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]]>International Women’s Day 2015
While there have been many achievements on gender equality since the Beijing Declaration on women rights was signed by 189 governments in 1995, many challenges remain, including a motherhood pay gap.
ILO News | 06 March 2015
In 2015, International Women’s Day will highlight the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a historic roadmap that sets the agenda for realizing women’s rights. White there have been many achievements since then, many gaps remain. Learn more. Source: ILO |
GENEVA (ILO News) – Two decades after the world’s largest gathering of women adopted a far-reaching agenda for advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment, women are only marginally better off with respect to equality at work.
“Are working women better off today than they were 20 years ago?” asked ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. “The answer is a qualified yes. Has this progress met our expectations? The answer is decidedly no. We need to be innovative, to reframe the debate and to intensify the focus on ensuring the rights of women at work, and promoting gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.” (See ILO Director-General’s statement )
Progress in realizing the Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 has been mixed, the ILO said in a briefing note prepared for International Women’s Day .
At the same time, the ILO also published a new working paper on the “motherhood pay gap” that imposes a wage penalty often over and above the wage gap already experienced by women worldwide. According to “The motherhood pay gap: A review of the issues, theory and international evidence ”, mothers often earn less than women without children, depending on where they live and how many children they have.
Some progress, many challenges
In terms of policy, legislation, and the ratification of international labour standards, there has been notable progress. For example, in 1995, 126 ILO member States had ratified the Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100) and 122 had ratified the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111). Those numbers are now 171 and 172 respectively.
Yet women continue to experience widespread discrimination and inequality in the workplace. In most parts of the world, women are often in undervalued and low-paid jobs; lack access to education, training, recruitment; have limited bargaining and decision-making power; and still shoulder responsibility for most unpaid care work.
Globally, the gap in labour market participation rates between men and women has decreased only marginally since 1995. Currently about 50 per cent of all women are working, compared to 77 per cent of men. In 1995, these figures were 52 per cent and 80 per cent respectively. It is estimated that reducing the gap in participation rates between men and women by 25 per cent in G20 countries by 2025 would add more than 100 million women to the labour force (See G20 Leaders’ Communiqué from Brisbane Summit).
Access to maternity protection has improved, though many women are still left out. While the percentage of countries offering 14 weeks or more maternity leave has increased from 38 per cent to 51 per cent, more than 800 million women workers globally, or 41 per cent of all women, still don’t have adequate maternity protection.
At the same time, states are increasingly recognizing men’s care responsibilities (See Maternity and paternity at work: Law and practice across the world – 2014 ). In 1994, 28 per cent of countries surveyed provided some form of paternity leave. As of 2013, this figure had increased to 47 per cent.
Today women own and manage over 30 per cent of all businesses, but tend to be concentrated in micro and small enterprises. Women sit on 19 per cent of board seats globally, and only five per cent or less of the CEOs of the world’s largest corporations are women.
While men are beginning to take on more care responsibilities, women continue to shoulder most of the responsibility for family care, often limiting their access to paid employment completely (See Global Wage Report 2014/15), or confining them to part-time positions, which are typically not as well paid. For example, in the European Union (EU), women spend an average of 26 hours per week on care and household activities, compared with nine hours for men (See Progress on equality between women and men, European Commission, 2013).
Violence remains a major factor undermining women’s dignity and access to decent work. Some 35 per cent of all women are victims of physical and/or sexual violence that affects their attendance at work.
A gender pay gap persists, both for women with and without children. In general, women earn on average 77 per cent of what men earn, with the absolute gap widening for higher-earning women. The ILO has noted that without targeted action, at the current rate, pay equity between women and men will not be achieved before 2086, or at least 71 years from now (See Equal pay, An Introductory Guide, ILO, 2013).
In addition, the ILO says it appears that the unadjusted motherhood gap tends to be larger in developing than developed countries. Globally, the motherhood pay gap increases with the number of children a woman has; in many European countries, for example, having one child has only a small negative effect, but women with two and especially three children experience a significant wage penalty. In developing countries, evidence suggests that the sex of the child may matter as daughters may be more likely than sons to help with household and caring tasks, thereby reducing the motherhood gap.
