Asia

“Domestic workers face beatings, sexual abuse, non-payment of wages and human trafficking situations. They run the gamut of physical and mental abuse used to control someone and in some households it is a slave owner mentality,” said Human Rights Watch (HRW) Deputy Director in Asia Phil Robertson. “There are enough cases of abuse that there has to be some sort of protective framework for these domestic workers.” To activists and domestic workers celebrating both in Geneva and abroad, the most groundbreaking part of the document is the acknowledgment that domestic work is, in fact, work.  Photo: David Swanson/IRIN

Feeding children has become harder for impoverished families, some of whom can no longer afford to provide a decent meal for them “We can no longer manage to offer our five children even a single decent meal. Prices are too high, I was recently laid off from my factory and now do only odd jobs, earning around Rs. 6,000 [US$70] a month. Almost the entire amount goes on buying food,” Fareed Ahmed, a textile factory worker, told IRIN. Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN