Civic Spaces

The authors explore an intriguing initiative to crowdsource the most important current issues on the governance agenda.

With the spread of illiberalism and identity politics, it’s been a rocky decade for democracy in much of the world. A project in Indonesia is working on a playbook to stem the antidemocratic tide.

The South Asia Small Grants Program (SASGP), administered by The Asia Foundation, has opened a call for proposals for Bhutanese organizations. The regional program provides small grants for eligible civil society organizations in five South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. This second round of call for proposals… Read more

In the Philippines, helping improve people’s lives sometimes requires changes to policies. There are areas that directly and tangibly impact people’s lives and which they want to have a say in—like waste management, consumer protection, biotech research or disaster risk management—but that can be daunting for most citizens and many local leaders wh… Read more

The Asia Foundation is announcing an open call for applications for its new Youth Leadership for Democracy (YouthLed)’s 2021 Leadership and Democracy (LEAD) Fellowship. The LEAD Fellowship is the first-of-its-kind program in the Philippines empowering Filipino youth leaders to be champions of democratic values, participatory governance, and civic e… Read more

The Asia Foundation announces a call for proposals for the South Asia Small Grants Program (SASGP). The SASGP will provide small grants to eligible civil society organizations (CSOs) in five South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Designed as a flexible mechanism to respond to existing contexts and emerging opport… Read more

Preventing violent extremism is typically seen as a task for government security agencies, and yet civil society organizations also play a vital role. From community networks operating at the grassroots to policy research institutes, non-governmental groups have unparalleled advantages in reaching marginalized groups and supporting effective, local… Read more

Civil society organizations in Southeast Asia have responded swiftly to the pandemic, in many cases more nimbly than governments. But civil society is also struggling to cope in a time of emergency government powers and shrinking civic spaces.

Across Southeast Asia, civil society organizations (CSOs) are supporting Covid-19 response efforts in a multitude of ways. In some contexts, they are providing healthcare, social protections, and welfare-related services, often focused on those with little access or who need them most. Based on a series of interviews with 47 CSO representatives in… Read more

In Thailand’s far south, where a vast majority of the two million residents identify themselves as Melayu, a group of youth activists collectively known as The Motive use digital content to combat misinformation on Covid-19. After the region experienced a second wave of conflict that claimed more than 7,000 lives in the last 17 years, it more recen… Read more

Young Moves is a Chiang Mai-based civil society organization that came together three years ago as a platform for youth from all four regions of Thailand to engage in socio-political issues impacting their generation. The youth group emphasizes respect and dignity for all people, regardless of their identity. Thaksin Bamrungthai, better known as To… Read more

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics contribute significantly to global environmental degradation. Fortunately, PET plastics can also be recycled, multiple times, to make fabrics, fibers, and other synthetic products. Approximately 10 percent of all plastics imported into Sri Lanka are PET, and many communities continue to dump or burn these r… Read more

When Chinese beauty vlogger Yuya revealed her story of domestic violence to the internet, she brought a ray of light to dark corner of Chinese society. But China his making great strides in combating DV.

The deadline for applications for the South Asia Small Grants Program (SASGP) has been extended from April 15, 2020 to April 29, 2020. All applications must be submitted by 5.00 pm local time on the new closing date. The Asia Foundation announces a call for proposals for the South Asia Small Grants Program (SASGP). The SASGP will provide small gran… Read more

Chinese statistics show that a quarter of that country’s married women have suffered domestic violence from their husbands. Though it’s critical that these women remain employed if they are to escape these abusive relationships, survivors often struggle with work. But China is making encouraging progress with measures to keep women active and safe in the workplace.

The Asia Foundation, with support from the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and in partnership with SafetiPin and the Centre for Social Research (CSR), held a national conference, Safety for She: Building Equitable Urban Spaces. The conference brought together experts and stakeholders and facilitated discussions on how to improve wome… Read more

It’s a 45-minute drive on unpaved roads from Barangay Mabunao to Panabo, a small Philippine city in the southern province of Davao del Norte. The round trip costs “Joy” (not her real name) about US$2.00—25 percent of her daily income—just to get somewhere where she has access to a fast, reliable internet connection. But at that price, she mostly st… Read more

With the ratification of an IMF bailout on May 12, Pakistan has now embarked on a difficult journey towards long-term economic stability. Some principal indicators suggest the extent of the pain: Inflation is expected to run around 18 percent in 2019–20. The Pakistani rupee has fallen significantly against the dollar, eroding national buying power,… Read more

