Anwar bin Sholeh had something to cheer when he showed up at a Jakarta training centre to practice pencak silat - the Indonesian martial art was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's (UNESCO's) prestigious heritage list."It's an honour that pencak silat has been recognised internationally," the 38-year-old, who has been practising the art since elementary school."This will motivate us to preserve our tra

Indonesia's little-known glaciers are melting so fast they could disappear in a decade, a new study says, underscoring the imminent threat posed by climate change to ice sheets in tropical countries.As the COP 25 summit wraps up in Madrid, nations are struggling to finalise rules for the 2015 landmark Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global temperature rises.Thousands of kilometres away, glaciers on a mountain range in Indonesia's Papua region - and a handful of others in A

Earlier this week, investigators for the Dog Meat Free Indonesia (DMFI) campaign revealed heart-breaking footage exposing the extreme cruelty suffered by an estimated 13,700 dogs every month in the Indonesian city of Solo. The dogs being shown on camera were heading to the slaughterhouse for their meat.News of the footage quickly went viral. The investigators found that dogs were being slaughtered in unhygienic conditions and were being killed in front of other dogs.

Forest fires that raged across Indonesia dented Southeast Asia's biggest economy to the tune of some US$5.2 billion, the World Bank said Wednesday, not including the health impacts from toxic haze that sent air quality plummeting.The fires are an annual problem but this year was the worst since 2015 due to dry weather, with 942,000 hectares (2.3 million acres) of land, mostly on Sumatra and Borneo islands, razed by the out-of-control blazes. Authorities deployed tens of thousand

In August last year, The ASEAN Post asked a question: How will Indonesia fare in PISA 2018? Recently, local Indonesian news reports revealed the answer to that question and it was, unfortunately, unsurprising.This is not to say that Indonesia had not put in efforts to increase the quality of its students.

Indonesia is one of the region’s best success stories. Despite having faced economic turmoil in the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis under the authoritarian Suharto regime, Indonesia is today one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

Heading towards the end of last month, Indonesia’s People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) had received proposals to revise constitutional provisions in order to increase the term of office for a president and vice president. The country’s current Constitution stipulates that a president and vice president may serve only two five-year terms in office, making for a maximum of 10 years.However, on 21 November, Assembly Deputy Speaker Arsul Sani revealed that proposals had been put forth f

Indonesia has a big problem in facing the challenges of the 4th Industrial Revolution. The quickly evolving landscape and potential requirements on the country’s skilled workforce is becoming a major concern. Indonesia, ASEAN’s largest economy, could be running out of time to equip its people with the necessary skills, attitudes and knowledge to stay competitive. The country has already highlighted a talent shortage of more than 50 percent as its biggest concern.

An Indonesian activist, who is also a doctor, recently revealed that people who have contracted the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the country still face rampant stigmatisation and discrimination in the workplace.

Southeast Asia is known for its vast rainforests which constitute about almost 20 percent of forest cover with the richest biodiversity in the world. What the region is also known for is its alarming rate of deforestation. Southeast Asia has the highest rate of deforestation of any major tropical region followed by Latin America and Africa.