Human rights challenges, where state power, environmental pressures, and social vulnerabilities intersect

Across Southeast and East Asia, October 2025 has revealed a continued pattern of human rights challenges, where state power, environmental pressures, and social vulnerabilities intersect. In Myanmar’s Rakhine State, military blockades and disappearing humanitarian aid have left over 15 million people, predominantly Rohingya, facing acute food insecurity, while refugee conditions in Bangladesh remain dire (Save the Children, 2025). In Indonesia, centralization of power, repression of dissent, and environmental exploitation have sparked public protests and Indigenous land rights concerns. Meanwhile, the Philippines grapples with ongoing accountability for human rights abuses and emerging climate litigation linked to corporate responsibility. In China and North Korea, restrictions on religious freedom and ideological expression have intensified, illustrating broader patterns of state control over civil liberties. Taken together, these developments highlight not only localized crises but regional trends in the erosion of rights, the persistence of displacement, and the struggle for justice.

Myanmar 

Military blockades and vanishing aid are causing over 15 million people to face acute food insecurity in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, where mostly Rohingya families live. This famine has been attributed to the governing junta’s blockage of UN aid convoys. Additionally, on October 15, 2025, Save the Children reported that “[t]he number of Rohingya refugees who left Bangladesh by boat in the first six months of [2025] tripled compared to [2024], as conditions for children in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar camps continue to deteriorate and funding cuts reduce essential services.” The government of Bangladesh, along with the UN and 113 partner organizations, launched a 2025-2026 Joint Response Plan detailing the need for “$934.5 million in 2025 to reach 1.48 million people, including refugees and nearby host communities.” Finally, during the UN General Assembly, held on September 30th, 2025, four Rohingya youth spoke about their experiences living in the refugee camps and demanding a “sustainable solution for a community that has been suffering for decades.” This unprecedented presentation by Rohingya youth marked an important moment for Rohingya representation in the long struggle for rights and recognition.

Indonesia

Over the past week, Indonesia has seen a rising public discontent as President Prabowo Subianto reaches his first year in office. His tenure has been characterised by increasing centralization of power, policies that excludes public participation and increasing repression of dissent.  A nationwide alarm also grew over the flagship, free school meals program which has faced safety lapses causing children to fall ill. In addition, critics have warned that the administration’s extractive policies risk ecological suicide by prioritizing industrial growth over environmental protection. Against this background, students mobilized in Jakarta demanding accountability for crackdowns on protestors and continued detentions of activists.

In Papua, leaders and the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) have accused Indonesian forces of bombing villages in a military operation that killed 15 civilians. The military has denied targeting civilians, claiming that they used legitimate security measures against armed separatists.

Further, a new detailed report by Climate Rights International highlights serious human rights and environmental abuses in Indonesia’s expanding nickel sector, including forced relocations, pollution, and violations of Indigenous land rights in Halmahera.

Philippines

This week, judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have called former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte’s case to move forward and have rejected a challenge by the court’s jurisdiction. Duterte and his lawyers have challenged the jurisdiction of the court as it did not open a full investigation into crimes in the Philippines until the country had withdrawn an ICC member, yet the judges disagreed and argued that the prosecution’s preliminary examination was sufficient enough to say it was already under consideration. Other notions to stop the Duterte case include Duterte being unfit to stand trial due to alleged cognitive decline, which will be assessed at the end of the month by medical experts appointed by the ICC judges.

In other news, 66 Typhoon Rai survivors are suing the fossil fuel company Shell demanding financial compensation for the losses they experienced under Typhoon Rai, also known as Super Typhoon Odette. It is the first civil claim to directly link polluting companies to deaths and personal injuries that occured in the global south. The claim states that Shell’s polluting business has contributed to climate change of which intensified the impact of the typhoon. Under Phillipine laws, the firm has violated the constitutional rights of the claimants to a healthy environment. Additionally, it claims that they caused harm by not only failing to mitigate its emissions but also in engaging in climate disinformation and obscuring climate science, including leaked internal documents that suggest Shell knew of the negative impacts of fossil fuel production and consumption. The environmental damage continues as a recent survey by the Davao Oriental provincial government showed that a strip mine had caused nickel mining damage near an UNESCO site in southern Phillipines. The provincial governor said the province would order the Pujada nickel mine to cease its operations as it was found to scrape bare 200 hectares of forestland. The mine is within 10 kilometres of the Pujada Bay, and Mount Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sancturary, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other negative effects have been felt with the mining including the coastal waters becoming heavily silted, and fisherfolks’ catches being halved since the mining has commenced.

China 

In October 2025, authorities in China arrested nearly 30 pastors and church members of the Zion Protestant Church, one of the largest unofficial Christian churches in China, including its founder, Pastor Jin ‘Ezra’ Mingri. The Zion Church was founded in 2007 and is not sanctioned by the government. It faced restrictions in 2018 when its Beijing church was shut down by authorities. Despite restrictions, membership increased during the Covid-19 pandemic through online sermons and has continued to grow. Pastor Jin was arrested under article 287-1 of China’s criminal law for “illegal use of information networks,” an offense which can result in a prison sentence of up to three years. These arrests signify the latest crackdown on faith groups in China, which has a long history of restricting the right to freedom of religion. Under the 2005 Regulations on Religious Affairs, all religious groups must be registered and controlled by the authorities. Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the government has sought to “sinicize” religion and increase ideological control to ensure it is aligned with the Chinese Communist Party.

North Korea 

A new human rights report has revealed that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, North Korea’s crackdown on religious freedom has accelerated. According to the data in the report, violations of religious freedoms accounted for less than 1% of all human rights cases until the 2000s but have since increased to 8.5% by the 2020s. This is likely due to various laws that have been introduced since 2020 that, at the time, aimed to prevent COVID-19 infections from spreading into the country, but now function to eliminate any general freedom of expression. Such laws have specifically targeted the inflow and spread of information and media from outside of North Korea, as well as intensified repression relating to ideological expression. When interviewing 15,303 defectors, researchers reported 99.6% of respondents answered that free religious activities are impossible in North Korea. According to this report, North Korean officials who are responsible for carrying out such abuses have the potential to be prosecuted under crimes against humanity as stated in international law.