Myanmar’s ruling Union Revolutionary Council, led by General Ne Win, published the country’s first public budget report in the 1963/64 fiscal year, with the title Pyi Thu Thot A Si Yin Khan Sar, or Citizen’s Report. This forward-looking exercise in democratic engagement and government transparency presented a profile of GDP growth, government reven… Read more

Nepal’s constitution mandates that women hold at least 33% of seats in the national parliament and provincial assemblies, and at least 40% in local governments. These provisions, enshrined in 2015, have given a record number of women a place at the table in Nepal’s political sphere. In spite of this, meaningful, widespread participation in major de… Read more

On February 23, with support from Development Initiatives, The Asia Foundation’s Data for Development (D4D) program hosted Nepal’s inaugural Women in Data conference. The conference theme was “where two superpowers meet,” bringing together female speakers, data professionals, and aspiring young women to discuss the achievements of women in data, an… Read more

On January 23, 2019, The Asia Foundation office hosted a roundtable on “Ensuring Justice Delivery for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence and Trafficking” at the International Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The Asia Foundation’s India office convened members of Indian civil society, law practitioners, trafficking and gender experts, as well as represe… Read more

The Philippines has a real estate problem. Half the real property in the country—approximately 12 million parcels of land—has no legal title. Like many countries in Asia, the island nation is experiencing rapid urbanization, and a large proportion of these urban residents in particular lack official titles to the plots of land they live on, which h… Read more

As rural Mongolians continue to move to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, in record numbers, the city has struggled to provide needed services, especially in the rapidly growing ger areas. The Municipality of Ulaanbaatar, under new leadership since 2016, has sought to improve public-service delivery and better target available development funds by increasi… Read more

The year 2007, according to traditional astrology, was the Year of the Golden Pig. It was believed that good fortune would come to families who gave birth during this auspicious time. Regardless of the role that astrology may have played, Mongolia’s annual birth rate grew from 50,000 in 2007 to nearly 90,000 in 2014, and Mongolia today is one of th… Read more

The general elections in Pakistan last month that propelled Imran Khan to the Prime Minister’s seat were momentous in many ways. With troubled relations abroad and fiscal difficulties at home, the electoral stakes were high. Newly liberalized voter registration laws and an enormous youth population promised a surge of first-time voters. The Asia Fo… Read more

The world’s cities are growing at an unprecedented rate. The United Nations projects that 60 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2030 due to accelerating migration and urbanization. In Myanmar, as in other rapidly urbanizing countries, urban growth is placing increasing pressure on municipalities and other governing bodies… Read more

On July 25, I voted for Pakistan. The national elections of 2018, preceded by controversy and enveloped in political heat, were conducted in the true spirit of democracy that Pakistan so deserves. Observers and analysts will have their say, but I want to share my experience of three inspiring aspects of Elections 2018. First, after working with my… Read more

In the course of roughly two decades, the people of Nepal have weathered a prolonged civil war, confirmed a national commitment to democracy, adopted a new constitution creating a federal state, and survived two massive earthquakes that reduced large parts of the country to rubble. Amid this history of national trauma, recovery, and political uphea… Read more

On July 25, roughly 106 million Pakistanis will begin casting their ballots for 272 National Assembly members and 577 Provincial Assembly members to serve for the next five years. The results of past elections in Pakistan have consistently been mired in controversy. Accusations of vote-rigging from losing parties are common, as in 2013, when the Pa… Read more

As Myanmar’s fitful democratic transition moves forward, many observers are torn between early, high hopes for the end of military rule and a growing pessimism about wider democratic, economic, and social reforms. In the international community, much of this pessimism is a result of the dire and well-publicized situation in Rakhine State and the re… Read more

On May 12, China will mark the 10th anniversary of the devastating Wenchuan earthquake that struck Sichuan province, leaving more than 69,000 people dead and over 40 million affected. While the impact of the earthquake lasts today, the one silver lining is that the catastrophe has catalyzed improvements to China’s disaster management architecture…. Read more

In June, the U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report moved Myanmar up to Tier 2 on its watch list, acknowledging “significant efforts” to combat human trafficking and forced labor in the country. For a country undergoing rapid reform and still grappling with a transition to democracy, the news was welcome, but caught some by surprise. E… Read more

On March 3, hundreds of groups from around the world will celebrate Open Data Day to showcase the value of open data for communities and to encourage the adoption of open data policies in government, business, and civil society. For Nepal, which is currently undergoing a process of decentralization to a new federal structure, there are high hopes f… Read more

