With CIDA support, the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) launched a campaign to educate women about the risks involved in overseas work and how to protect their rights.The campaign helped raise national awareness about the plight of women migrant workers. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino women leave the country annually to work in the Middle East or East Asia. They are employed mainly as domestic helpers or "entertainers", which often means they are forced into prostitution.

Sources estimate that up to 800,000 children could be engaged in prostitution in Thailand. Children as young as 12 from poor families in the north and northeast, and from neighbouring Burma, Laos and China are sold by parents or agents into the sex trade. CIDA supports a UNICEF Canada project that helps the Thai government and NGOs reduce child prostitution and rehabilitate young prostitutes.

Thai Girls Taking a Different Path Most of the teenage girls in Lim's village in northern Thailand were taken to Bangkok to work as prostitutes. As part of an ethnic minority, Lim was never recognized as a Thai citizen, so she was not entitled to attend school. A kind teacher let Lim go as far as grade 6, but her family needed her to start earning money. Lim seemed destined to follow her older sister into a brothel. Then Lim received a secondary school scholarship from the Daughters Education Programme (DEP), funded mainly by UNICEF Canada. After finishing secondary school at age 16, Lim was selected by the Pan Pacific Hotel for its Youth Career Development Programme. Lim is now learning accounting and food preparation at the hotel, and intends to work there part-time while studying business administration. Following DEP's example, last year the Thai government provided scholarships to 800,000 girls in northern Thailand who were at high risk of becoming prostitutes.