HOPONG, Myanmar: Fields of purple opium poppy stretch across the pastures and peaks of mountainous eastern Myanmar, with many farmers reluctant to give up the profitable cash crop in spite of incentives offered. Myanmar is the second biggest source of opium in the world after Afghanistan, with Shan state its main production hub. AFP hiked […]
Children’s rights bill inconsistent over child labour regulations
August 25, 2017 by
Sections within the draft law are inconsistent over the minimum working age, and child employment in many sectors remains unregulated A children’s rights draft law introduced to Pyidaungsu Hluttaw on July 7 fails to address inconsistencies between existing domestic laws regarding child employment and the legal minimum working age. The bill does not tackle grey […]
Solving Southeast Asia’s Drug Problem
September 22, 2015 by
The Obama administration has once again named Myanmar and Laos to its list of twenty-two countries determined to be major drug trafficking countries or major drug transit countries. The White House memo, issued on Monday, noted that Myanmar “failed demonstrably during the last twelve months to make sufficient or meaningful efforts to adhere to their […]
Can Coffee Replace Opium in Southern Shan State?
December 9, 2014 by
In the hills in southern Shan State surrounding Taunggyi, in Myanmar, up a tangle of roads barely passable in a Hilux, deep into an ocean of opium poppy fields barely clinging to the hillside, a few islands of other crops have sprung up. They are most prominently coffee and rubber – all part of a […]
