Preface

The present report was written as the main technical paper for the ILO's High-Level Tripartite Meeting on Social Responses to the Financial Crisis in East and South-East Asian Countries to be held in Bangkok from 22 to 24 April 1998.

The first chapter documents the severity of the crisis in terms of its macroeconomic impact and briefly discusses its nature and origins. Chapter 2 then traces the social impact of the crisis in the three most severely affected countries, namely Indonesia, the Republic of Korea and Thailand.

The third chapter reviews the policies and programmes that have been adopted so far to contain the social costs of the crisis. A particular concern was to identify needs that were still unmet and ways in which this gap can be narrowed in the short term.

The fourth chapter attempts to draw some lessons from the weaknesses in past policies and institutions that have been revealed by the crisis. It suggests priority areas for policy and institutional reform that need to be addressed immediately in order to overcome the current crisis, to reduce the risk of similar crises in the future, and to improve the capacity to cope with a large and unanticipated rise in unemployment and poverty.

Given the centrality of international labour standards and tripartism to the work of the ILO in general and the important role that standards can play in promoting a socially equitable and harmonious way out of the current crisis, section 4.2 of Chapter 4 is devoted to this topic.

A separate paper on ILO action presents proposals on how the ILO can assist its constituents in the light of the analysis of problems and possible solutions contained in the present report.

Most of the writing for the report was completed in mid-March 1998 and information used in it does not, therefore, go beyond what was available at that time.

4 April 1998.