UNICEF Responses to the Asian Crisis.

In Indonesia, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has launched a new Rapid Response Complementary Feeding Programme to provide low-cost complementary food for infants in selected provinces, with the aim of revitalizing the village health post-network and a community self-help approach to the crisis. UNICEF, UNDP and the World Food Programme of the United Nations are cooperating on ways to provide emergency assistance to vulnerable groups. Efforts are also underway to expand the scope and coverage of Indonesia's existing community health financing activities, including saving schemes for maternal health and grants for emergency obstetric care. In response to the increase in school drop-outs, UNICEF and the Government have launched a national social mobilization campaign aimed at keeping children in school. The agency is also expanding its support to existing government efforts to monitor the effects of the crisis. These include reactivating an early food security monitoring system at the district leve l, refocusing of the 100-village sentinel site surveillance and setting up an emergency crisis "hot-line" information system.

UNICEF and the Royal Thai Government have adopted a new country programme for 1999-2003 designed to specifically address the problems that have emerged from the crisis. A rapid data collection exercise, as well as a study on budget allocations, were undertaken in 1998, the findings of which helped better define programme responses to the crisis. The focus of activities has been somewhat shifted to better meet the needs of the poorest families. Advocacy efforts with government counterparts have resulted in a decision to use the UNICEF-supported bottom-up planning process for the distribution of Social Investment Programme (SIP) funds. UNICEF is also actively collaborating with the World Bank and UNDP in the design and implementation of SIP.

UNICEF has provided emergency assistance to 4,800 families in four provinces of Mindanao that have been seriously affected by drought and whose access to basic services is being further compromised by the economic crisis. The package includes rice, corn seeds, gardening tools, medicines, vitamins and school supplies. It is also providing additional support for programmes aimed at vulnerable groups of children who need health, nutrition, education and psychosocial services. It is cooperating with the Government, other UN agencies and donors within the United Nations Development Assistance Framework regarding the channeling of emergency assistance to target groups. UNICEF is also carrying out coordinated studies with UNDP, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank on the effects of the crisis and on identifying specific activities for more intensive and orchestrated programme assistance, such as for school children, working children, and children of indigenous communities.

ILO Response to the Asian Crisis

The International Labour Organization (ILO) takes a tripartite approach, involving the participation of Governments, workers' organizations and employers' organizations as equal partners, to meet the needs of its constituents on the country and regional levels.

In Indonesia, an ILO direct contacts mission in August 1998 examined the steps to be taken to ensure full application and compliance with the fundamental ILO Conventions on protection of the right to organize and to collective bargaining. This is a very significant breakthrough in relations between ILO and Indonesia on international labour standards. The Organization is also assisting in drafting a new Trade Union Bill and a Labor Dispute Settlement Bill, and revising the Manpower Act. It has published a report, Employment Challenges of the Indonesian Economic Crisis, to provide the Government with a framework for policy. Ongoing activities include workers' education programmes, "Improve Your Business" programmes for women entrepreneurs and productivity workshops for employers.

In the Republic of Korea, the Ministry of Labor requested of ILO specific and urgent assistance in the context of active labour market policy. A high-level mission discussed assistance in planning unemployment policy measures with Korean officials, including introducing a training voucher system and evaluating training systems; restructuring the public employment service; and establishing a social safety net for casual and daily workers. The Ministry has asked ILO to develop a specific action programme on vocational training. Following a tripartite seminar held in April 1998, which examined the compatibility of national law and practice with fundamental human rights Conventions in the wake of the crisis, the Government has entered into an intensive dialogue with ILO on the subject.

In Malaysia, following the country's ratification of ILO Conventions No. 100 on equal remuneration and No. 138 on minimum age for employment, a national tripartite seminar was organized by ILO to advise on implementation. A trade union workshop on the subject was also held in order to devise a national policy for trade unions on equal remuneration and child labour.

In the Philippines, ILO is carrying out training programmes on management development for small- and medium-sized employers, skills development for the informal sector, and "Improve Your Business" programmes for women entrepreneurs. It is also conducting major action-oriented research on the impact of the crisis on gender equality at work, as well as advisory services to promote employment creation through labour-intensive programmes.

In Thailand, ILO conducted a study on the feasibility of the national authorities introducing unemployment insurance, as foreseen in Thailand's Social Security Act of 1990. The Organization is providing technical assistance to the Social Fund Office in developing management capability, identifying projects for labour-based infrastructure employment and monitoring. Technical assistance in skills training and employment fields is under discussion. An ILO project on tripartite minimum wage determination has been carried out, and province-based training on the details of this process is being implemented. A country employment policy review was launched in October 1998. A tripartite seminar in July 1998 considerably improved the prospects for ratification of some of the fundamental human rights conventions. No. 100 on equal remuneration is now in the process of ratification and No. 138 on the minimum age for employment will follow. The Thai Parliament adopted a new State Enterprises Labor Relations Act.

