Scouting and Guiding in Laos

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File:Laos.jpg
Membership badge of Scouting in Laos, with the Lao language character ຈ (ch)

At the present time, there is no known Scouting program in Laos, one of only six of the world's independent countries that do not have Scouting.

In the 1930s, André Lefèvre, chief of the Eclaireurs de France, set up a training camp for 60 Scoutmasters from all over French Indochina. At the end of 1937, French Scouting sent Scoutmaster Raymond Schlemmer to the Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese areas of Indochina to oversee the setting up of the Fédération Indochinoise des Associations du Scoutisme (FIAS, Indochinese Federation of Scouting Associations) in all three regions.

From 1939 through 1945, the political situation affected Scouting activities all across the country, as World War II engendered a movement for an independent Laos. The French began to lose control and were finally overthrown by Japanese intervention. This ceased the French Scouts' activity in Laos, as well as all Scouting activities.

Homegrown Scouting was once again active in Laos, between its inception in 1959, at which date it numbered 2,300 Scouts, and its banning by the Pathet Lao in 1975.

Laotian Scouting in exile existed at least into the early 1990s in Los Angeles, alongside fellow Vietnamese Scouting in exile and Cambodian Scouting in exile groups.

See also

References

Facts on World Scouting, Boy Scouts International Bureau, Ottawa, Canada, 1961

Members of the Asia-Pacific Scout Region

Full members: Australia | Bangladesh | Bhutan | Brunei | Republic of China (Taiwan) | Fiji | Hong Kong | India | Indonesia | Japan | Kiribati | South Korea | Malaysia | Maldives | Mongolia | Nepal | New Zealand | Pakistan | Papua New Guinea | Philippines | Singapore | Sri Lanka | Thailand
Associate members: Macau | French Polynesia
Potential members: Afghanistan | Cambodia | East Timor | Nauru | Samoa | Solomon Islands | Tonga | Tuvalu | Vanuatu | Vietnam
Countries without Scouting: People's Republic of China (mainland) | North Korea | Laos | Myanmar

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