ASIAN YOUTH AT RISK: EPIDEMIC SMOKING, PREMARITAL SEX AND YOUNG MARRIAGES

Date: 11-21-2001

The East-West Wire is a news service provided by the East-West Center in Honolulu. For more information, contact Susan Kreifels at 808-944-7176 or EastWestWire@EastWestCenter.org.

"Asian Youth at Risk" Conference Nov. 26-29. Taipei ***PRESS CONFERENCE TIME CHANGE A news conference will be held at 3 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 26, at The Grand Hotel in Taipei, the conference site. The entire conference is open to the media and briefs of the research papers being presented will be available to journalists.

HONOLULU (Nov. 21) - Smoking among youth has reached epidemic proportions in some Asian countries. Premarital sex is common among young men but is rare among young women in the Philippines. And among married youth in Indonesia and Nepal, most who think they married too young did it because of their parents.

These are some of the findings that will be discussed at a four-day conference in Taipei sponsored by the East-West Center in Honolulu. The conference will look at risk-taking behavior among adolescents and the most effective programs now in place. Findings will be presented from the Asian Young Adult Reproductive Risk (AYARR) research project, which examined the most important and reliable large-scale youth surveys taken in recent years in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.

"The conference is of critical and strategic importance because this is a new and controversial area of research in Asia," said Corazon Raymundo, professor at the Population Institute, University of the Philippines. "At the same time the research is dealing with dearly held traditions in the Asian cultures."

The conference, titled "Asian Youth at Risk: Social, Health, and Policy Challenges," will bring together some 75 experts on adolescent behavior, policymakers, youth program managers and NGO and government representatives from Asia and the United States. Raymundo said this is the first time researchers and policymakers in Asia have come together to discuss such critical and sensitive issues such as adolescent sexuality and reproductive health.

Alarm has spread throughout Asia about the growing social changes influencing youth and the increase in harmful risk-taking behavior among adolescents, according to East-West Center population and health experts Peter Xenos and Minja Kim Choe, who organized the conference. The problems will continue to grow as Asia sees a significant increase in its young population and as economic development offers more potentially dangerous choices.

More than a dozen Asian countries will report on risk-taking behavior among their youth stemming from new drugs, delayed marriages and greater freedom. Presentations will also deal with drinking and drug-taking, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and the smoking epidemic among Asian youth.

In addition to the six AYARR project countries, presentations are expected from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, South Korea, Japan, Jordan, and the United States.

For conference information check http://www2.eastwestcenter.org/ayarr2001. Direct inquiries to Peter Xenos or Minja Kim Choe at xenosp@hawaii.edu, mchoe@hawaii.edu or ayarr2001@eastwestcenter.org

Corazon Raymundo can be reached at craymund@psdn.org or Manila 632-920-5402.

This is an East-West Wire, copyright East-West Center