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Photo credit: ESCAP/ Chanju Lee Blog

With a population of around 4.9 billion people, the Asia-Pacific region is home to 63 per cent of the world’s inhabitants. As of 2021, the region accounts for around 37 per cent of global GDP (USD 35…

UNOCHA/Matteo Minasi Blog

Multiple earthquakes, the strongest being of 7.7 magnitude, struck southern Türkiye and northern Syria on 6 February 2023. The earthquake was extremely powerful, and more deadly because it…

Photo credit: ESCAP Tsunami Trust Fund Blog

When the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami claimed the lives of 230,000 people in a matter of hours, the world realized the gap in preparedness in absence of effective early warning. It was this shared…

Photo credit: UNICEF/UN0691098/Sami Malik Blog

"The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids -- the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently as floods submerged much…

Photo credit: Shutterstock/wk1003mike Op-ed

Asia and the Pacific is the most digitally divided region of the world, and South-East Asia is the most divided subregion. The Covid-19 pandemic detonated a “digital big bang” that spurred people,…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/D.Talukdar Blog

“The global battle to reduce disaster losses by 2030 will be won or lost in Asia and the Pacific” – Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction.

This…

Photo credit: Shutterstock/Chuyuss Blog

The inauguration of 414 km electrified standard gauge Lao-China railway line has a potential to change the dynamics of international transport among the ASEAN member States and beyond.

The railway…

A New Energy Bus in Beijing (Photo Credit: Yijia Cheng) Blog

The recently concluded United Nations Climate Change Conference 2021, or COP26, in Glasgow, recognized that rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, are…

UNICEF/Malani Wolfgramm. Blog

On January 14, 2022, the South Pacific experienced the incredible force of the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai. The plume reached 30 kilometers into the stratosphere, and the eruption was…

Blog

During the current economic crisis caused by COVID-19, there was a decrease of investment in ICT infrastructure due to new priorities and the need to support the emergencies of the pandemic. There…