IRRAWADDY
ISSA 2009.12.22
BANGKOK — When the global financial crisis hit Southeast 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.