Availability of subnational budget information strengthens democratic governance and transparency With the support of The Asia Foundation, the Tanintharyi Region government in southwestern Myanmar today launched its inaugural Citizen’s Budget for the 2017/18 fiscal year, disseminating hundreds of physical copies to help citizens better understand t… Read more

It is now apparent that the age of social media has transformed public consciousness of important events. Most recently, “fake news” and other streams of misinformation spread via social media have been blamed for exacerbating a highly polarized political climate in the United States, and further impeding productive civic engagement. This phenomeno… Read more

To increase civic engagement in strengthening government effectiveness in Indonesia, The Asia Foundation held a competition for civic tech apps through the “Innovation and Collaboration for Development” (In.CoDe) program. The competition kicked off by inviting civil society organizations, start-ups, local governments, and universities to propose te… Read more

The data revolution has permeated beyond the closeted realm of computer science into becoming a linchpin of public policy-making. Data in all of its buzzy forms (big data, little data, open data) are transforming the face of public governance into a digital one. With the dawn of the data revolution comes digital innovation. But effective implementa… Read more

Innovation is a tricky word to define. It has a whiff of excitement as well as – increasingly –inevitability, since technology is coloring our work and our lives. Development partners are adapting to explore the enormous potential of information and communication technologies. This, in turn, is introducing new actors, partnerships, approaches – suc… Read more

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have long played a crucial role in development cooperation, both in delivery of services and in policy advocacy. According to the OECD DAC, in 2013, DAC members allocated $19.6 billion in official development assistance (ODA) to NGOs. The majority of this (almost $13 billion) was channeled through NGOs based in… Read more

The Indonesian province of Riau declared a state of emergency last month as haze from agricultural fires across Sumatra continued to envelope the region. The fires are the result of an early dry period, which comes all too quickly after last year’s extended dry season that saw agricultural fires burn over two million hectares of peatland mostly in… Read more

The global youth population has reached a remarkable 1.8 billion out of 7.3 billion, and most of them live in developing countries like Bangladesh. According to the UNFPA’s most recent State of the World Population Report, 30 percent of the 161 million people living in Bangladesh are 10-24 years in age. As Bangladesh aspires to attain middle-income… Read more

Indonesia’s digital era is well underway. Many start-ups have been established and achieved notable success, the number of technopreneurs is growing, and the government has now decided to open the economy to more investment in e-commerce. Add a new idea into the mix. Where some IT initiatives tend to focus on business and the economy, The Asia Foun… Read more

“Nothing About Us Without Us” has become a familiar slogan used by the international disability movement and relies on the principle of full participation for all. However, in Indonesia, where people with disabilities (PWDs) still face enormous barriers…

The last few years have seen some of the most brutal attacks against Pakistan’s religious minority communities, estimated to make up approximately 3-5 percent of the total population of over 190 million.

On Sunday, November 8, more than 30 million voters in Myanmar went to the polls to cast their votes for members of the Union Parliament as well as for the 14 state and region parliaments. These were the first elections in many decades in which an astounding 91 diverse political parties participated. Given that many were voting for the first time, the Union Election Commission, political parties, and hundreds of civil society organizations provided much-needed voter education.

2015 is a year of economic change for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as the region seeks to establish the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by December 31. The AEC will usher in a single economic market for the ASEAN member nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – allowing the free movement of goods, services, skilled labor, and capital. The reorganization of the region’s economy will be a step toward ASEAN’s “Vision 2020,” which calls for a unified partnership that is outward-looking, peaceful, stable, prosperous, and developing in a dynamic way.

In early November, less than one month after Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s inauguration, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, the newly installed Environment and Forestry minister, announced that the government would extend an existing moratorium on the issuance of new permits for logging in primary forests in an effort to halt deforestation. While environmentalists and concerned citizens alike certainly welcomed this news, the road ahead to improving forest and land governance in Indonesia is steep.

In 2014, internet usage in Cambodia grew at a rate of 42.7 percent, according to a report released by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications last year. This sharp growth rate is being driven by an increasingly dominant youth demographic that aspires to connect to each other…

Commentators on citizen-led accountability programs in persistently underdeveloped and conflict-prone states frequently advocate approaches that “work with the grain” of local social norms and institutions. At the same time, it is argued that local ownership…

With the appointment of Mongolia’s new prime minister, Saikhanbileg Chimed, in November, expectations are high for the further development of Mongolia’s mining industry, which accounts for 18.5 percent of the country’s GDP. While large-scale mining operations often make headlines…

Since the collapse of the socialist regime in 1990, Mongolia’s economic development has been dependent on an expanding formal and informal mining sector that for many years had little regard for the environment.

