|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
SOUTH ASIA
A fair deal for striking teachers
Thousands of teachers across Nepal are calling on its government to strike down provisions of a new bill that they say could undermine their job security and trade union rights.
The Nepal Teachers’ Federation (NTF) — an umbrella organization of various teachers’ unions in the country — staged a nationwide strike last Sept. 20 to oppose the School Education Bill, which seeks to grant local governments the power to recruit, transfer, and demote or promote teachers. It also makes it illegal for teachers to protest.
That they have escalated their protests into a strike — seen to affect an estimated the studies of 7 million students in 34,000 schools across the country — reflected the federation’s frustration with the government, which it accused of “bypassing previous agreements while drafting the bill. It seems it has taken our concerns very lightly,” NTF chairperson Kamala Tuladhar told The Kathmandu Post.
Among others, they demanded that teachers be kept under the aegis of the central government and not under the control of local governments.
The unions argued that granting local units such power would further erode the quality of education in Nepal — already ranked 143rd in the world in terms of human development according to the 2023 Human Development Index — as it could breed nepotism and favoritism in the appointment process.
The protesting teachers also sought higher wages and an end to temporary or contract appointments.
As it is, Nepal’s education system is plagued by the lack of adequate budget and resources for public schools; while its higher education institutions are suffering from poor quality and an exodus of Grade 12 graduates who favor foreign universities.
The federation eventually called off its strike after sealing a six-point deal with the federal government. Among others, they agreed to introduce provisions that would create an expert committee to study the issue of teacher integration and periodic promotion, and to ensure that teachers are not transferred or made to face actions without proper justification.
NORTHEAST ASIA
Surfacing the missing Tibetans
The “worrying pattern” of enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests in Tibet has prompted an international rights group to call on the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to demand the Chinese government to surface these disappeared Tibetans and hold those responsible accountable.
In a statement before the 54th session of the UNHRC in Geneva last Sept. 19, International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) director Kai Muller urged the council to use the upcoming Universal Periodic Review of China to urge the government to “disclose the whereabouts of ‘disappeared’ Tibetans, to end this deeply concerning pattern and to hold accountable those responsible for torture or ill-treatment.”
As of 2023, the group has monitored at least 16 cases of disappeared Tibetans, many of whom went missing after expressing their opinions on government policies. Many of them, Muller said, “face torture and ill-treatment, while their families do not know where they are, what exactly they are accused of, whether they have access to a lawyer or whether they will receive appropriate medical care.”
Some of them are also suspected of having fallen victim to the Chinese government’s so-called “labor transfer” and “vocational training” programs targeting the people of Tibet, which was occupied and ruled by China to stake its claim over the independent state.
In April 2023, a panel of U.N. special rapporteurs reported that these programs, which affected “hundreds of thousands of Tibetans,” were being used to undermine Tibetan identity and to politically indoctrinate them.
It was also found that the Tibetans made to undergo such programs were prevented from speaking their own tongue and discouraged from expressing their religious identity.
Speaking before the council last Sept. 18, Mélanie Blondelle of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights also urged the UNHRC to use China’s upcoming UPR to “make information on labor transfer and training schemes in Tibetan areas publicly available and include provisions that allow Tibetans to opt out of these programs.”
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Upending predatory lending
Stop delaying and start taking steps to remedy the harms inflicted on Cambodians, civil society groups challenged a Dutch social investor and other “impact investors” in the country who continue to fund microfinance institutions (MFIs) linked to human rights violations there.
“Serious human rights violations in Cambodia’s microfinance sector have been escalating for almost a decade while foreign investors have turned a blind eye,” said Naly Pilorge, outreach director for the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO). “[The investors] claim to improve the lives of low-income communities. So we expect them to actually remedy the problems faced by long-suffering borrowers.”
