Global IssuesSOUTH-EAST ASIA: Crisis Prompts More Gov’t Spending on Children
When the global financial crisis hit South-east Asia last year, a reality that had once plagued this region — a spike in child labour — emerged as an obvious concern.
Experts feared that the crisis, which began in the United States a year ago, would see a repeat of what followed the 1997 Asian financial crisis, where children paid a price by being forced to work as their parents lost jobs in the millions.
But this time around a different story is unfolding in some of the countries in the region whose export markets in the west began to dry up this year, say labour rights experts and economists.
'There are some positive signs emerging from the current crisis unlike in 1997,' says Gyorgy Sziraczki, senior economist at the Asia-Pacific office of the International Labour Organization (ILO). 'Governments have learnt from the Asian crisis and are not repeating the same mistakes as they did then.'
'Cutting social spending after the 1997 crisis was an aggravating factor to increasing child labour,' added Szirackzi in an interview in his Bangkok office. 'This explains the good news this time.'
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) learned similar lessons. The two financial institutions’ austerity conditions for large bailout or rescue packages included cutting social spending. This time, though, 'they didn’t suggest cuts in social spending,' said Szirackzi.
'The governments in the region did not cut social spending but introduced programmes that strengthened social spending,' Szirackzi explained. Indonesia and the Philippines are among the countries where innovative social spending programmes have been introduced, consequently keeping vulnerable children in the school system.
Indonesia’s ‘Hopeful Family Programme’, which was implemented in January 2007, was expanded in 2009 to cover more families in the giant archipelago following the crisis hitting its export sector. Under this programme, families living below the poverty line of less than 15 U.S. dollars per month get a direct boost of cash on top of aid for health and education.
These forms of assistance are conditional on expectant mothers undergoing at least four medical check-ups during maternity, said the ILO in a study assessing the impact of the global financial crisis in Asia. 'Families with children need to take them to local community health centres to receive vaccinations and ensure they complete up to junior high school. A minimum attendance requirement is also set at 85 percent each year,' added the report.
A similar programme in the Philippines—called ‘Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino’ or poverty reduction programme for the Filipino familiy, which was implemented in 2007—was expanded in 2009 to benefit more poor families, says Armin Bauer, a senior economist at the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. 'They were given conditional cash transfers to ensure that maternal care was ensured and that children went to school.'
The Philippines and Indonesia gave additional money to the already prevailing social spending programmes, he said in a telephone interview from the Philippine capital, Manila. 'After the 1997 crash there was no additional money spent, only cuts.'
The two South-east Asian countries set aside four percent of their respective stimulus packages of six billion U.S. dollars for their social protection programmes. The standard government spending on social protection is one percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in Indonesia and less than 0.4 percent in the Philippines.
According to the World Bank, seven countries in the region have been pumping money to increase health and education spending in the wake of the latest financial crisis. They include Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, in addition to Indonesia and the Philippines.
For instance, Thailand’s current social protection interventions are estimated at 1.5 percent of GDP, while Malaysia’s rate is nine percent of GDP, according to the Bank.
'The manufacturing, mining, and tourism sectors, as well as estate farming, have all been hit hard,' said a World Bank study presented in a meeting of South-east Asian government officials and policy makers held in the Thai capital on Dec. 8-9. 'In the first seven months of 2009, manufacturing exports declined by 30 percent in Vietnam and by almost 40 percent in Indonesia, compared to the same period in 2008.'
'Demand for semiconductors and electronics manufactured in the Philippines also declined as much as 60 percent in the first quarter of 2009,' added the Bank. 'In Cambodia, both the garment and construction sectors have been affected significantly.'
Such an anticipated cost had prompted the ILO to warn in an April study that vulnerable children could be affected. After all, a study of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which saw economies in the region drop by 13 percent growth into negative territory, highlighted what happened in three countries.
In the Philippines, 'a drop in (school) enrolment rates and a rise in child labour among 10-14 year-olds' were among the findings revealed in the ‘Impacts of the global financial and economic crisis on child labour and youth employment’ ILO report. 'The impact of the crisis was also noted as resulting in increased labour exploitation of girls in Indonesia and Thailand.'
In May, the ILO noted that the number of people unemployed in the Asia-Pacific region could rise by between nine and 26.3 million, pushing the total number of unemployed in the region to exceed 112.2 million people.
Concerns that more children would be compelled into situations of forced labour in the region are not unfounded. In September, the U.S. government’s department of labour pointed an accusing finger at countries like Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia for permitting abusive forms of child labour.
The Philippines was among the top six countries singled out for producing goods that used child or forced labour, the U.S. department stated in its first global report that looked at 122 products in 58 countries. Military-ruled Burma, or Myanmar, was identified for having forced child labour for products like rice, sugar cane and rubber.
The other products children have been trapped into labouring in the 58 countries range from garments, footwear and textiles to toys and Christmas decorations.
According to the ILO, the Asia-Pacific region is home to some 120 million children under 15 years who are working. They account for close to 19 percent of the 650 million children between the ages of five and 14 in the region.
(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.)
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service