Topics & Concerns

Asia is the fastest growing economy in the world. East Asia and the Pacific (including Southeast Asia) registered a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 6.8 percent while South Asia recorded a GDP growth rate of 7.1 percent in 2014. However, the economic growth is not felt at the grassroots level as Asia remains home to the largest population of working poor in the world. Despite the immense wealth created in Asian countries, its unequal distribution is creating highly unequal societies in which only a few prosper while the majority remain poor.

AMRC believes that the situation of the working poor will not change if they depend only on the promises of the neoliberal, trickle-down economic growth model adopted by most Asian countries. The marginalised working poor should themselves be the ‘agents of change’. Their participation and inclusion in decision making processes that could affect their wellbeing, dignity, and rights should be guaranteed.

It is in this overall context that AMRC tirelessly performs its mission of supporting the building of an independent and democratic labour movement in Asia that staunchly fights for the promotion of labour rights and gender equality. Through participatory and empowering interventions like action research, capacity building, networking, and advocacy, AMRC strives to fulfil its mission in its four key programmes:

• Organising the marginalised for social protection
• Monitoring capital mobility
• Occupational safety and health
• Labour rights and gender

In addition, AMRC supports and works closely with networks focused on thematic issues such as the Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV), Asian Roundtable on Social Protection (AROSP), and Asian Transnational Corporations Monitoring Network (ATNC)

Through our publications such as the long-running Asian Labour Update and the newly launched Asian Labour Review, AMRC collates and disseminates analysis on the labour movement in Asia.