Health impact assessment (HIA) is a relatively new concept within the Thai policy-making arena. From a human security perspective, the HIA has the potential to be a practical tool to empower local communities in protecting their health. One important element of the HIA is the process of public participation. While the HIA mechanism requires public participation at various stages of the process, the risk remains that the effect of public participation on the final HIA-outcome is limited.
Read MoreThe development and aid sector has undergone a general professionalization, which lately has paved the way for a number of quality and accountability mechanisms. These are intended to provide evidence of impact and to demonstrate that NGOs support their intended beneficiaries in a justifiable manner. One of the recent initiatives is the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP). It is a self-regulatory NGO-initiative which has a primary focus on certifying member organisations against benchmarked standards for humanitarian action and has lately come to be known as the loudest champion of beneficiary voices.
Read MoreIn the context of a militarized State such as Burma this research sheds light on the effects that military rule has had on reproductive health in ethnic areas such as Chin State. In 1997 the Burmese State ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and has specific obligations in terms of health care and family planning. However until the present time, health care policies and delivery mechanisms are highly centralized and controlled by the military, which has affected reproductive health, with infant mortality rates that are substantially higher than regional and international levels.
Read MoreOver the last decade a growing consensus has emerged to address climate change, and international agreements on the regulation of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses (GHGs), namely the Kyoto Protocol, have come into full effect. Under the Kyoto protocol, developed countries agreed to reduce emissions of GHGs by an average of 5% of 1990 levels by 2012. Three mechanisms were set up, including the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows Annex 1 (developed) countries to source a percentage of their emission reductions within developing countries.
Read MoreHuman security is a relatively new theory in the world of international security; the new people centered approach advocated by the concept has been interpreted into a number of conceptual frameworks aimed at applying the notion to assess projects on the ground. Special economic zones have been utilised by a number of different Asia countries to increase economic growth through providing geographical areas that have different economic laws to other parts of the country they are created in. By bridging the literacy gap that exists between the two notions analysis can be employed to identify the usefulness of human security when the concept is applied to assess a mega-project such as the case study of the special economic zone in Savannakhet Lao PDR.
Read MoreDespite being endowed with huge untapped natural resources the North Eastern region of India for most of its post-independence history has been primarily perceived within security paradigms. This has resulted in major negligence of its development and self-sustainability while its economic potentials have remained unexploited. Consequently, the region is plagued with multiple issues of political instability, poverty, maladministration and is yet to gain freedom from wants, hunger, unemployment and exploitation. Thus, this paper argues for the need of an alternate model of development for the region interlinking purposes of 'security' and 'development'.
Read MoreInfrastructure development is crucial to economic development of developing countries. Due to the financial, technical and management facilities are lacking, many countries have undertaken infrastructure development projects via smart partnerships with the international or private organizations. Such partnership where the private sector engages in public assets is called Public- Private Partnership (PPP). The new civilian government of Myanmar has embarked on a PPP policy to develop local infrastructure and encourage growth. In line with its PPP policy, this is the expansion project of Yangon International Airport (YIA), one of the major transport gateways in Myanmar.
Read MoreBagan is an ancient city which is one of Myamnar's most famous tourism sites. Most of the inhabitants of Bagan rely on tourism-related business and the town is famous for its specialty lacquerware souvenir products. Since 2011 after democratization, international tourist arrivals have increased and along with it, the demand for lacquerware. The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate how tourism development influences lacquerware production, trade and socio-economic conditions of lacquerware entrepreneurs and craftsmen in Bagan before and after 2011 as well as to establish the role of the Lacquerware Technology College in sustainability of the lacquerware industry in Bagan.
Read MoreMyanmar, a country that only officially opened its borders to tourists in 1996, has a new level of visibility amongst international travelers with the recent political transformations and lifting of both U.S. and E.U. sanctions. The government of Myanmar has officially adopted tourism development as one of its economic priorities, recognizing it as one of its biggest potential growth areas in the near term future.
Read MoreInternal displacement issues are gaining heightened importance worldwide. The 2011 global report of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center shows that for 2011 there were approximately 26.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). Myanmar's continued armed conflicts still cause movements of forced migration, which makes this phenomenon a current issue.
Read MoreMyanmar's shift towards a democratic country entails an opening of the country to the rest of the world, and this all has directed attention to policy makers and experts indicating need for educational reforms to move forward human resource development agenda. One of the important sectors to be scrutinized is formal education sector; the government school system. This is because employment prospects for university graduates, comprising 2.7% of total economically active population, are very challenging at present. Within this context, role of non-formal education (NFE) programs which focus more on practical learning than formal education comes to be focused. However, there are limited studies how NFE programs can fill the education-employment gap. Thus, the research explores how NFE programs, particularly not given by government universities, make the connection between educations to employment which formal education fails to achieve.
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Nowadays, good governance has become an important issue to be discussed within the international development framework. Many developing countries try to implement good governance principles through many forms; one of them is to establish ombudsman committees. An ombudsman committee is an institution which functions to monitor public service deliverance from government agencies to the society through the form of external complaint handling system.
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