“The overriding conclusion 20 years on from Beijing is that despite marginal progress, we have years, even decades to go until women enjoy the same rights and benefits as men at work,” said Shauna Olney, Chief of the Gender, Equality and Diversity Branch of the ILO.
“The ILO has launched the women at work centenary initiative to accelerate its efforts to support global action to meet this challenge and deliver on the transformative agenda on gender equality and women’s empowerment called for in the proposed UN Sustainable Development Goals. This change won’t happen organically. It requires specific, targeted, and courageous policy interventions.”
For more ILO information on International Women’s Day 2015 please click here.
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]]>Poverty pushes a high number of children in Kosovo* to drop out of school and enter child labour as early as 10 years old. The ILO supports efforts of Kosovo’s public institutions and social partners to eliminate child labour, with an emphasis on its worst forms.
Feature | 09 February 2015
PRISTINA (ILO News) – Sevdije Morina, a mother of five, lives in the Kosovar village of Vrajak. The children help her with the hard farm work – harvesting onions and grapes.
“I was forced to stop sending them to school so that they could work more in the fields and the vineyard,” Morina explains.
The children often handle pesticides and dangerous tools. “There have been cases when we’ve been injured when hoeing. And once I cut my hand with an axe,” recalls her 12 year-old daughter Haxhere. “Since we did not have a car or other transportation, we had to walk the six kilometres from Vrajak to Ratkoc to take the children to hospital,” Sevdije Morina adds.
Morina and her four siblings are not the only children in Kosovo who do hazardous work instead of going to school and enjoying a normal childhood.
Risking their health and lives
Coming from poor families, some of them have to start to work as early as the age of 10. Working on a garbage dump or in agriculture, they risk their health and even their lives. For many of them, combining school and work is a major challenge.
Behxhet Gaxhiqi, Advisor on Social Issues to the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, recognizes the problem: “Because of how it is carried out, child labour harms or abuses the child and deprives him or her of the right to education.”
“Child labour harms or abuses the child and deprives him or her of the right to education.” |
Behxhet Gaxhiqi, Advisor on Social Issues to the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare |
For dozens of children collecting waste at a local dumpsite
in Koshtova, a small village pn the outskirts of the town of
Mitrovica, working conditions may be even more difficult than
for Morina and her children.
They often hurt themselves when they collect the garbage
or run to meet a new truck arriving at the dumpsite. They
rush because the winner of the race takes all and can fill his
or her bag alone. Everybody accepts this tacit agreement to avoid fights between the children.
Labouring at a dumpsite
Labour activist Labinot Berisha has been personally involved in the activities of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, which in cooperation with NGOs, tries to help these children. “What touched me most was that working at the dumpsite had become a daily routine for these children,” he says.
Other children work in the streets, either begging or selling goods. “Police come across cases of children working in the streets, particularly if it is work linked to illegal activities,” says Avni Zahiti, a police officer in Mitrovica.
But the police officers are not the only cause of stress for these street children. They also face psychological pressure from their families to bring home a certain amount of money.
“One of the main problems children face is stress. Accumulated throughout the years, this leads to insomnia, learning problems and even more serious disorders, including depression,” explains Natyra Agani, a psychologist in Pristina.
Working children cannot wait for better times
Despite these problems, the ILO and the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare try to find quick and adequate solutions.
“The fact that child labour is closely related to poverty and high unemployment in a country should not give us the comfort of focusing our efforts on long-term action to eradicate poverty and reducing unemployment – assuming that child labour will be eliminated in the long run too,” says Lindita Boshtrakaj, the ILO’s National Programme Manager for the child labour project in Kosovo.
“Child labour is an unacceptable way of providing financial support to a family,” |
Lindita Boshtrakaj, the ILO’s National Programme Manager |
“There are many children in hazardous work and they cannot wait that long. This is why immediate action is needed to protect these children.”
“Child labour is an unacceptable way of providing financial support to a family,” she adds. “Public authorities, communities and families all have their share of responsibility in fighting these abuses and they should act on these responsibilities.”
So far, the project has led to the formulation of the Kosovo Action Plan (KAP) for Prevention and Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL). The idea is to strengthen the response of public authorities, and workers’ and employers’ organizations to address child labour and raise awareness in communities and families.
