Bombs, Borders, and Birthrates
Issue 50 — Key Developments Across Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia
Editor’s Note
by Mattia Peroni, Lead Editor - Mekong Belt Desk
This week's issue of the Mekong Belt features four articles that each, in their own way, ask who bears the cost of a state's unfinished business. In Laos, farmers and rural communities continue to live with the literal remnants of a war fought over fifty years ago, as UXO contamination and deforestation trap the country's most vulnerable in a cycle of poverty. Meanwhile, Myanmar inches back toward ASEAN's table through a cautious virtual meeting, raising the question of whether diplomatic re-engagement can — or should — outpace accountability. Across the border, Thailand's private sector is sounding the alarm on a demographic time bomb, as a shrinking workforce and a creaking immigration system threaten to undermine decades of industrial growth. And in Cambodia, 790 juvenile offenders have been transferred to border centres to perform military engineering support — a government initiative that blurs the line between rehabilitation and conscription, drawing scrutiny from international humanitarian law.
Lao PDR 🇱🇦
Land, Lives, and Laos
by Thipphavanh Virakhom, in Vientiane
Laos is a country still shaped by a war it never declared. Between 1964 and 1973, almost 3 million tonnes of bombs were dropped on its territory, this was the most heavily bombed country in history based on its population. Out of 270 million small bombs dropped, nearly a third failed to explode and are still dangerous today.
Fifty years on, this is not history. It is the daily reality for millions of people. Roughly 25% of Laos’s villages remain contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO). Over 22,000 people have been killed or injured since the war ended. The number of victims has dropped to about 300 a year. That shows things are improving, but it still means 300 people are hurt or killed every single year.
The people most at risk are not statistics, They are farmers who cannot safely work their land, children growing up in communities where the soil still holds danger, women and girls in remote villages far from healthcare and support when accidents happen. Poverty and UXO contamination feed each other. Unsafe land means less income which means less capacity to move away or recover.
Laos is facing a major forest crisis alongside its bomb problem. The country used to be 70% forest, but illegal logging dragged that down to 40% by 2010. Even though more than half of the population relies on the forest to make a living, losing these trees costs the country nearly a fifth of its economy every year. While a new plan to plant 10 million trees will help, the loss of these forests hurts the poorest rural communities the most, the very same people who are already trapped living on land filled with hidden wartime bombs.
Policies and frameworks exist. Laos has integrated UXO clearance into its national development plan. It was among the first countries to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions and will chair the treaty’s Third Review Conference in Vientiane this coming September. But frameworks alone are not enough. What is still needed is consistent, long-term funding reaches the village level. Community-based clearance and reforestation programmes that actively included women, ethnic minorities, and the rural poor, not just as beneficiaries but as decision-makers. Stronger regional accountability within ASEAN, where only two of eleven member states have fully joined the cluster munitions treaty. And honest recognition that recovery takes generations, not project cycles.
Sustainable development in ASEAN cannot be complete while one of its members is still clearing bombs from its farmland and watching its forest disappear. This is calling for partnership. The kind that shows up in budgets, in technical support, and in political will that outlasts any single conference commitment cycle. The bomb and the trees are not separate issues. They are one. The question of whether the most vulnerable people in Southeast Asia Nations can finally live safely, on land that nourishes rather than threatens them. That question deserves a serious and sustained answer including from Laos, from ASEAN, and from the wider international community.
Thipphavanh holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs. She is a governance and development professional specialising in rule of law, access to justice, and gender equality in Lao PDR. Her work focuses on strengthening justice sector institutions, advancing people-centred governance, and promoting gender-responsive systems. With extensive experience in project coordination, monitoring and evaluation, stakeholder engagement, and strategic communications, she has collaborated closely with national institutions and international partners to support inclusive and sustainable development.
Myanmar 🇲🇲
ASEAN Agrees to Virtual Talks With Myanmar's Foreign Minister
by Myat Moe Kywe
ASEAN has agreed to hold a virtual meeting with Myanmar’s foreign minister, the bloc’s secretary-general said Thursday. This signals a cautious shift toward re-engaging with Myanmar’s military government, which ASEAN has largely distanced itself from since the 2021 coup.
ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn confirmed the development on the sidelines of the bloc’s summit in the Philippines. “It’s very clear that today the ASEAN foreign ministers agree that there will be an engagement with Myanmar, with the foreign minister of Myanmar, that they will have a virtual meeting coming up in the very near future,” he told Reuters.
