of U.S. aid has nongovernmental organizations in Thailand that cater to some of the most vulnerable populations cutting back on operations – or ceasing them altogether.

India’s ruling party bets on the political goodwill generated by a recently finished major religious festival even as questions about tragedies that occurred during the event remain unanswered.

The Southeast Asian country’s democratic journey since the Reformasi has been fraught with structural contradictions, where human rights are a political commodity. Anwar Ibrahim’s government exemplifies these tensions.

Six months into his presidency, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has expanded military influence across the government, raising deep concerns among rights advocates and civil society actors who survived the Suharto dictatorship.

The 2025 World Press Freedom Index paints a bleak picture of press freedom in the region, with declines in economic scores across most countries and no let-up in media crackdowns under authoritarian and repressive regimes.

Myanmar’s junta and its armed local affiliates are keeping the country’s scam centers in business in the midst of a civil war and growing international concern, say observers.

Saigon falls, the United States withdraws, and the country reunifies. But divisions remain and a peace beyond the end of the conflict still seems a distant goal.

The recent 7.7-magnitude earthquake that ravaged central Myanmar magnifies systemic neglect of a people already reeling from oppressive junta rule.

From silencing dissent within Hong Kong, the Chinese government’s crackdown has now extended beyond its borders – and it has no scruples about targeting those whom fleeing activists left behind, either.