The Administrative Instruction 05/2013 on the Prevention and Prohibition of Hazardous Child Labour in Kosovo was approved in July 2014. It contains the updated Hazardous Child Labour List drafted with the help of the ILO.
Since March 2013, members of the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce (KCC) are obliged to observe the ILO’s four fundamental labour principles, including the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, and the elimination of child labour, forced labour and discrimination at work.
Preventing child labour
The Chamber of Commerce, with ILO support, prepared reports on the situation of child labour in companies and in their supply chains in agriculture, construction, extractive industries and collection of scrap metal. The reports were used to mobilize members of the KCC to take effective measures to prevent child labour.
“When it comes to the welfare of the child, we can never say that we have done enough.” |
Behxhet Gaxhiqi |
As a result, forty members of KCC adopted codes of conduct on combating child labour in their supply chains and communities, while the KCC itself has approved its Strategy for Prevention and Elimination of Child Labour 2014-2020.
In addition, occupational safety and health issues will be mainstreamed into the compulsory education (grades 8-9) and upper secondary school curricula. A curriculum on occupational and safety issues was prepared with ILO support and approved by the Ministry of Education Science and Technology.
It will start to be taught in the new school year 2015-2016. Advice to farmers about hazardous child labour in agriculture was also included in the training modules of agriculture advisory services provided by the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Rural Development.
Meanwhile, all actors in Kosovo agree that there is still much to be done in the fight against child labour.
“When it comes to the welfare of the child, we can never say that we have done enough,” concludes Behxhet Gaxhiqi, from the ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. “Further work and additional resources will be needed to scale up interventions to withdraw children from the worst forms of child labour.”
* As defined by UN Security Council Resolution 1244, hereafter named as “Kosovo”.
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World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2015
News – 22 January 2015
Which sector will create the most jobs? |
GENEVA (ILO News) – The greatest single source of new jobs will be found in private sector services, such as business and administrative services, and real estate, according to the latest ILO World Economic and Social Outlook.
These and related industries will employ more than a third of the global workforce over the next five years.
Public services in health care, education and administration will continue to be a major source of employment. While increasing at a slower pace, they will still represent 15 per cent of total employment.
In contrast, the report said that industrial employment is expected to stabilize globally at slightly below 22 per cent.
“Service sector employment will remain the most dynamic with respect to job creation in the next five years.” |
Raymond Torres, ILO Research Department |
This is because the pace of job creation in the construction sector will decline in comparison to the period 2010-2013, although it is expected to remain above 2 per cent per year on average. Employment levels in manufacturing, meanwhile, will remain largely unchanged over the next 5 years and will account for only 12 per cent of all jobs in 2019.
“Service sector employment will remain the most dynamic with respect to job creation in the next five years,” said Raymond Torres, head of the ILO Research Department.
The shift of employment to services and the decline in manufacturing means a significant change in the skills demanded by the labour market.
“There will be a hollowing out of jobs needing medium levels of skill for routine tasks that can be automated,” Torres explained.
Individuals who once occupied these jobs will need to acquire new skills or instead face the prospect of competing for jobs at the lower end of the skill spectrum.
There is also growing demand for jobs that require face-to-face interaction, such as in health and personal services. This signals the emergence of a large care economy.
The global trends show significant regional variations, with medium-skilled jobs disappearing in advanced economies at a faster pace than is the case in emerging and developing countries.
This polarization between higher and lower-skilled jobs is having a direct impact on labour incomes. The increase in jobs at both the lower and upper ends of the skills ladder, at the expense of those in the middle, has and will continue to contribute to widening income inequality.
Employment shifts also affect consumption and poverty levels. The number of routine jobs, such as machine operator or assembler has decreased in many countries, raising concerns over the role of manufacturing in helping workers to escape poverty.
Without manufacturing jobs, opportunities for rural workers to improve their employment situation will be scarce.
Higher-skilled occupations are not accessible to those who lack formal education and have not opportunities for training.
“These trends highlight the role of policies to help enterprises and workers seize the opportunities associated with new technology, while at the same time breaking barriers for moving up the economic and social ladder, especially for women,” Torres concluded.
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For more information on the International Labor Organization (ILO) click here to visit their website.