In last week’s In Asia, I examined the growing environmental and social costs that the coal mining industry is having on Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, home to 28 percent of Indonesia’s total coal reserves. Already, 6.6 million hectares have been allocated for mining across the province, and in the provincial capital…

Last week, Indonesians woke up to the news that in the dead of night the parliament voted for a bill that would end direct elections for over 500 local-level political offices (mayors, district and sub-district governors), and replace them with an indirect selection process in regional parliaments. Since then, the country has been engaged by the decision, and civil society groups have readied themselves…

In what is yet another significant twist in this fascinating election year in Indonesia, the country’s national legislature (DPR) will vote today on a hastily cobbled bill that aims to eliminate over 500 direct local elections. Following heralded national elections in April and July and a decade of direct local elections, this bill has surfaced like a sudden malady afflicting Indonesia’s electoral democracy. Here is a brief diagnosis of this disorder as well as a prognosis for recovery.

Indonesians have spoken out about a contentious bill to be voted on today that would eliminate direct elections for local mayors and district heads. Leading the charge against the bill, tabled just a month before President-elect Joko Widodo assumes office…

Last month, the One Foundation, one of China’s most visible charitable organizations, presented a new strategy to government officials and national researchers that marks a major shift in the approach to disaster mitigation in the country.

In Asia editor Alma Freeman recently interviewed co-founder and Director of Programs and Communications at the Greenovation Hub, a grassroots NGO that focuses on environmental protection and innovation in China.

Just weeks after election results declared former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) as Indonesia’s presidential front-runner, the president-elect’s team of volunteers announced that he would be crowdsourcing his cabinet. Through an online survey, anyone can choose…

As The Asia Foundation recently marked its 20th anniversary in Mongolia, Country Representative Meloney Lindberg sat down with Naranjargal Khashkhuu, president and CEO of the Globe International Center…

In this year’s hotly contested presidential elections, Indonesia’s democracy went through what probably has been its hardest test yet. Two hours before the General Elections Commission (KPU) announced the final results on July 22, when Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s victory…

In Asia editor Alma Freeman recently interviewed Dwi Rubiyanti Kholifah, Indonesia country director for the Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN), which focuses on the role of women in peace building and inter-faith cooperation. Kholifah was selected as one of the 10 inaugural 2014 Asia Foundation Development Fellows.

There is much talk these days in Pakistan about democracy. Just over a year since national elections marked the first transition in the country’s history from one democratically elected federal government to another, some are already calling for new elections for reasons ranging from alleged malpractice at the 2013 polls…

Google “newest democracy” and you are likely to find the young island nation of Timor-Leste among the top hits. Do the same for “media censorship,” however, and the top results are of nations not exactly known for promoting democratic values such as Russia and China. However, right now, Timor-Leste’s national parliament…

Public disenchantment with Nepal’s political parties has been on the rise since the end of the decade-long conflict in 2006. Discussions about impunity have increased correspondingly, mirroring the growing frustration with the political process. A newspaper uncovers an instance of high-level corruption…

The Government of Timor-Leste has indicated that it is committed to joining the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by 2015, but as the date for the planned accession draws near, questions regarding the benefits of membership, and the young country’s readiness, remain unanswered.

Clean rivers in Laos are critically important to the well-being of local communities and to the country’s national development. Nearly 80 percent of the population of this landlocked Southeast Asian nation depends on river-fed subsistence agriculture for its survival.

By the end of President Yudhoyono’s term, for the first time, Indonesians will have witnessed their first 10-year stretch of both democracy and stability. While there is no shortage of criticism of what democracy has yet to achieve, the last 10 years have proven a commitment to what the overwhelming majority of citizens…

According to latest Ministry of Civil Affairs estimates, natural disasters in China last year killed 1,851 people, left 433 missing, and affected some 390 million people across the country. Indeed, China is one of the most vulnerable countries to natural disasters – on May 12, 2008, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake hit Wenchuan City…

Every year, a “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence” campaign is held across the globe, including in Mongolia, to increase awareness about this global pandemic. This year in Mongolia, the spotlight was shone on domestic violence…

As civil society in Asia has made significant progress over the past several decades, the need for a forum that brings together the major players to focus on key challenges to inclusive and participatory democracy has become increasingly important.