Comparative analysis of bilateral memoranda on anti-human trafficking cooperation between Thailand and three neighboring countries : what do the origin and the destination states agree upon?

In order to prevent, suppress and punish human trafficking, bilateral agreements between origin of victim countries and destination countries are crucial, because their cooperation involves cross-border activities such as repatriation of victims, extradition of criminals and information-sharing. This article analyzes three bilateral legal instruments between The Government of The Kingdom of Thailand and her three neighboring countries, namely The Royal Government of Cambodia, The Government of Lao People's Democratic Republic and The Government of The Union of Myanmar. The analysis will examine the legal status of the victim, the victim as witness in criminal proceedings, the victim protection programs, the recovery and restitution of damages, the process of repatriating the victim, and the prosecution of the criminal.

Rules of Origin and Local Content in East Asia

Rules of Origin (RoO) are an integral part of all trade rules. In order to be eligible for Common Effective Preferential Tariffs (CEPT) under AFTA and similar arrangements under the ASEAN-China FTA, a product must satisfy the conditions relative to local content. The paper tries to calculate local content as well as cumulative local content in East Asian economies, with use of the Asian International Input-Output Tables; it also investigates factors of change in local content by applying decomposition analysis. The paper finds that the cumulation rule increased local content of the electronics industry more significantly than local content of the automotive industry, and the contribution of the cumulation rule increased in the period 1990-2000, due to rising dependency on neighboring ASEAN countries and China.

Rural to Urban Migration: A District Level Analysis for India

Based on the recent census data this paper analyses the district level rural to urban migration rates (both intra-state and the inter-state) among males and females separately. Both the rates are closely associated irrespective of whether the migrants originate from the rural areas within the state or outside the state. This would suggest that women usually migrate as accompanists of the males. Though many of the relatively poor and backward states actually show large population mobility, which is primarily in search of a livelihood, the mobility of male population is also seen to be prominent in the relatively advanced states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. Rapid migration of rural females within the boundaries of the states is, however, evident across most of the regions. The social networks, which play an important role in the context of migration are prevalent among the short distance migrants and tend to lose their significance with a rise in the distance between the place of origin and destination though there are some exceptions to this phenomenon. Besides the north-south divide in the Indian context is indeed a significant phenomenon with a few exceptions of metropolitan cities. As regards the effect of factors at the place of destination, prospects for better job opportunities are a major determinant of male migration. Low castes and minority groups tend to pull migration through network effects. Among females also these effects are evident though with the inclusion of the male migration rate they become less significant. Finally the paper brings out the policy implications.