Day: February 9, 2022

The European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are pleased to announce the opening of the call for applications for the 2nd edition of the EU-ASEAN Young Leaders Forum, “Scenarios for the Future of EU-ASEAN Relations” #EUASEANYOUTH2022.

 

Young people represent more than 30% of the European population and 34% of ASEAN population. 2022 will be designated as the Year of Youth both in the EU and ASEAN and this Forum will bring together young leaders of both regions to connect with an impressive global network of policymakers, diplomats, international development experts, entrepreneurs, and other inspiring leaders.

 

On this occasion, EU Ambassador to ASEAN Igor Driesmans said: “In 2022, the EU and ASEAN mark the 45th anniversary of their partnership. Over these years, EU-ASEAN relations have grown into strong, multifaceted and comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Building on this momentum, we look to the next generation of leaders from across the EU and ASEAN to share their ideas and hopes for the future. With this in mind, the EU is pleased to organise this year, in cooperation with ASEAN, a new edition of the EU-ASEAN Young Leaders Forum”.

 

Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dato Lim Jock Hoi, also said: “As strategic partners, ASEAN and the EU continues to enjoy a long-standing and robust relationship, with cooperation expanding in many areas in the past 45 years. This includes promoting initiatives in strengthening youth engagement and people-to-people connections such as the EU-ASEAN Young Leaders Forum. I believe that the youth should play a larger and meaningful role in building a more participatory, inclusive, sustainable, resilient, and dynamic global community. To foster stronger ties between ASEAN and EU, it is important for the youths of ASEAN and Europe to learn from each other and develop networks for collaboration.”

 

Young people aged 20-35 from the European and Southeast Asian business communities, academia or civil society organisations can submit their candidacy online until 4th March and be part of an exciting programme which will run between March and October 2022. The online application form can be accessed through the following link: https://bit.ly/euaylf22(link is external)

 

The programme will combine online and hybrid sessions, with a series of capacity building programmes run by renowned experts, where youth will develop skills for problem-solving through critical strategic thinking, teamwork, policy research and proposition.

 

Participants will have the chance to make their voices heard by putting forward their proposals and taking part in shaping the future of EU-ASEAN relations. Young Leaders from EU and ASEAN will present a set of strategic policy recommendations to Leaders at the EU-ASEAN 45th Anniversary Summit in late 2022.

 

The Forum is organised in partnership with the ASEAN Foundation, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), College of Europe in Bruges and in Natolin, Asian Vision Institute and the New Horizon Project.

 

 

Source: Delegation of the European Union to ASEAN

Malaysia’s government and business leaders say they are taking steps to stamp out forced labor amid a flurry of U.S. import bans over the rampant abuse of migrant workers making much of the world’s rubber gloves and palm oil.

Labor advocates and analysts, though, say their efforts still don’t go far enough.

Malaysia is the world’s leading supplier of medical rubber gloves and the second largest producer of palm oil, after Indonesia. Both industries draw overwhelmingly on workers from overseas to fill jobs most Malaysians shun because of the low pay, long hours and physical strain.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has slapped import bans on eight of Malaysia’s leading glove makers and palm oil producers — four of them since October — for alleged labor abuses ranging from excessive overtime and withheld wages to debt bondage and physical violence. Six of the so-called Withhold Release Orders are still active, more than for any other country except China.

The Malaysian companies have either promised to investigate the allegations or announced plans to upgrade their employees’ cramped and dingy dormitories, reimburse them for the crippling fees they had to pay job recruiters and other reforms.

The government has taken heed as well. It proposed amendments to the Employment Act in October that would add fines and jail time for those guilty of forced labor abuses, and launched the country’s first National Action Plan on Forced Labor in November aimed at wiping out the practice by 2030. On Jan. 30, Human Resources Minister Saravanan Murugan said he would meet with all the companies facing WROs to discuss what they could learn from the companies that managed to get orders imposed on them lifted.

“I think they’re seeing their stance in the past, of some degree of denialism or dismissing these as just being some kind of foreign intervention that was trying to undermine Malaysia, is not tenable,” said Lee Hwok Aun, who runs the Malaysia Studies Program at Singapore’s Institute for Southeast Asian Studies and follows the country’s migrant labor issue.

But he and others say the government is still taking only half measures.

In an opinion piece for local news outlet Malaysiakini shortly after the government tabled its proposed amendments to the Employment Act in parliament, opposition lawmaker Charles Santiago slammed the bill for going too easy on forced labor. Penalties would max out at about $24,000 and two years in jail.

“To me it is still consistent with a government that cannot resist any more these kinds of legislative and policy changes … but [is] still being very reserved, being very partial in the way that it’s grappling with it,” said Lee.

During the launch of the National Action Plan on Forced Labor in November, the United Nations’ International Labor Organization, which helped develop it, called the plan “a major step towards eliminating forced labor” in the country.

The document lays out a number of ideas and goals for raising awareness of the problem, improving law enforcement and adding or enhancing related laws.

