Crisis in Asia: Young People and Change

After three decades of impressive economic development, Asia is in the middle of an economic crisis. Following a period of sustained growth since the early 1980s, many countries in East and South-East Asia have witnessed substantial slowdowns in economic growth rates. Since the outbreak of the currency crisis of July 1997 in Thailand, the slowdown has turned into an outright recession, affecting other countries across East and South-east Asia. Indonesia, the Republic of Korea and Thailand have entered an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reschedule foreign debt and their economic structures.

The achievements made in the past few decades set standards for other parts of the world. Poverty had been reduced from over 50 percent in the late 1960s to between 5 and around 15 percent in 1996. Dramatic improvements were made in other areas of social well-being, such as food security, education, infant mortality, and life expectancy. Unfortunately, it appears that despite many of those achievements, the countries are again facing some of the challenges of the past: how to fight increasing poverty, unemployment and malnutrition. It is estimated that by the end of 1998, some 80 million Indonesians will need to survive on less than 2,100 calories a day. Millions of people will be roaming the job market for jobs, a phenomenon not known to the present boom-day generations of the three countries.

What has been the response of the three countries so far? In June 1998, the Thai Government announced a "Social Investment Plan" addressing specifically those worst affected by the crisis: the newly unemployed, the urban poor, the elderly, and children. A Social Investment Fund is expected to help develop community-based projects, to be initiated, planned and carried out by the communities themselves, enabling them to be self-sufficient and empowered to deal with the new hardship. In Indonesia, the new administration has yet to present a clear-cut plan of action in the area of social development. However, with the assistance of multilateral agencies, the Kemacatan Development Fund is expected to assist at least 25 million people through a new national education programme and the provision of cash and in-kind grants to various vulnerable groups. In the Republic of Korea, the response so far appears to have been limited to financial sector reform, changes in corporate governance, and other economic reforms. Increasingly however, adjustments will need to be made to rapidly increasing number of unemployed workers in the urban areas of the country.

Youth (defined as those between 15 and 24) are among the groups most seriously affected by the economic crisis. Two key indicators have been the exploding youth unemployment and a reported increase in the number of drop-outs, presumably linked to a rise in the numbers of youths seeking income in the informal sector or rural labour.

More severely, the crisis has had a profound impact on the outlook of finding productive and meaningful employment and education for this generation. It has led to a sense of desperation and frustration among some youth, not able to cope with the hitherto seemingly certain and secure future. As the crisis looms on, this aspect is as yet to be fully appreciated. However, a quick reminder of the large number of youth in the streets of Jakarta and other Indonesian cities demanding a change of government earlier in the year, should be sufficient to illustrate this frustration with the status quo.

As noted above, the three countries in the region have yet to fully operationalize their response to the economic crisis. Moreover, it appears that Governments have so far not been able to develop policies and programmes dealing with the impact of the crisis on youth. An evaluation of any such programmes would at this stage therefore be quite premature.

With the financial assistance of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) and the Evangelische Zentralstelle fur Entwicklungshilfe (EZE) of Germany, ESCAP has, for many years, conducted a large number of training seminars and workshops to train youth leaders and national youth personnel from both the government and NGO sectors. This has led to the development of the "ESCAP HRD Course for Youth Development." This Course is now being offered on a regular basis in selected countries of the region.

Youth leaders have been trained in techniques and tools to increase the participation of young people in community development projects, in decision-making processes in their communities, and in income-generation activities. The activities under this programme have focused on the least-developed countries and those countries in economic transition. However, these activities could fit in any government and non-government-led initiative to tackle the impact of the economic crisis for young people. ESCAP is therefore exploring possibilities to offer the training course to countries affected by the crisis.