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]]>Dec 5, 2014 Global wage growth stagnates, lags behind pre-crisis rates.
Please click here to be redirected to the link to the ILO special portal on the ILO Global Wage Report 2014/15. The portal includes the report, executive summaries and press releases. Videos and interactive charts are also available.
Global Wage report 2014/15 |
Gender pay gap widens for higher-earning women>
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]]>© Cao peng / Imaginechina 2014 |
The global tide against forced labour is rising and we have seen significant progress in ending this scourge. But the job isn’t done yet, because modern slavery still is, unfortunately, big business and millions are suffering.
The ILO estimates that forced labour generates illicit profits of US$ 150 billion every year. About two thirds of those profits are made from exploitation — mainly of women and children — in the sex and entertainment industry.
But slavery also brings profits to unscrupulous employers in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, mining, domestic work and other sectors which harbour the majority of those subjected to forced labour.
And it knows no geographical boundaries, touching lives in the North and South alike.
Headway has been made in the form of stronger laws and policies. Workers have joined forces and organized themselves in sectors where forced labour persists. Companies have taken action to eliminate forced labour from their supply chains. And there is a growing movement of citizens who call for an end to the suppression of and discrimination against their fellow-citizens.
Since the ILO called for a Global Alliance against Forced Labour in 2005, the worldwide movement against this inhuman practice has grown day by day. Leaders from governments, business, trade unions, the arts and the media have stood up and taken action.
But we need to do more.
We need to tackle the socio-economic root causes of modern slavery, such as traditional land tenancy systems, as well as unregulated labour sourcing and recruitment practices. We need to improve the lack of access to education and skills for people who live in poverty and suffer discrimination. We must fight the oppression of workers who seek to join trade unions. And we must ensure stronger law enforcement to stop human trafficking once and for all.
In June 2014, representatives of governments, workers and employers from the tripartite ILO’s 185 member States overwhelmingly supported the adoption of new legally binding standards against forced labour. The Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) and its supplementary Recommendation No 203 proclaim new obligations and provide guidance to secure the effective eradication of forced labour, trafficking and slavery-like practices.
We call on governments to ratify the new Protocol rapidly and to step up action at home and abroad.
We call on workers’ and employers’ organizations – actors in the real economy –to strengthen their action against forced labour.
And we call on all who are striving for this goal to support the ILO’s Global Alliance against Forced Labour.
Looking ahead, let us also ensure that the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals include strong commitments to eradicate all forms of slavery and forced labour of adults and children.
Today, as we focus on eradicating contemporary forms of slavery, we reaffirm our commitment to end these practices in word and deed once and for all. We owe this to future generations and, most urgently, to the millions of women, men and children who are denied the right to live and ultimately work in freedom, dignity and equality.
Let us all join forces to end slavery in the 21st century.
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]]>
Posted on November 28, 2014, by the International Labor Organization (ILO)
Benjamin Smith, Senior Officer for Corporate Social Responsibility International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour |
The importance of employers in the worldwide movement against child labour has never been clearer. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights, including a child’s right to be free from child labour, is now widely recognized. Today, companies that don’t have a policy against child labour are outside the mainstream.
The challenge is to ensure that policy commitments achieve results — and this requires action on the ground, in workplaces and communities. I was in Blantyre, Malawi recently to train a company’s agronomists on combating child labour in agriculture. Every day, these agronomists — who are mostly young men and women — travel huge distances over rough terrain on Honda 125 motorcycles, visiting farms to advise farmers on when to plant, what fertilizers work best and when to harvest.
An upcoming meeting at the ILO looks at the challenges of helping companies identify obstacles in implementing child labour principles in supply changs. Find out more. |
Now they were being trained to watch out for child labour on farms, which mostly involves the children of farmers themselves, and to work with the farmers to find solutions.
After the training I asked one young agronomist what she thought, guessing that combating child labour was not what she signed up for when she took the job. Far from considering it a burden and one more task to be carried out during her visits, she told me that working to eliminate child labour was crucial, and that it would benefit the farmers and their families, as well as her company.
It was gratifying to hear her answer, and it bodes well for the company’s efforts to eliminate child labour in its supply chain. Providing training and other support to farmers, such as paying fair prices for crops, is an example of how companies can embed their policies against child labour into their core business.