But none of it is binding, and labor activists say it addresses few, if any, of the main problems with Malaysia’s labor laws and policies, including work permits that tie migrants to a specific employer.

“The fact that workers cannot change employers, the fact that there’s systemic corruption, the fact that most of the workers in the country, like millions of workers, are employed by bogus employers who don’t have any legal status, all of these kind of issues that really contribute to forced labor in practice, as opposed to in theory I mean, they’re not even addressed in the action plan,” said independent labor rights advocate Andy Hall, who helped bring many of the alleged abuses against the Malaysian companies facing WROs to U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s attention.

“It’s a pretty document, but … we don’t see any signs of these changes being implemented on the ground,” he added.

The action plan suggests the government “consider” making work permits more flexible but makes no commitments.

Real change, said Hall, will come only when the companies and the government start to hurt from the fallout financially.

“You have media, you have activists, you have unions and civil society. They can all make noise. But … at the end of the day it’s money, it’s brands, it’s investors, it’s buyers that really matter,” he said.

In November, Saravanan, the human resources minister, conceded to parliament that Malaysia’s forced labor woes were starting to hurt foreign investors’ confidence in the country as a reputable supply hub.

Harrison Cheng, Malaysia analyst for international consulting firm Control Risks, agreed. He said U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s sustained focus on Malaysia.

for the past two-and-a-half years was posing “considerable” risk to the country as a draw for foreign investors.

Cheng said some of the firms facing WROs counted on the United States for as much as one-fifth of their exports, and that Britain and Canada have put a hold on imports from some of the same companies while they investigate the forced labor allegations for themselves, adding to their pain.

Whether the pressure leads to meaningful reform, he said, will hinge on not only continued attention from the United States but sustained, and increased, enforcement by Malaysia.

But he warned that Malaysia’s recent run of wobbly governments made the long-range focus something like the national action plan would need to bear fruit look like “a distant prospect.”

The country has seen political defections bring down two governments in as many years. Cheng said another change in government could derail what momentum there is for labor reform.

“There is increasingly a push towards snap federal elections, and a change of administration could result in a change in priorities away from these labor reforms, or at the very least some delays in implementing them,” he said.

 

 

Source: Voice of America

as visited Fiji.  There’s a very good reason for that:  we’re a Pacific nation.  The Pacific part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy is vitally important, and in the category of 90 percent of life is showing up or showing up; but more than showing up, I think you’ll see some very concrete things come out of the visit to Fiji.  I’m not going to get ahead of myself, but we’ll have a few things to talk about when we get there.  So I’m very much looking forward to that.

And then finally, of course, we end up in Hawaii, and there Japanese and Korean counterparts will come together.  We’ve been spending a lot of time – Deputy Secretary Sherman and myself – on trilateral collaboration among the United States, Japan, and Republic of Korea.  This is another opportunity to drive that forward.  There is a very broad common agenda that we have, of course, starting with challenges posed by the DPRK but going well beyond that.  This is an important moment to keep driving that forward.

We’ll also have a chance to spend time with our INDOPACOM commander, Admiral Aquilino, to talk about the work that we’re doing throughout the Indo-Pacific to advance stability, to advance security.

So we’re covering quite literally as well as figuratively a lot of territory.  I’m looking forward also to seeing some of our State Department colleagues who have a hardship assignment in Honolulu when we end the trip.  So that’s what we’re doing.  There’s a lot that’s going to be said at each stop.  We’ll have a chance to talk about specific issues that we’re focused on.

Meanwhile – the last thing I’ll say – even as we’re doing this we will be on the phones, on the video conference with other countries and counterparts, back in Washington, given everything that’s going on in Europe.  And I expect, for example, to be speaking to French, Germans, British colleagues in the coming days, among many others.  So I wanted to leave it at that.

 

 

Source: US State Department

HANOI– Tourist hotspots across Vietnam received some 6.1 million domestic visitors during the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday that ended on Sunday, the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said, yesterday.

 

During the biggest holiday of the year, domestic travellers surpassed the number posted in Dec, 2021, at 5.2 million, bringing over 25 trillion Vietnamese dongs (1.1 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue.

 

Southern Tay Ninh province hosted the largest number of visitors at 595,000, followed by southern Ba Ria-Vung Tau province and central highlands, Lam Dong province.

 

Although Hanoi cancelled festivals and activities over COVID-19 concerns, the Vietnamese capital city recorded 105,000 tourists during the holiday. The visitors were mainly from nearby localities such as northern Bac Giang, Ha Nam and Thai Binh provinces.

 

Vietnam aims to attract 65 million tourists this year, up 150 percent against last year, including five million foreigners, earning 400 trillion Vietnamese dongs (17.6 billion dollars), according to the ministry. It recently proposed the full resumption of inbound and outbound tourism, starting Mar 31, when the country is expected to have completed administering the third shot of COVID-19 vaccines.

 

In 2021, Vietnam hosted just 157,300 international arrivals, plunging 95.9 percent on a yearly basis, mainly due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to its General Statistics Office.

 

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK