Empowering Indigenous Peoples in Asia through Communication

The paper comes to the conclusion that there is significant potential in Asia for innovative Indigenous media and ICT applications, which remains largely untapped. It introduces examples from Asian countries and describes an initiative that sets out to implement a Communication for Empowerment agenda on a regional scale. Finally, a detailed case study from Lao PDR puts the theoretical concepts into the perspective of a developing country with a nascent civil society. The case study analyzes the experience from an innovative project that has helped introduce the concept of community radio in Lao PDR and forms part of a larger governance reform effort.