Southeast Asian Campaign Tour against globalisation

RESIST GLOBALIZATION!
We Demand Women Workers Rights!

A campaign tour to the different South East Asian countries affected by the recent economic crisis was conceived as our South East Asia subregional program for this year. A delegation of 13 women workers and organizers from the 5 Southeast Asian countries covering Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, The Philippines,Singapore, participated in the tour. They shared their experiences and views on the recent Economic Crisis and Globalization, how these have affected their lives and what they are doing to cope as well as resist against it.

We, as CAW, are initiating, facilitating and organizing with the active support & participation of our network groups, this campaign up to the end of the year 2000. It began with the SE Asia Campaign from Feb 24th - March 10, 1999.

The SE Asia Campaign started with a Leadership Training Workshop of 4 days in Malaysia, hosted by the Women Development Collective, Malaysia. The workshop closed with a Press Conference in Kuala Lumpur, on the 27th Feb, with the public launch of the campaign and the tour. Press statements prepared by the workshop was distributed widely.

This was followed by a tour to Manila and Zamboanga, of thePhilippines to meet & exchange with our network as well as contacts there. Apart from meeting these groups and exchange of experiences and struggles, the tour group also joined in pickets at the FTZs. This is especially significant since the Asian economic crisis, for all the affected countries to take stock of things together, at the grassroot level.

The tour then proceeded to similarly, crisis-stricken country in East Asia, Korea, to share with the movement there and exchange our experiences. More importantly, to forge genuine international solidarity between grassroot movements across 2 sub-regions, who are all suffering but also resisting the IMF/WB regime/policies.

In the March 8 activities organized in Seoul jointly by Korea Women Workers Association United( KWWAU), Korean Confederation of Trade Union (Women's Committee) & Federation of Korea Trade Union, the tour team was able to participate as a delegation to take the campaign message from various countires to the movement there. The visit in Korea was hosted by the KWWAU as well as Women's Link . During the stay the group also met with other contact groups. (Details of the campaign is given in the paper edition.)