What is the extent of a company’s responsibility? How can it ensure that it has the right policies and procedures in place to prevent child labour in its supply chains and take the necessary action if it occurs?
The challenge is tougher for companies that lack such an ability to directly influence the lowest parts of their supply chain. Supply chains are getting longer and more complex all the time. What’s more, child labour is concentrated in the informal economy and when suppliers sub-contract production to unregulated, informal enterprises it becomes much more likely that child labour may be involved.
In this complex context, what is the extent of a company’s responsibility? How can it ensure that it has the right policies and procedures in place to prevent child labour in its supply chains and take the necessary action if it occurs? How can it coordinate with other companies to share experiences and accelerate change in its industry? And how can it work with governments to support lasting solutions?
While it’s relatively straightforward for a company to ensure its direct suppliers don’t use child labour, making the same guarantee for other suppliers down the line can be much more difficult. |
These are some of the questions that companies put to the ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour. They ask for guidance to ensure that their policies are aligned with ILO Conventions and that their practices are effective in preventing and eliminating child labour.
One of the ways that we have responded is through the Child Labour Platform (CLP). This Platform, which operates under the auspices of the UN Global Compact Human Rights and Labour Working Group, brings companies, employers’ organizations, trade unions, ILO experts and others together for frank and open exchanges of experience about what works and what doesn’t.
It helps companies identify obstacles, but also good practices and solutions to overcoming hurdles. An ambitious research programme delves into some of the central challenges, such as age verification and child labour monitoring.
The next meeting of the CLP will take place on 4-5 December in Geneva and is open to all companies interested in learning about state-of-the-art approaches to due diligence around child labour.
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]]>Joint ILO MPI reports
Press release | 18 November 2014
©Kirill Kudryavtsev / APF / AFP 2014 |
WASHINGTON and GENEVA — Against a backdrop of aging populations and persistently low economic growth, few European governments are doing enough to help recent immigrants move from low-skilled precarious jobs and into decent work, says a new report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and International Labour Organization (ILO).
The report, Aiming Higher: Policies to Get Immigrants into Middle-Skilled Work in Europe, shows that while some countries have made sizeable investments in labour market integration policies over the past decade, they have focused primarily on getting immigrants into work. As a result, these policies have struggled to facilitate career progression over time.
“Europe’s demographic prospects make clear that countries can ill afford to squander the potential of their residents” |
Europe’s demographic prospects make clear that countries can ill afford to squander the potential of their residents”
“Europe’s demographic prospects make clear that countries can ill afford to squander the potential of their residents — wherever they come from,” said MPI President Emeritus Demetrios G. Papademetriou. “While some countries have given significant priority to labour market integration policy in recent years, much less attention has been paid to the quality of their jobs, and immigrant progression into middle- and high-skilled work lags substantially.”
“As our findings demonstrate, despite some promising innovations in some countries there is clearly no quick fix to the problem of immigrants stuck in low-skilled work or unemployment,” said Christiane Kuptsch of the ILO. “However, strengthening employment and migration policy coherence could yield significant benefits for migrant workers, employers and labour markets.”
The employment gaps between native and foreign-born workers not only persist but have widened since the onset of the global economic crisis, with particularly significant effects on women, migrants who come on a visa other than a work visa and immigrants from outside the European Union.
While Europe has experienced considerable immigration over the last 25 years from within and beyond the continent, a majority of immigrants were not selected for their skills and instead arrived through humanitarian channels or as part of family reunification. Many who came with sought-after skills found work with ease, particularly during the economic boom of the mid-2000s. But many newcomers have struggled to progress out of the lowest-skilled jobs into stable, middle-skilled positions, in some cases despite having substantial qualifications and experience.
The report is the result of a research initiative that was carried out by MPI in collaboration with the ILO and with funding from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. It examines the labour market progression of recent immigrants in six EU countries (Czech Republic, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) and analyzes policies related to integration and workforce development, with a focus on public employment services and language and vocational training.
The publication sketches the difficulty foreign-born workers face in gaining a secure foothold in the labour market during their first decade after arrival, with many experiencing lengthy periods of unemployment, inactivity or stagnation in low-skilled work.
