THE PHILIPPINES

(One) calculation places the number of working Filipino children between the ages of 5 and 14 years at 5 million, or 19% of the total force. Of the 5 million working children in the Philippines between 5 and 14 years of age, about 77% live in rural and 23% in urban areas.

Working children mat be found in diverse sectors of the Philippine economy. In the formal sector of the economy children can be found working in the garments, wood-based, and food industries. In the informal sector of the economy, the magnitude of working children is virtually unknown. In this sector, children are mostly found in agriculture, street-vending, in illegal trade such as prostitution, and in domestic or bonded labor.

On the average, children work from 4 to 6 hours a day, earning below 1000 pesos (approx 17.85Us) per month. A significant number do not even get paid since their contribution to the total production efforts of their families are not recognized by employers.

Child labor also takes its toll on the education of the working children. Out of the 70% of the Philippines’ working children who are still able to go to school, half experience problems of high costs of education, distance, and difficulty in catching up with lessons. Working students tend to be chronic drop-outs.

(From IPEC Philippines website)

THAILAND

Thailand is a receiving, sending, and transit country for trafficked men, women and children.

Within the country, people are trafficked from the improvised Northeast and the North to Bannock for labor and sexual exploitation. People who are trafficked are usually the rural poor, and are often from ethnic minorities. A strong risk factor for internal trafficking is the lack of citizenship status for approximately a half million non-Thai-tribe people living in northern Thailand.

As a destination country, Thailand receives trafficked women, children, and men from Myanmar, Cambodia, China, and Laos for labor and sexual exploitation and, in the case of children, to work in begging gangs. Factors contributing to trafficking include poverty and unemployment, migration to seek a better quality of life and the growing sex tourism industry. Thailand is considered one of the major destinations of pedophile sex tourists.

A number of NGOs and individuals have been concerned with issues related to trafficking in persons since the early 1980s. Although Thailand may have a distinct trafficking problem because of numerous political, social, economic, geographic reasons, it also has one of the most active NGO communities on combating trafficking in the world

(From the website www.humantrafficking.org)