Employers' activities

Programmes to assist employers in increasing enterprise competitiveness are being jointly organized by ILO and the national organizations of employers in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. An Employers' Confederation of Thailand workshop was held in July 1998 and a series of workshops on developing and implementing productivity improvement programmes was scheduled in several parts of the Philippines and Indonesia in late 1998 and early 1999. A subregional training workshop for employers' organizations in selected Asia-Pacific countries was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in February 1999.

Workers' activities

ILO contributed to a subregional workshop on women, young workers and their families in East and Southeast Asia, held in Bangkok inJuly 1998. A workers' education project in Indonesia got underway at the end of 1988. Another project to assist workers and their organizations, funded by Denmark, covers Indonesia, Thailand and VietNam. These projects develop the capadty of trade unions to defend workers' interests and become capable negotiating partners in time of economic crisis.

Industrial relations 

With support from Japan, ILO's multi-disciplinary advisory teams in the region have tailored a programme to constituents' needs in adapting their industrial relations systems to the challenges posed by globalization, the financial crisis and its aftermath. National tripartite seminars have offered analysis and have stimulated policy debate in India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam in recent months. The need to build strong industrial relations institutions at the national level has been central to these seminars' themes. The financial crisis has shown that strong and representative institutions providing a forum for social dialogue can be instrumental in finding alternatives to job losses, in an equitable sharing of the costs of the crisis, and in building consensus for needed reforms.

Child labour

ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) arranged expert group meetings in Thailand and Indonesia in March 1998. Proposed measures included better targeting of poverty alleviation and employment creation programmes to vulnerable groups, especially female-headed households and those at risk of redundancy. Above all, access to education needs to be guaranteed to all children. A study on the effect of the crisis on working children is being conducted in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, in collaboration with employers' and workers' organizations.

Gender issues

A Japan-funded regional programme on the employment of women has been launched in Indonesia and Nepal to assist member States in promoting action to improve the quantity and quality of women's employment through country-based activities. ILO and the Asian Institute of Technology are carrying out a joint research project on the gender dimension of the crisis in East and South-East Asia. Studies on Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand are nearing completion.

Enterprise Development

Several new global and regional ILO programmes address the employment effects of the crisis and are expected to cover a number of countries in the region:

* ILO-ASSIST Asia-Pacific, funded by the Danish Government, was launched in May 1998. The programme promotes sustainable employment in construction and infrastructure through labour-based technology and fair working conditions. Activities have been formulated in Indonesia and Thailand.

* ILO's International Small Enterprise Programme (ISEP) encourages policies and programmes to create sustainable and productive jobs in small- and medium-sized enterprises within the framework of comprehensive national employment programmes.

* A Belgian-funded ILO programme, Strategies and Tools against Social Exclusion and Poverty (STEP), promotes the development of grass-roots level social protection for informal sector and rural workers. Priority is given in East and South-East Asia to developing mutual organizations for health care and retirement benefits. The pilot countries are Indonesia, Nepal, Mongolia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Point of View: Sri Lanka ... has not been significantly affected by the Asian financial crisis. However, in recent months, there has been a softening of export prices and increased competition from regional producers, and this has resulted in a slowing of the economy. At present, foreign aid accounts for approximately 50 per cent of the Government's capital expenditure. Aid from bilateral donors, except Japan, has reduced significantly during the recent past. The sharp decline in aid is mainly due to difficult economic conditions in the donor countries and resultant cut-back in their aid budgets and increased claims on the aid resources by the recipient countries. Government access to the concessional funding is likely to diminish in the foreseeable future. In this declining aid scenario, the Government has embarked on a programme to tap financial resources from the semi-concessional sources of funding and from private sources to meet the Government's emerging essential investment needs. Sri Lanka has received assistance from the United Nations Development Programme to prepare guidelines for mobilizing funds from commercial sources and formulate a debt policy and a borrowing strategy by reviewing current debt indicators and implications of tight credit, export financing and commercial borrowing. Furthermore, the Government has taken several steps to improve the private foreign investments to promote economic growth and to support poverty reduction by absorbing surplus labour and driving wages and productivity upward. --Social Implication of Financial Crisis: Resource Mobilization and National Local Cooperation, by A. Abeygunasekara, External Resources Department, Colombo, Sri Lanka.