Updates, Resources and Reports
The Tea Leaf Center | Issue #22
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The Tea Leaf Center is growing! We hired our first Research Assistant in early January and she started work mid-month. Passachol (Pam) will help us with research projects and trainings, outreach to Thai organizations and translation. We also finished transforming our home office to a more formal office, complete with sign and GoogleMaps location – so come on by if you’re in Chiang Mai!
We are also finally coming back to the online learning and connectivity platform we started developing during Thailand’s first wave of COVID-19 early last year, and we’d love your input! If you haven’t taken the needs assessment survey yet, you can take it here.
Finally, we have some exciting research and training projects coming up to start off the year – more on those when plans are firmed up.
If you or your organization would like to work together on a research project or would like more information on the trainings we offer, please reach out. We have a sliding scale of fees (which means smaller organizations pay less) and design all our trainings to specifically meet the needs of our partners. Here’s a reminder of the types of trainings we offer:
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Especially during COVID-19 and accompanying restrictions on travel and gatherings, it's important to think about what data already exists and how you can use it to answer your research questions and inform your work. Using secondary data sources can help refine your research question, provide national or international context in which to interpret your findings and help triangulate your findings. In some cases, you can conduct your own analysis and interpretation of existing data, reducing your need to collect new data 'in the field'.
On that note – here’s a list of just a few useful data sources available online related to Southeast Asia:
| Database and Sponsor |
Topic(s) |
Countries |
| DataTalk.Asia: Data Portal of Election Violations |
Election-related law violations |
Indonesia, Philippines |
| ASEANStatsDataPortal |
National-level, mostly economic data, also includes transportation and labor. Relies mostly on government-reported data. |
All ASEAN members |
| Open Development Initiative |
Broad range of topics and user-friendly map interface, not always up-to-date. |
Mekong region and individual county pages for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam |
| Southeast Asia Covid-19 Tracker, Center for Strategic and International Studies |
Tracks mortality rate, GDP projections and government responses (including summaries of government policies w links to sources) |
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Timor Leste |
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What existing data sources do you use in your research? Send it to us on Facebook or on Twitter (@tealeafcenter).
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Civil Society Research Outputs
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The report Lockdowns and Shutdowns, published by Athan, the Peace and Development Initiative - Kintha, and the Rohingya Youth Association in collaboration with the Cyberlaw Clinic and International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, stresses the violation of digital rights of ethnic minority internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Interviews with these groups of people show how many aspects of their lives are affected without connectivity, which is a form of human rights violation.
Two reports published by Thai Lawyers for Human Rights display the number of prosecutions under “Lèse Majesté” and a statistical profile of minors charged for political expression and protest in 2020-2021 in Thailand, documenting the extent of the legal crackdown against the protest movement.
It is undeniable that one of the world’s biggest issues right now is the effect of COVID-19 pandemic towards health and socioeconomic situation of millions of people. It also halts human rights development around the globe as people experience more and more inequalities. The report, published by FORUM-Asia, captures the status of human rights in the time of COVID-19 pandemic in South Asia, which has pointed out challenges such as poverty and children’s and women’s rights to be promptly addressed.
The crime of exploitation of children can occur in the offline world as well as in the online world. Based on their thirty years of experience, ECPAT International published five summary papers revealing complex problems of sexual exploitation of children (SEC), which is intensified by globalization, technological advancement, lenient legislation, and gender norms.
Stockholm Environment Institute published the Slow-Onset Climate Hazards in Southeast Asia as to present severe impacts of climate change towards humans and natural systems. Building resilience is the heart of this report acting as a social protection for vulnerable groups.
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