BANGKOK — Widespread backsliding on protections of basic rights is taking a toll on Asian economies as growing inequality leaves the poor vulnerable to labor abuses and scams, a report by Human Rights Watch says.
The report released Thursday says many governments in the region have grown more hostile to efforts to protect basic human rights as an authoritarian wave has swept across the world in the past year.
It urges “rights respecting democracies” to form alliances with civil society groups to counter that trend and help to fill a vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal of foreign aid and participation in international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, under President Donald Trump.
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Weakened basic human rights are intertwined with hardships for many in the region. In Afghanistan, forced returns of displaced people plus sharp cuts to foreign aid have left more than 22 million people without enough food, shelter or medical care, the report noted.
Authoritarian governments have outlawed dissent, enabling officials to evade public accountability and undermining the rule of law.
In Indonesia, Indigenous activists and government critics, particularly those opposing mining companies and oil plantations, faced threats and arrests, it said, giving them no recourse against powerful vested interests.
Predatory microfinance lending is another practice that has trapped the poor in indebtedness in places like Cambodia, where Indigenous communities, in particular, have fallen prey to forced land sales and a lack of access to their traditional livelihoods, it said.
Nepal and Bangladesh are among several countries in Asia that rely heavily on remittances from migrant workers who are vulnerable to abuses despite decades of work aimed at protecting them.
The workers often must take out loans at high interest rates to pay recruitment fees and once they arrive overseas face abuses by foreign employers and domestic recruitment agents, including a wage theft, unsafe working conditions and sexual violence, among other violations.
In the wealthy city-state of Singapore, migrant workers are excluded from the country’s Employment Act and limits on working ho