August

"Morocco has adopted a bill approving the Council of Europe's (CoE) Convention 108 for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. Once ratified, Morocco will become the second non-member country of the Council of Europe to accede to Convention 108, following Uruguay. ""The Moroccan Data Protection Authority hopes that ratification will lead to amendments to the Moroccan [data protection] law,"" said Floriane Leclerc, representative for the Association of Francophone Data Protection Authorities (AFAPDP). ""It needs to be modified to reinforce the authority's ability to enforce the law, [and] its financial and functional independence"" Morocco was first invited to accede to Convention 108 on 30 January 2013. Convention 108 is the first legally binding instrument governing data protection, adopted by the CoE in 1981, establishing minimum data protection standards. The CoE is in the process of discussing proposals to modernise the Convention in light of the upcoming changes proposed by the draft EU Data Protection Regulation. Morocco's accession will bring the total number of countries party to the Convention to 47"

"The purpose of POPI is to give effect to the Constitutional right to privacy, by introducing measures to ensure the personal information of ""data subjects"" (including employees) is safeguarded when it is processed by ""responsible parties"" (such as employers). POPI provides conditions for the lawful processing of personal information. It sets out eight core information protection principles and conditions, including accountability, purpose specification, information quality, openness, security safeguards and data subject participation. Employers will have to comply with these principles whenever personal information of employees is collected, stored or used. Certain types of information such as ethnicity and trade union membership are considered 'special personal information'. The processing of such information is prohibited unless it falls within a statutory exception."

The founding members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand), have all experienced remarkable economic growth since the organization was founded in 1967. Singapore alone went from a GDP of $1.3 billion to $239.7 billion in 2011. And while the other original ASEAN countries may not be as prosperous as Singapore, they are enjoying growth rates unheard of in the rest of the world. Malaysia's GDP grew 5.6% in 2012, and Indonesia's grew 6.4%, compared with the United States' 2.2%. However, wages in Southeast Asia (except Singapore) are among the lowest globally. Low wages are leading to increased union mobilization across Southeast Asia, and strikes are increasingly common. Some politicians have responded by establishing higher minimum wages and better worker protections. But what can an American or European HR manager expect when looking to hire in these countries? A lack of skilled labor is the first pitfall. As a result, local workers with the right combination of education and skills are highly sought after, and the competition for them is fierce.