Written by analysts Meghan Benton, Madeleine Sumption, Kristine Alsvik, Susan Fratzke, Kuptsch and Papademetriou, the report also examines strategies to address the labour market integration of immigrant workers in Europe—including programmes targeted directly at immigrants and mainstream services available to the whole population.
While targeted programmes allow policymakers to design services for new arrivals’ specific needs, including orientation and job coaching, they are often small in scale and focus on particular groups (such as refugees or family immigrants). As a result, they run the risk of excluding many others with similar needs. Some countries have thus turned to mainstream institutions, such as public employment services and training institutions, to provide more inclusive services at a greater scale, the research finds.
Public employment services could be a vehicle for connecting recently arrived workers with employers and providing career development and retraining advice. This potential, however, has not been realized in the countries studied. Employment advisors are often over-stretched and don’t have the required specialized training or resources to meet immigrants’ specific needs. Some countries also lack the capacity to provide long-term career development or to provide in-work support to immigrants who are employed but stuck in the least-skilled jobs.
The design of vocational and language strategies that address migrants’ skills needs is a difficult but necessary task. Training is no panacea, as employers are not always willing or able to promote participants into more skilled jobs after they gain new skills. Nonetheless, training holds a great deal of promise to reduce gaps in language fluency, basic skills and technical expertise as well as the acquisition of soft skills, the authors conclude.
The report offers a series of recommendations for policymakers to consider, including:
Read the country case studies and other reports in the 14-report research series.
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, DC dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is the specialized agency of the United Nations which is mandated to establish international labour standards and has worked for the advancement of social justice since 1919.
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]]>The post Empowering Rural Women appeared first on IAMAW.
]]>The International Day of Rural Women recognizes “the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.” The International Labour Organization (ILO) marks this day by showing what it does to help empower rural women around the world through helping them gain access to work that is just, decent and sustainable. The ILO maintains a team of over 50 development focal points to better integrate decent work into rural economic development.
Presentation | 15 October 2014
A look, in photos, at what the ILO is doing to connect women in rural areas with decent work.
The ILO is working to promote skills in the rural sector and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, over 2,900 women entrepreneurs were trained to start their own business. Not only did the women say the training boosted their confidence, a follow-up survey showed that one new business has been created for every two entrepreneurs trained. Two jobs were created for every two entrepreneurs trained and two jobs were added to each new business which was started after training, including the job of business owner. © Evan Schneider / UN |
Paid employment opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa are scarce and the vulnerable employment rate, at 77.4 per cent in 2013, remained the highest of all regions. Africa’s population is growing faster than anywhere else. The informal economy in sub-Saharan Africa is around 54 per cent. Cooperatives are fundamental to economic empowerment in rural areas and small villages. With ILO training and financial support, micro-insurance has been provided for 10,000 cooperative members, mainly women. In Ethiopia, around 6,300 women and seven women’s cooperatives have benefited from credit and business management training. © Sonii David / Community Eye Health |
Women and girls are regularly exposed to unacceptable forms of agricultural work in rural areas, but are often more vulnerable than their male colleagues in accessing support and voicing their concerns. Measures to protect all workers from unacceptable hazards and forms of work directly benefit women and girls. In El Salvador, the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) is working to combat child labour in rural communities by increasing women’s capacity for employment or entrepreneurship. Diminishing household dependence on child labour is at the core of these efforts. To date more than 2,400 women have been trained through project activities. © Ben Beiske / Flickr |
The ILO is active in environmental rehabilitation in Haiti. An ILO/UNDP/WFP joint project for natural disaster prevention and environmental rehabilitation in the Artibone Region implemented water and soil conservation projects that provide income and enhance agricultural produce. The programme provided combined food and cash payments and generated jobs of a 25-day duration to 3,600 households. Half of these are headed by women. © CE / ECHO / M. Bernardez |
In the area of agricultural value chain development, the ILO is striving to ensure gender equality and prevent the repetition of traditional patterns of gender discrimination, where poor and uneducated women remain in lower paid, less skilled and more insecure work. In northern Peru, Café Femenino is a brand of organic coffee created, grown, processed and owned by women. The product is sold in the US and Canada as fair trade. Inspired by these efforts, women in other Latin American countries have begun their own Café Femenino programmes. Organic and fair trade premiums have led to better nutrition in coffee-growing areas, as well as improved sanitation, new wet-processing mills and many miles of new roads. © Miguel Alvarez / AFP |
Training for Rural Economic Empowerment, or TREE, is an ILO community-based programme in Asia and Africa. In rural Pakistan, female trainers educated rural women at home because social norms restrict them from getting trained outside their homes. As a result, many of the trainees experienced increased mobility, self-esteem and socioeconomic empowerment. © ILO |
Decent work must also include social protection. But for women living in rural areas, it can be difficult, if not impossible to access benefits like healthcare or cash transfers. In Cambodia, the ILO is working with the government to facilitate access to social protection through a single window service. The first offices of the Social Service Delivery Mechanism (SSDM) were opened in June 2014. By the end of 2016, all communes of the Siem Reap province should have an office, thus allowing rural women access to healthcare, cash transfers and other social protection benefits. © ILO |
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]]>18th American Regional Meeting
New regional initiative to tackle child labour agreed by Latin American and Caribbean countries at the 18th ILO American Regional Meeting in Lima.