LICADHO, along with Equitable Cambodia (EC) and FIAN Germany, issued this challenge on Sept. 18, shortly after the Netherlands’ National Conduct Point for Responsible Business Conduct (Dutch NCP) said it would proceed with the groups’ complaint against Oikocredit, a global social investor based in the Netherlands.
Oikocredit is one of many “social impact investors”—or those who fund businesses, organizations and industries generally seen as a social good, like renewable energy, healthcare, and education—that invest in Cambodia’s MFIs, which were initially intended to help the rural poor and microenterprises have access to critical banking services, like loans.
Filed in December 2022, the complaint lodged by the groups accused Oikocredit of failing to conduct due diligence on its investments in Cambodia’s MFI sector “despite evidence of harms directly linked to those investments.” Between 2017 to 2022 — at a time when local and international organizations and journalists were sounding the alarm on the debt-driven human rights crisis in the country — Oikocredit continued to invest up to 67 million euros (US$70.8 million) in MFIs.
This crisis was fueled in large part by MFIs receiving direct funding from Oikocredit and whose predatory lending practices have led to coerced land sales, food insecurity. and loss of livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of Cambodian borrowers unable to pay their debt.
In their latest joint report, “Debt Threats,” LICADHO and EC found that MFI loans now far outstripped most Cambodians’ incomes, and that most borrowers were now paying 70 percent of their incomes to settle their loans.
In allowing the complaint against Oikocredit to proceed, the Dutch NCP is expected to facilitate dialogue between the concerned non-profit organizations and the global social investor to explore possible actions.
“We are pleased to see the process is moving forward,” said Vuthy Eang, EC executive director. “It is time for Oikocredit and other ‘social impact’ investors to stop delaying and start taking concrete measures to remedy the harms they have contributed to.”
REGIONAL
Overcoming ‘learning poverty’
When more than half of 10-year-old children in most countries in the region are unable to read and understand age-appropriate text, it’s time for action.
The World Bank’s latest report, “Fixing the Foundation: Teachers and Basic Education in East Asia and Pacific,” highlights the dire reality that now confronts these children in most countries in the region – learning poverty. This has prompted the global organization to challenge governments in East Asia and the Pacific to raise teaching quality and student learning in their countries to compensate for the “learning poverty” exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Specifically, the report called on heads of government and ministries of education to set a vision and to develop credible agendas for reform; for ministries of finance to allocate sufficient resources to enable the implementation of a reform agenda; and for teachers to step up to the new challenges of the digital age.
The report acknowledged that socioeconomic disparities and inequality in some poor- and lower-income countries exacerbate this phenomenon. For example, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Philippines count among eight countries in the region where learning poverty is above 50 percent. In contrast, learning poverty is at 3 to 4 percent in higher-income countries, namely, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea.
“Strong skills cannot be built on weak foundations. And weak skills will not power the productivity growth needed for the transition to high-income status. Empowering teachers, through a combination of training and technology, is key to strengthening basic learning outcomes,” the report said.
Even so, many of the region’s middle-income countries also face “serious challenges” in achieving high teacher quality. For one, the countries’ education systems do not attract the best academic performers owing to poor wages and working conditions; while many teachers have limited knowledge of their subjects.
The World Bank also found that many teachers do not employ effective teaching practices. In Mongolia, the Philippines, Vietnam and some poorer provinces in China, only seven out of every 100 teachers demonstrate highly effective practices.
Still, the report is optimistic that middle-income countries can greatly improve their teaching and student learning by increasing public education spending for the sector—and allocating those resources efficiently.
Currently, several countries in Asia — including Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, China, and Vietnam — spend less than 6 percent of their gross domestic product on education as recommended by the U.N.
“Countries with high levels of learning poverty (such as Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and the Philippines) will need to focus on fostering systemic improvements and supporting all teachers, whereas countries with more moderate levels of learning poverty (such as China, Palau, Thailand, and Vietnam) can take more targeted approaches, focusing on specific challenges such as remedial support for lagging school districts,” the report said.
