Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Myanmar military attempted coup. However, the people’s movement has remained steadfast to fight for democracy and their rights. We are highlighting key events happening during the past year. During the past year, the junta has continued to dismantle democratic institutions that could hold it to account. It has also wielded [ Read more ]

On 1 February 2021 the Myanmar military seized power in a coup, overthrowing the democratically-elected government led by the National League for Democracy (NLD). The coup has been met with nationwide peaceful protests and civil disobedience movements demanding the restoration of the elected civilian government, release of all those who are arbitrarily detained following the [ Read more ]

FORUM-ASIA, in collaboration with ANNI, has released the Paris Principles Week, a campaign that will last all the week from 14 to 20 December 2020 – day on which we celebrated the 27th Anniversary of the Paris Principles –  as part of the #HumanRights Month, where we talked about what the Paris Principles are and [ Read more ]

From 29 November to 10 December 2020, FORUM-ASIA has presented a series of infographics, on occasion of the International Women Human Rights Defenders Day (29 November), the International Human Rights Defenders Day (9 December) and Human Rights Day (10 December), with the aim of celebrating human rights and applauding human rights defenders, of any gender, [ Read more ]

With many interweaving and changing variables, measuring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and determining the appropriate responses has been a significant challenge. In this context, this series of webinars has contributed towards rejuvenating civil society platforms within South Asia. The webinars have provided a forum for civil society organisations (CSOs) to discuss the human [ Read more ]

FORUM-ASIA released its #FAagainstHateSpeech poster series in the lead up to Myanmar’s general elections scheduled on 8 November. In week before the elections, FORUM-ASIA highlighted cases of hate speech across Asia and will offer recommendations drawn from its briefing paper ‘Pervasive Hate Speech and the Role of Facebook in Myanmar’. The briefing paper is a [ Read more ]

Principles of equity and justice, as well as the recognition of fundamental freedoms, are cornerstone requisites to mitigate and adapt to climate change ‒ and makes climate justice a human rights issue. FORUM-ASIA is proud to have launched ‘Working Paper Series 8: Climate Justice – Navigating the Discourse’ based on the homonym working paper. In the week [ Read more ]

  The 45th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council took place from 14 September until 6 October 2020. In the sessions, FORUM-ASIA plays a fundamental role in bringing an Asian perspective to global human rights discourses through various interventions, including side events, statements, letters and press releases, to advocate for issues concerning human rights defenders [ Read more ]

In the ASEAN region as elsewhere in the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a genuine health emergency, prompting governments to take extraordinary, unprecedented measures in an effort to curb its lethal impact. While measures were taken by ASEAN Member States to genuinely combat the proliferation of the virus, others used it, sometimes concurrently, as [ Read more ]

The well-being of human rights defenders is a critical – but still often neglected – issue. Human rights defenders (HRDs) are particularly exposed to a number of different stressors. Unlike others, HRDs will generally have a higher exposure to stress and trauma, either directly or indirectly. ‘Psychosocial Well-being for Human Rights Defenders in the Philippines’ aims to provide [ Read more ]