News | 14 October 2014
Lima – A group of 25 Latin American and Caribbean countries announced the launch of a regional initiative to boost efforts to combat child labour, and achieve the goal of total eradication by 2020.
The document signed by Labour ministers, representatives of Governments and the Director General of the ILO, Guy Ryder, announces the “firm commitment to achieve the goal of eradication” and establishes a series of commitments based on strengthening intergovernmental cooperation.
The Regional Initiative was signed at the 18th American Regional Meeting of the ILO in Lima, in the presence of more than 400 delegates from governments and employers’ and workers’ organizations from across the continent.
“The initiative is part of a global effort to restore the rights of 168 million children and adolescents affected by the scourge of child labour,” said the ILO Director-General.
During the presentation of the initiative at the plenary sitting of the Regional Meeting, he recalled that Latin America and the Caribbean had proposed to eradicate the worst forms of child labour by 2016 and to eliminate all forms of child labour by 2020. However, these particular goals may not be achieved.
In recent years important achievements have been made in reducing the number of children in child labour by 7.5 million. However the ILO noted that if progress continues at this pace, it will require at least 40 years to achieve the goal of eradication.
According to ILO estimates, there are 12.5 million children in child labour in Latin America and the Caribbean, of which the vast majority, 9.5 million, are in hazardous work. “This initiative unites us all in Latin America and the Caribbean,” said the Minister of Labour of Peru, Freddy Otárola, who is President of the 18th American Regional Meeting, and who was responsible for the presentation of the initiative.
The “Regional Initiative for Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour” was launched a year ago at the Third Global Conference on Child Labour, where several countries shared their concern about the slow progress, and suggested that Latin America and the Caribbean could be “the first region in the developing world to be free of child labour.”
The initiative is designed to accelerate the prevention and eradication of child labour, and includes a number of indications to strengthen the mechanisms of action and identification of the practice.
The declaration signed in Lima states, that the persistence of child labour, especially its worst forms, is a factor that exacerbates social inequality, which deepens social and economic vulnerability.
ILO press contacts: prensa@ilo.org
Luis Cordova, press officer for the ILO, +511 6150386, +51 989301246, cordova@ilo.org
Alejandro Iturrizaga, assistant press ILO, +511 6150301, +51 99401775, iturrizaga@iloguest.org
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]]>Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF
ILO Statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee.
Type: Statement
When: 11 October 2014
Where: Washington D.C.
English: Reversing the slide into a low growth trap (PDF), pdf 0.2 MB
Summary |
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Serious risk of global economy getting stuck in a low growth trap
Jobs gap widens
Stagnant real wages
Risk of policy responses that further weaken prospects for recovery
Coordinated action to restore global aggregate demand
Macroeconomic policies for sustainable development
15. A prolonged period of low growth would be a disastrous start to the renewed global drive for sustainable development that is currently being discussed in the UN as well as in the IMF and the World Bank Group. The global policies to reverse the slide into a low growth trap must lead on to a reorientation of the framework for macroeconomic policy coordination to focus on full employment, decent work, reduced inequality and the elimination of extreme poverty.
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