There was a lot of press hype and UN-generated publicity about the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) in Beijing and the NGO parallel meeting held in Huairou, one hour from Beijing. The women’s Conference was not the last large UN event in a seemingly endless string of UN conferences, but it just as well could have been. Why such a fuss for a UN event that would probably turn out to be another pointless extravaganza?
EPZs are viewed as union-free zones where workers are exploited and their rights to organise are brutally trampled. But the situation for EPZ workers cannot be truly understood if analysed in isolation of family, society, and the global marketplace. Conditions in the EPZs are a reflection and magnification of universal class and gender problems. Even though women are undervalued in the labour force, their families, governments, and employers benefit from and depend on their low cost (and often free) labour inside and outside the home.
After a decade of promoting foreign investment, Thailand now proclaims itself as Asia’s fifth economic ‘dragon’. Since 1991, the country’s annual GDP growth has been above 7%. For many third-world countries, Thailand’s success story reaffirms the paradigm of the ‘‘NIC’’ model of capitalist development in Asia.
As industrialisation spreads across Asia, waste and toxic hazards accumulate at a disturbing rate and pose a major threat. Many developed nations partially relieve themselves of the burden of toxic waste by exporting undesirable industries and processes to less-industrialised and less-regulated countries. The “grow now, clean up later” approach to development in Asia has established an environmental menace that may haunt the region for decades to come.
Is the ICFTU theory back-to-front? Is the so-called New World Order (NWO) in danger of being ‘killed off at birth by casino capitalism’, as the ICFTU maintains? Yes and no.
For the last six months, columnists and editors for many publications around the world have been trumpeting the break in the Cold War as a historic victory for capitalism, and, they say, democracy. The euphoria has at times reached almost juvenile heights, but more disturbing than that is the fact that it seems blind to reality.