The State Inspection and Anti-Corruption Authority has met with United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vientiane to share knowledge and experiences on upgrading complaint handling systems.The two-day workshop on complaints systems which concluded on Friday aimed to provide concrete and practical guidelines ...

The Chinese dams are blamed for turning gold dreams of Mekong panners into dust, especially Thailand‘s gold panners. Vijitra Duangdee, writing in South China Morning Post (SCMP) said that not only gold is disappearing but, the diets, livelihoods and environment of 60 million people have been jeopardised by the dams, and ...

Vietnam and three Mekong neighbors will join hands to assess plastic waste leakage into the river system in a bid to fight plastic pollution in the region. Fifty government officials and university researchers from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam gathered to discuss assessment methodologies to study ...

Major dam construction projects have become a favourite pastime of some autocratic governments, with China leading the way. But, far from protecting against water shortages, as supporters promise, large dams are contributing to river depletion and severely exacerbating parched conditions. Nowhere is this more apparent ...

Ministerial delegates from the Mekong River Commission (MRC) Council have now approved a list of strategic documents, charting a new course for it and strengthening its efforts to balance environmental protection and economic development in the Mekong Basin. The MRC Council represents the highest level of ...

It’s home to spectacular beauty, abundant natural resources, and more than 300 million people spread across Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, and China. Yet the Greater Mekong has been gripped by conflict and political crises, creating in many places conditions ripe for illegal forest ...

Myanmar’s ongoing crisis was raised as a possible hindrance to regional cooperation to save the Mekong River, as other countries along the important waterway pledged on Wednesday to strengthen collaboration in efforts to conserve the water resource. At the quadrennial Mekong River Commission (MRC) Summit in ...

On October 29, Laos unveiled a new dam in the country’s north. The 1.3-gigawatt Xayaburi dam sits on the Mekong River, which flows the length of the country. Laos plans to build nearly a hundred like it by 2020—many with direct funding and support from ...

Mekong Institute (MI) is opening application for the Mekong Institute Young Scholars (MIYS) Program which aims to develop the human resource capacity of public institutions involved in the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) development and cooperation initiative by providing a structured learning opportunity and hands-on experience to ...

Sixty-six fortunate folk have been located alive as the Lao government task force headed by the Deputy PM reported 34 confirmed dead, 31 missing and another six post-flood disaster-related fatalities in Attapeu in final figures cited by to the nation’s news media Thursday.The search for the remains of victims from the ...

Originating in the Tibetan highlands and running through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Vietnam, the Mekong and its tributaries provide water, food and income for 60 million people. The longest river in Southeast Asia is home to the world’s largest inland fishery. It ...

The Mekong River, a critical waterway for six countries in Southeast Asia, is registering critically low water levels this summer. The Mekong River Commission (MRC), which monitors Southeast Asia’s longest river, reported in mid-July that water levels over the previous month had fallen to “among the lowest ...

Modern China seems to have learned the ancient master’s lesson well. It has unleashed water wars on Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. Even as China’s neighbors deal with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, they are experiencing their worst drought in living memory. The mighty Mekong ...

State land leases and concessions in Laos are an economic arrangement in which the Lao Government rents state land at a yearly fee to both domestic and foreign investors for a wide range of economic activities including, but not limited to, agricultural and tree plantations, ...

Recent weeks have seen new developments in the ongoing tension over the Mekong river and its waters, as the river basin faces ecological crises and its waters play an ever-larger role in geopolitics. Thailand has announced that it is reconsidering its decision to purchase power from the planned Sanakham ...

The young people sitting together in a classroom at Chiang Mai University came from countries across the region, yet they do not only identify as Cambodian, Lao, Myanmar, Thai or Vietnamese. Keep reading ...

Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Working Group on Health Cooperation will convene its first meeting in Luang Prabang, Lao on December 13-14.For more information, please visit here ...

Visa applications to Thailand from Laos via Vientiane are set to get a shakeup with the introduction of an online appointment system, Thailand’s Embassy has confirmed.Long queues into the Thai consulate in Vientiane are set to become a thing of the past, with all appointments to ...

Laos joined other countries and development partners at the Sector Ministers’ Meeting (SMM) which was convened by the Sanitation and Water for All partnership in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 4-5. Topics at the meeting centred on supporting the achievement of the water, sanitation and ...

More than 100 people who will lose land and other property when the planned expressway is built through Vientiane did not declare their intention to accept the compensation offered by the deadline of January 30.The 15.2 km expressway will link the Lao International Trade Exhibition ...