Hydropower in Southeast Asia holds much promise. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), hydropower capacity in the region grew almost threefold from 16 GW to 44 GW between 2000 and 2016. The major users of hydropower technology are Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) members in the Indochinese region and the Philippines.

“Where is ASEAN?”. This is the question that Charles Santiago, chairperson of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), heard the most when he was in Bangladesh recently. Earlier this year, Charles led a team of current and former legislators from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand on a fact-finding mission to Bangladesh.

According to the World Bank, the Asian region supports the food demands of 60 percent of the global population by using just 23 percent of the world’s agricultural land. Due to an increasing population and decreasing land mass, the role of technology in agriculture is key. This is where the booming start up scene in Southeast Asia could come in handy for farmers.

Among all the 10-member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Myanmar lags behind in terms of electricity connectivity to the national grid. Only 35 percent of the population is connected to the national grid, according to a report published by Baker & McKenzie in October, 2017.

Human rights are rights that are fundamental to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, or religion. However, due to the diverse cultures and varying political structures in Southeast Asia, tackling human rights issues remains a major hurdle for the region.

The recent repatriation deal between Bangladesh and Myanmar has been put on hold amid widespread criticism from human rights groups. Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a pact in November last year agreeing on the repatriation of its Rohingya refugees.

As of 2015, out of the total population of 630 million people living in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, 107 million do not have access to electricity. Those affected live mostly in remote areas and are far off from electricity grids.Rural electrification is a major challenge for regional development. As rapid urbanisation sees more and more rural towns develop, what undergirds such a shift is access to electricity.

Myanmar’s agricultural sector faces a myriad of problems, such as a shortage of trained farmers, a rural infrastructure and lack of crop diversification.

Bangladesh on Sunday sought to reassure the international community that a planned repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to conflict-scarred western Myanmar would be "voluntary" and in coordination with the United Nations.In a briefing to foreign diplomats, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H Mahmood Ali insisted that the operation to return some 750,000 refugees who fled unrest and a military crackdown in Myanmar would involve the UN's refugee agency."In o

Bangladesh has counted more than a million Rohingya refugees living in camps near the border with Myanmar, higher than previous estimates, the head of its registration project said Wednesday as preparations for their return got under way.The Bangladesh army began biometric registering of the refugees last year after the latest mass influx of Rohingya from Myanmar, where the Muslim minority have faced decades of persecution.The registration is aimed partly at aiding repatriation of the refugee