ASEAN

“Mountainland” is an ongoing long-term project by the photographer Sascha Richter that surveys the lives and societies of Zomia. The pictures presented here were taken as first part of the project in October 2016 in the Northwest of Vietnam. More parts of the series can be found here. [gallery]

President Duterte is the most controversial figure in the Philippines today, and arguably in the ASEAN region. He is now President of the Philippines, which chairs ASEAN in 2017. What is in store for the Philippines and for the chairmanship of ASEAN? 

Thida Khus is the Executive Director of SILAKA, a Cambodian NGO that has been working since 1997 to increase the participation of women in Cambodia. Thida will be speaking at the Heinrich Böll Foundation about the situation of women in Southeast Asia.

Migrant workers in the Asean Region live and work under inhumane conditions. To improve this situation policies, the migration industry and the accountability of employers must all get a lot more attention.

In times of increased ASEAN economic integration the official rhetoric around migration is one of free labour markets, opportunities and exchange. However, there are indications that ASEAN's migration management is in fact a "politics of return".

The tension between the imperatives of “market sovereignty” and the entrenched principle of “state sovereignty” of authoritarian oligarchies will define the open-ended tendencies and outcomes of the ongoing regionalisation process in Southeast Asia.

Although ASEAN’s efforts to balance economic growth and environmental sustainability are growing, they are often overshadowed by the group’s economic integration agenda.

Some countries, as Vietnam, fear it, others, like Thailand, have high hopes - what can be expected of ASEAN's neo-liberal project? About its future perspectives and an alternative vision.

Southeast Asian cities will play a critical role in the unfolding of the ASEAN Economic Community, which is to be launched at the end of 2015. A discussion of the inter-linkages among economic growth, urbanisation, consumption, and the environment.