A few years ago, Southeast Asia’s rapidly growing “tiger economies” were the envy of the world. Today, the area is better known for a trio of maladies: ethnic cleansing, burgeoning inequality, and super-exploited labor.
The sorry state of human rights and labor protections in the region has been driven home by three events that captured the world’s attention.
On the high seas, thousands of Rohingya refugees from Burma (also known as Myanmar) found themselves stranded and desperate when neighboring states refused to accept them. In Indonesia, investigators discovered illegal fish factories run by captive migrant laborers. And last May in the Philippines, 72 workers perished in a horrific factory fire.
As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, prepares to integrate the region’s economies by the end of 2015, it’s worth asking what it is these countries will be combining—their markets or their deep-seated social problems?
