Thaksaporn

ASEAN Poverty

Sirichanyaphong

Due to the fact that most of the countries in South East

Asia are still developing and some are underdeveloped, they

decided to cooperate as a group in order to accelerate the
economic growth, promote regional peace, and provide
assistance to each other. Therefore, the association of

Southeast Asia Nation or ASEAN was established. However,

there are still a lot of problems that havent been solved and
poverty is one of its main problems. The common problems

identified by the committee, which are related to the poverty,

are natural disaster, prostitution, and land grabs.

There are several causes, which affect the countrys

condition and have played a role in causing the problems

such as lack of jobs, unequal distribution of development to

the rural areas, and incompetent government. However, these

causes are related to each other, affecting and linking like a
chain. For example, the problem of grabbing agricultural

lands in Laos due to the foreign investment project between

the government and private company and inefficient

governmental management. At first the corporation persuades

the farmers by promising them prosperity. As the lands are
given to companies but the government cannot provide an

efficiency solution to take care the people who used to live in

those lands, it destroys rural peoples livelihoods. When

people have no land, they have no job, no food and no

incomes so it affects in higher mortality rate. Apart from that,
in some countries like Thailand, people have no job to do
because of the drought. The jobless problem leads poor

people to find another way to earn money such as sending

their daughters to prostitute themselves, causing the

prostitution problem. Although there is the law assigned to

control the prostitution, but when people and their family
have nothing to eat, they have no choice. Moreover,

sometimes the poverty is also caused from the natural

disaster. Natural disaster can lead people into the poverty

condition in such a short time; it brings a huge damage to

peoples lives and properties and also the shortage of food.

However, even the government cannot stop the natural

disaster, but they can reduce a risk of damage by providing a

good secured warning of the disaster and prepare aids for
people.

In my opinion, the solution to these issues is to start

improving and caring about the poor people mostly in rural

area of the country. As you can see that the development and
growth in almost every country in the world are happened in

only the city while the poverty is found in the rural area. The
government tries to improve populations quality and brings

up the technology in mainly the urban area; the development

slowly expands to outside. Most of the money is used to

carry on the investments instead of promoting agriculture,
even though most of populations in Asian countries are

farmers, workers, agriculturists or fishermen. Moreover, the

problem is trigger worse since the government takes many

lands from these farmers to industrial uses such in Laos. In

addition, to solve the problems the government should

provide people more alternative jobs and improve the rural

community.

However, to make sure that a far rural area will have an

equal distribution and development is not easy as long as

there is still a corruption and inefficiency of governmental

management. Since the challenges of solution to be executed

are the farness of distance and the corruption. Some regions
are very hard to approach, manage and develop because of

the distance and topography. Also, even the money and aids
are sent to improve community but it is hard to ensure that
the money reaches there or not.