Myanmar’s leadership has been barred from top ASEAN meetings since the military’s 2021 coup unleashed a lethal crackdown on dissent and spiralled into civil war. The decision to hold a virtual ministerial-level meeting — rather than a physical seat at the summit table — reflects the bloc’s attempt to thread a difficult needle: resuming dialogue while avoiding the optics of full rehabilitation of a regime still prosecuting a brutal conflict against its own people.
Kao Kim Hourn said Myanmar had indicated it wanted to normalise ties with the 11-member grouping, but that its neighbours want to see concrete progress on de-escalation, dialogue and humanitarian aid access before any broader re-engagement, according to Free Malaysia Today.
The announcement did not emerge in a vacuum. The decision to hold talks with Myanmar’s top diplomat came after Thailand’s foreign minister told Reuters he would propose the idea, with the aim of building consensus within ASEAN for greater engagement.
Bangkok has been among the most active in pushing for Myanmar’s return to regional forums. Thailand reportedly sent a congratulatory message to junta chief Min Aung Hlaing after he assumed the presidency under the military’s rebranded regime.
On May 18, the Philippines and Myanmar held their fifth round of Foreign Policy Consultations in Manila — co-chaired by Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister U Ko Ko Kyaw and Philippine Undersecretary Leo M. Herrera-Lim — covering trade, investment, energy and transnational crime. The Philippines’ decision to invite only a deputy minister, rather than a senior political figure, appeared calibrated to signal engagement without full endorsement.
The pattern points to a bloc under quiet strain. While ASEAN has collectively reaffirmed Myanmar’s exclusion from high-level political summits, a position reiterated in Cebu during 48th ASEAN Summit, individual member states have also engaged functional ties with Naypyidaw on their own terms, creating a growing gap between the bloc’s stated position and the diplomatic reality on the ground.
Now, with the bloc’s agreement on holding the virtual meeting, it is likely to shift the bloc’s stance on Myanmar. Once scheduled, it, will be the most formal contact between ASEAN’s foreign ministers and the junta’s top diplomat since Myanmar’s exclusion began. Critics are likely to argue it rewards a regime that has shown little genuine movement on the bloc’s Five-Point Consensus — its own roadmap for resolving the crisis — which remains largely unimplemented more than four years after it was agreed upon.
Kao Kim Hourn also said the possibility of creating a special envoy for Myanmar with a remit beyond one year was part of ongoing discussion, with some unspecified issues still to be resolved.
The virtual meeting is being presented as a cautious way to keep communication open without formally recognizing the junta. However, it raises a deeper question: beyond ASEAN’s diplomatic calculations and gradual re-engagement, will this kind of engagement actually reflect or address the realities and concerns of people in Myanmar?
Myat is a senior undergraduate student majoring in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. She has interned at The Asia Foundation in Washington, D.C., and she has also worked as a summer research assistant at the Centre for Policy and Innovation (CRPI), gaining experience in research and analysis. Her work focuses on civic engagement, gender, youth leadership, and community development.
Thailand 🇹🇭
Thailand’s Demographic Time Bomb
by Paranut Juntree, in Bangkok
Thailand is sprinting toward a demographic cliff. Long celebrated as the primary industrial engine of Southeast Asia, the Kingdom’s domestic labor pool is drying up at a globally unprecedented rate.
Thailand has already become an aged society where more than 20% of its population is 60 or older, combined with a shrinking birth rate and unprepared effects of the current Iran-US conflict and the hikes in energy and production costs. This workforce crisis reached a critical flashpoint on May 20, 2026, when the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking (JSCCIB) slashed its national GDP growth forecasts. Led by the newly appointed chairwoman of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI), Pimjai Leeissaranukul, the private sector issued a definitive ultimatum that vital industries like manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and hospitality are starving for personnel, risking total collapse without an immediate, massive influx of foreign labor.
However, welcoming migrant workers requires Thailand to confront an uneasy paradox. While the private sector demands the immediate relaxation of immigration barriers to maintain national competitiveness, the physical infrastructure governing these workers is fundamentally insufficient. A key friction point is the Ministry of Labour’s e-Work Permit system. Due to technical bottlenecks and unintegrated databases, the digital framework frequently leaves renewals in administrative limbo. The JSCCIB notes that these bureaucratic delays have inadvertently stripped thousands of legally documented, tax-paying migrants of their status, pushing them into illegal undocumented vulnerability due to systemic state shortcomings.
