Laws: July, 2003 - Number #18

Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association on July 4, 1995 pledged to remove children younger than 14 from factory floors. Since then, some 10,000 children have been removed from apparel factories that export clothes to the US. Apparel employs 1.5 million in the country of 133 million with a per capita GDP of $370 and accounts for 75 percent of Bangladeshi export earnings, about $4.5 billion a year. However, since September 11, 2001, demand for clothing has fallen, and 300,000 apparel jobs have been eliminated.

Critics say that the well-intentioned ban on child labor has made things worse for young girls, many of whom do not go to school, but instead are pushed into harder and more dangerous jobs, including prostitution. In 2005, all restrictions on apparel trade are to be removed, which may help China and India to compete in the global rag trade.

India. The first of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology was established in 1953, and the 50th anniversary of the founding of IIT was held in Silicon Valley; 25,000 IIT graduates are in the US. The IITs are known for excellence; only two percent of the 178,000 applicants each year are accepted. Tuition is now about $450 a year, up from $45 a year in the early 1990s.

Critics allege that the Indian government has diverted resources to the IITs at the cost of primary education, but one advocate of India exporting high tech workers counters that "Brain drain is better than brain in the drain."

American and European families adopted nearly 800 children from India in 2002, but an Indian activist has practically stopped foreign adoptions by arguing that discrimination against women in India prompts poor families to sell their baby girls for as little as $20 each. India's Central Adoption Resource Agency must approve foreign adoptions, and there are allegations that it approves foreign adoptions even if the children in orphanages were bought from mothers.

Pakistan. UNHCR announced plans to move 600,000 Afghanis from Pakistan to Afghanistan in 2003.

President Bush in June 2003 requested $3.1 billion in aid for Pakistan, half for military aid and half for infrastructure, health and education systems to try to address the poverty that Bush sees as one of the root causes of terrorism.