After being let go from his part-time job as a waiter last year during the pandemic, Danny Goh hit rock bottom.For eight months, he struggled to find work to support his wife and four young children.
This past year COVID-19 has placed Southeast Asia on the brink of a socio-economic crisis, with 218 million informal workers’ livelihoods at risk and as many as 38 million people pushed into poverty. The crisis, coupled with typhoons that devastated countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, risks rolling back a generation of progress in the fight against hunger. More than 64 million people in Southeast Asia were undernourished in 2019.
One of the 17 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include Zero Hunger, which is Goal 2 after Goal 1: No Poverty. The SDGs, also known as Global Goals were adopted in 2015 as a call to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.Unfortunately, the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030.
Child wasting is among the most prevalent forms of undernutrition globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined wasting as a low weight-for-height, or thinness due to a severe process of weight loss, often associated with insufficient food intake (nutrient and energy density), and disease.
While a recent report by two civil society groups in Cambodia outlining predatory practices by local microfinance institutions (MFIs) may not paint the clearest picture of the sector, there is no denying that there are murky waters ahead.The report by the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and local NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) documented numerous cases of coerced land sales, child labour, debt-driven migration, food insecurity and other human
The word “migration” conjures images of war, natural disaster, and severe economic distress. All are important reasons why people seek refuge far from home. But the single most powerful driver of migration may well be food – or, rather, the lack of it.As of 2017, some 821 million people worldwide – about one in every nine – faced chronic food deprivation.
It seems like there is either too much or too little water in the Southeast Asian region. The last three months have seen heavy seasonal rain and flooding across Myanmar, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines, exacerbated by tropical storms Son-Tinh, Ampil, Joe, and, more recently, super typhoon Mangkhut. This has resulted in deadly consequences, including triggering dam failures in Lao PDR’s Champasak and Myanmar’s Swar creek.
As it barrelled down its path, the super typhoon Mangkhut left a trail of death and destruction in its wake. Mangkhut, the most powerful tropical storm of the year to date, continued to wreak havoc on Southern China’s Guangdong and Guangxi, killing four, after first making landfall in the Philippines and Hong Kong. More than three million people had been moved to safety in preparation for the typhoon in China, which made landfall in Guangdong, late Sunday afternoon.
