Asian Legal Review

I remember 2011 well. Indonesia was chairing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and I was serving as deputy foreign minister for Asean cooperation. I learned a great deal, although if I had to summarise the experience in one word, I would say: meetings.
Asean members meet. They talk. They disagree. They issue statements. Then, quite remarkably, they meet again. We meet in conference rooms, coffee shops and restaurants. We speak by telephone and online. And when matters become…

Businesses with operations, investments or supply chains connected to the Middle East may need to reassess sanctions compliance risks following UK government announcements concerning Israeli settlement-related activity and new Iran sanctions measures, experts have said.

Indonesia’s finance ministry is preparing to absorb debt payments for Whoosh, the China-funded high-speed railway connecting Jakarta and Bandung, in a move officials say will ease financial pressure on the state-owned enterprises that built and operate the line.
The government has argued that the burden is manageable after the debt was restructured over 80 years, requiring annual instalments of about 1 trillion rupiah (US$56.5 million). But the plan has also raised concerns that taxpayers are…

Singapore’s Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing is set to visit China from Tuesday to Thursday at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun and will speak at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum for the second consecutive year.
His visit comes as defence analysts tell This Week in Asia that ties with Beijing are important for the city state’s balancing strategy with Washington. Singapore and the United States are close strategic partners with deep defence cooperation.
Singapore’s defence ministry…

Changes to the jurisdiction rules for collective redress actions in EU member states would have significant implications for litigation strategy, forum selection and the conduct of cross-border disputes across Europe, experts have said.

Energy ministers and executives met in Bangkok on Monday to discuss the prolonged price increase for liquefied natural gas (LNG) triggered by the Iran war, with Southeast Asia’s growth ambitions and climate goals on the line as the cost of powering economies shifting to artificial intelligence soars.
On the first day of Gastech 2026, one of the world’s largest energy conferences, policymakers implored pragmatism over net-zero targets and closer cooperation to ensure affordable LNG supplies,…

Voters in an autonomous southern Philippine region will cast their ballots on Monday in the region’s first parliamentary elections, seen as a crucial step in the quest for self-determination and lasting peace after decades of insurgency and violence.
The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM, covers five provinces, three cities and 63 villages across eight special geographic area clusters. It has nearly 2.4 million voters, with election officials aiming for an 80 per cent…

Winston Churchill famously praised the resilience of the British people during the Blitz, describing the nightly bombings of London as a “cruel, wanton, indiscriminate” attempt by Adolf Hitler to break the spirit of a tough “island race”.
He was not wrong about the toughness and courage of his fellow citizens. But as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest leaders and historical writers, he created a false impression of the uniqueness of the British wartime experience.
Strategic bombing alone,…

The political impasse in Malaysia’s government has regressed to a game of chicken, experts say, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the former ruling Umno party trading barbs and dares as pressure grows for snap polls with more than a year left to term.
Relations between Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition and erstwhile rivals Umno have hit its lowest point since the two sides cut a deal to form a unity government in 2022, after a series of recent state polls that saw PH all but decimated…

Rescuers retrieved more remains from a passenger ferry in the Philippines that was gutted by fire, bringing the death toll on Saturday to 76 with 13 missing.
Forty-three people survived the fire on Wednesday night among the 132 on board.
The ferry sailed from the capital, Manila, and was off the village of Turda some 39km (24 miles) from its destination, the Port of Coron, when the fire was reported on Wednesday evening.
The cause of the blaze has not been determined but a survivor said it may…