FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Unemployment & Poverty
Threat To Peace, Security

By Bhuwaneshor Sharma

UNEMPLOYMENT poses a serious threat to peace and security of any nation. Employment is one of the measuring rods of a robust economy. History proves that unemployment invites violence and is risk for peace and security.

Symbol

Unemployment is a symbol of poverty and backwardness. Poverty fuelled by large masses of unemployed people generates a serious economic, social and cultural crisis. Nepal is no exception in this regard. The present crisis is largely the result of poverty and lack of proper employment strategies and opportunities.

A recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) report on World Unemployment paints even more gloomy picture of unemployment in the future. There were no indications of improvements last year. Two years of economic recession has pushed the number of unemployed to new heights worldwide leaving little prospect for improvement in the global situation.

The ILO has estimated that the number of unemployed people worldwide grew by twenty million since the year 2000 to reach a total of 180 million by the end of year 2002.

The report indicates deteriorating employment situation and least chances for recovery are on the cards. Continuation of this trend will dramatically increase the number of unemployed and working poor with its major share in Asia. The bleak situation would have grave consequences for the social and political stability. Prospect of weak and delayed recovery is more disturbing causing serious challenges for political stability, especially in developing countries.

Global economic recession and decreasing employment opportunities will victimise the developing nations like Nepal. The ILO finds that domestic violence and armed conflict have contributed to heightened unemployment and poverty in Nepal. No one denies that unemployment and poverty fomented violence and armed conflict in Nepal. They contribute to each other and intensify insecurity, even causing failure of a political system.

Economic slowdown and unemployment will be a great challenge to meet national and global targets on poverty alleviation. The present rate of unemployment indicates that the UN goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015 won't be possible. At least one billion jobs needed to achieve the UN target and possibility to generate such a big employment market is almost impossible within a decade.
Of 800 million hungry population in the world, Asia Pacific region houses 500 million. Of 500 million in Asia Pacific, 300 million live in the South Asia alone. The figure shows that South Asia has been emerging as a hotspot of poverty, hunger, famine and unemployment. The picture is bleaker with least hope of recovery when coming closer to our region.

South Asia is home to nearly 40 per cent of people earning less than one dollar a day. This shows a worsening employment figure in the region.

There are several reasons behind growing unemployment even in the industrialised nations. The aftermath of the September 11 brought further shocks and amplified the economic down-turn worldwide. Despite, 500 million unemployed men in the Third World, overall unemployment has increased by 6.9 per cent in 2002 against 6.5 per cent in 2001. Unemployment in these countries began to grow soon after the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) suffered a setback in spring 2001 sparking an economic slowdown. And, Asia suffered severely from the bursting of ICT bubble, which cut the export to the industrialised countries.

In addition, weakening confidence among investors brutally exposed the financial fragility of countries in several regions putting many people out of work. Furthermore, international terrorism and growing insecurity within countries gave a hard blow to the employment markets. Hard hit among them remained labour-intensive export oriented sectors such as garment industries, which largely employ women.

International terrorism discouraged tourists' movement. This further caused the decline of tourism industry worldwide. Nepal suffered much from it. As a result, the employment market declined putting many people out of work. Tourism, Nepal's second largest industry, has posed a serious danger to the recovery of wounded national economy.

Armed conflict and domestic violence, as mentioned above, have sent negative messages to international community. The situation has discouraged visitors and investors in Nepal. This has squeezed the possibility of creating employment opportunities in South Asia. Of course, security concerns, poor weather conditions, slowdown in exports and declining tourism revenues worsened the employment situation worldwide especially in the developing regions.

Threats and risks of unemployment are very big. They will challenge peace and security situation in the days to come. Unemployment and poverty will further support the situation because millions of people will go hungry everyday. Hungry people know no morale. Their first priority will be to quench their hunger. Greater unemployment and poverty will put severe pressure on government's budgetary targets given the fragile financial positions of many countries. Terrorism and violence will never be wiped out without food for hungry, jobs for jobless, protection for deprived and justice for victimised.
Lastly, coming to our own nation, the population under poverty has reached from 3.5 million to 5 million in the last decade. The later figure represents 23 per cent of the total population. This is enough to understand unemployment situation of the country. Unbalanced opportunities, rapid population growth and lack of modernisation in agriculture are a few reasons behind this.
Nearly 60 per cent of the world's labour force would be in Asia by 2010, with China alone making one quarter of the global labour force. Thus, the greater part of the jobs that needs to be created by 2010 must come in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the ILO report suggests. "Only through pro-jobs and pro-poor policies can we address this growing employment crisis and place decent work at the heart of economic and social policies," the report says.

Focus

Policy makers should focus on measures to secure and spread the recovery and ensure faster growth for work opportunities. The ILO suggests employment intensive investment. It has stressed promotion of private sector for creating more jobs. Furthermore, policy makers need to focus on reducing the vulnerability of developing countries.

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