This legal gray zone also highlights ethical and human rights risks. When official channels become impossibly slow, desperate employers may turn to unregulated brokers. This immediately subjects vulnerable individuals to transnational trafficking, excessive recruitment debts, and possibly forced labor. This danger is magnified by the ongoing crisis in a neighboring country like Myanmar, where displaced populations are constantly crossing the border fleeing conflict rather than purely pursuing economic migration.
Furthermore, the government must actively manage public perception on migrant labor. For decades, domestic policy has treated migrant communities as transient national security threats rather than permanent pillars of economic integration. A clear example of this is the restricted right of migrant workers to unionize and protect their interests. While public sentiment often resists the influx of foreign labor due to concerns over domestic job competition, the business sector faces a starkly different reality. For employers, there is a critical shortage of domestic workers willing to fill ‘3D’ jobs (dirty, dangerous, and difficult). To neutralize domestic anxieties that migrants are exhausting public resources, policy must frame structured, low-cost health insurance schemes and worker protections as an investment that makes foreign labor budget-neutral and beneficial for provincial infrastructure.
While the private sector is already pushing to expand G2G (government-to-government) agreements to bring in new demographics from South Asai, money and quotas alone cannot fix flawed institutional logic. Easing borders is merely a temporary solution if the domestic framework remains hostile. As Thailand grapples with an aging society, treating migrant workers with basic human dignity, streamlining legal registration, and ensuring fair wages is no longer just a human rights protection gesture but an economic survival mechanism of the country.
Paranut has a background in advocacy, with experience in policy research, communications, and civic engagement across both the NGO and government sectors. As Thailand’s Youth Delegate to the United Nations, he represented Thai youth in global dialogues on migration, education, and human rights, championing inclusive policymaking. He holds a degree in political science with a specialization in international relations.
Cambodia 🇰🇭
Cambodia Transfers 790 Juvenile Offenders to Support Military Engineering and Frontlines
by Malai Yatt, in Phnom Penh
Following Prime Minister Hun Manet’s directive, nearly 800 juvenile offenders were moved to specialised centers to perform national service, focusing on vocational rehabilitation and engineering support for frontline military operations
According to the official announcement, after Manet has ordered the supportive measures for gangsters who engage in harmful practices and order insecurity in society, the government bodies have been working to transfer juveniles to the border.
It should be noted that on April 20, PM was instructed to carefully organise and transfer juvenile offenders to perform work assisting frontline operations in printing and other appropriate tasks, in order to support both the frontline military and the engineering corps.
“As a result, on May 21, the General Department of Prisons arranged the transfer of a total of 790 male juvenile offenders from educational and correctional centres and capital-province prisons to continue their sentences at two target educational and correctional centres.
It added that there are listed as the 4th Correctional Education Center (in Pursat Province), totaling 651 individuals, and the Preah Vihear Provincial Prison, totaling 139 individuals.
The transfer of these juvenile offenders was intended to enhance correctional education and rehabilitation through participation in vocational training programs, to build personal skills, and to engage in activities beneficial to the local community, according to Manet’s Facebook post.
Comparing the new initiative to one convention, it’s similar to the Third Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners of war. It lays out specific guidelines for their care and release, as well as defining their rights. Other individuals who are robbed of their freedom due to armed conflict are likewise protected by international humanitarian law.
In a previous announcement, the PM has suggested that sending gang members and young offenders to perform military duty at the border could benefit the country and shorten prison sentences.
“Currently, we arrest and imprison them, but what we lose is rice. Some change their lives after release, but others return to gang activity,” the Prime Minister said, adding that they would not serve on the frontline but take on support roles.
“[We’re] not handing them a gun; they should build trenches, it helps the engineering division,” Manet said, citing an example, he added.
In short, Cambodia has transferred 790 juvenile offenders to border centers, shifting from standard imprisonment to military engineering support and vocational rehabilitation to improve national security and discipline.
Malai is a reporter at Kiripost, where she has worked for over two years, driven by a strong commitment to amplifying the voices of underserved communities. Her reporting focuses on economic and foreign affairs.
Editorial Deadline 23/05/2026 11:59 PM (UTC +8)
