BIYAGAMA, Mar 24 (IPS) - Ramani, 26, sits inside her small, dimly-lit boarding house room, cutting vegetables, in this industrial town outside Colombo. She plans to return to her rural village in May to get married.

"Most girls generally work for five years in garment factories and return to their villages to get married,’’ she says.

Thousands of young women, employed in garment factories spread across Sri Lanka, and concentrated in Free Trade Zones (FTZ) in towns like Biyagama, now face an uncertain future due to lowered demand for their products...

Cambodia’s garment exports are declining as a global recession crimps demand in the U.S. and Europe, cutting into an industry that supports a 10th of the Southeast Asian country’s population.

In January, garment exports plunged 25 percent from a year earlier to $185 million, said Mean Sophea, who heads the Commerce Ministry’s Trade Preferences System Department. Over the past decade, they grew at an average pace of 28 percent per year, according to the World Bank... 

For Adam Rice, doing his part to improve working conditions for under-paid laborers in sweatshops is as straightforward as crossing the street.

By Edmund McWilliams

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Jakarta underscores the importance that the Obama administration appears to attach to Asia and to the U.S. relationship with Indonesia. Indeed, a broad-based, mutually beneficial partnership between the United States and Indonesia can and should be one of the foundations of America's 21st century Asia-Pacific strategy.