CENTRAL AMERICA: Women Eke Out a Living in Informal Economy

"I've been working in the streets since I was a girl. My parents didn't send me to school, so it's really hard for me to find a job," says Carol Orozco, 31, who forms part of the veritable army of vendors hawking their wares on the streets of Central America.

RIGHTS-BURMA: When Hard Times Hit, Some Children Go to Factories

Fifteen-year-old Cho Cho Thet knows little about the world outside of the garments factory where she works.

SINGAPORE: Migrant Workers’ Families Face Uncertainty Ahead

Instead of spending weekends at shopping malls in this bustling city-state, Rod Luacan and his family now keep themselves busy with activities in church on Sundays.

JAPAN: Calls Rising for Stop to Discriminatory Work Laws

A chorus of calls for changes in discriminatory work laws is spreading across Japan in the aftermath of waves of lawsuits filed by short-contract workers.

URUGUAY: Pulling Small Dairy Farmers Out of Poverty

"The problem is when you're too small, just too small," says Claudia Pérez, a small-scale dairy farmer in Uruguay, glancing to her left, where her pasture ends just 50 metres from her modest rural home.

CHINA: Hard Times Expose Migrants’ Worries about Children

Life for China’s 130 million migrant workers has never been easy. In recent years, however, family life for the ‘liudong renkou’ (floating population) was showing signs of improving – until the financial crisis.

INDIA: Lay-offs from Recession-hit Gulf Lead to New Lives at Home

Domestic worker Beena Joy, 35, came back empty-handed after losing her job in recession-hit United Arab Emirates, but soon found that getting laid-off has given her a happier life back home here in this southern Indian city.

RIGHTS-INDIA: Commonwealth Games: No Medals for Labourers

If medals are being given out for backbreaking labour on miserable wages and impossible working conditions, thousands of migrant workers, slaving to complete stadia and other facilities for the October Commonwealth Games in the Indian capital, will be the champions.

PHILIPPINES: Street Kids Learn to Save in Times of Crisis

Since he dropped out of elementary school, 17-year old Cenen has been making a living for himself driving a borrowed motorised sidecar in the crowded streets of Binondo, a bustling business district in Manila, capital of the Philippines.

U.S.: Immigration Enforcement Prone to Abuses

A little-known programme run by the Department of Homeland Security is using inaccurate databases and functioning "as little more than a dragnet to funnel even more people into the already overburdened" detention and deportation system of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

EGYPT: Minimum Wage Not Enough

A stalemate between labour unions and business associations is preventing Egyptian authorities from setting a minimum wage that could improve the lot of millions of citizens living in poverty.

CHILE: Activists Fear Setbacks Under Rightwing Government

Trade unions and non-governmental organisations in Chile are worried that rightwing billionaire Sebastián Piñera's election as president will mean setbacks in terms of social policy and respect for labour and social rights.

NEPAL: Communities Take Up Cudgels for Forest Conservation

Tired of walking, Shankar Prasad Ghimire, 87, a retired government worker, puts his walking stick aside and takes rest on a vast expanse of lush green land.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Another Kind of Economics Is Possible

Democratising economics as well as politics is essential for ending irrationality and discrimination as part of the struggle for social and environmental justice, said participants at one of the panels of the seminar assessing the World Social Forum's (WSF) first 10 years.

U.S.: Obama Downplays Foreign Policy Agenda in Major Speech

In laying out his priorities for the coming year before a joint session of Congress and millions of viewers Wednesday night, U.S. President Barack Obama made it clear that the focus of administration would be, more than anything else, on domestic issues – and the vital mission of job creation in particular.

LABOUR: Migrant Domestic Workers’ Rights Next on ILO’s Agenda

Po Po has been enduring long hours of hard work, poor pay and abuse within the confines of her employer’s home for the past seven years. Poverty forced her to leave her family in eastern Burma and abandon a university education to work as a domestic helper in Thailand.

LABOUR: North America’s Long Winter of Discontent

In the wake of a blizzard of economic hardship across North America, native land of the financial crash of 2008 and ensuing Great Recession, the shapes of other possible worlds are emerging from the drifts. Some are frozen and dystopian, but others may harbour green shoots of hope.

RECESSION AND RECOVERY: The Lucky Are Unemployed – Part 1

The agreed, if dubious, solution to the financial crisis was to get people and governments - in the richer countries - to borrow more in order to spend more. What is not in doubt is the growing numbers of people who will be able to neither borrow nor spend.

ASIA: As Economy Turns, Turning Off Stimulus Tap Is a Challenge

As the global financial crisis triggered alarms across Asia, Singapore responded with a government programme to aid its vulnerable workforce. The affluent city- state pumped in three billion U.S. dollars in an employment protection programme.

ZIMBABWE: One Million Casualties of Land Reform

The seizure of large commercial farms - almost all white-owned - has continued despite the formation of a unity government in Zimbabwe. The country's farm workers say they are the biggest losers.

PAKISTAN: Home-Based Workers Struggle to Climb Out of Poverty

Razia Khatoon, 36, crouches over a huge wooden frame, her eyes squinting in the dimly lit room inside a squatter settlement in Orangi town in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.