335th Session of the ILO Governing Body

Decision concerning the Standards Initiative: overall review of its implementation

Record of decisions | 28 March 2019
The Governing Body:

(a) welcomed the efforts of all constituents and the Office towards the progress reported on the implementation of the two components of the Standards Initiative, namely the Standards Review Mechanism (SRM) and the workplan to strengthen the supervisory system;

(b) with respect to the component concerning the SRM, noted the information provided on the lessons learned and future directions; requested the Standards Review Mechanism Tripartite Working Group (SRM TWG) to take its guidance into account in continuing its work and to provide a report for the Governing Body’s second review of the functioning of the SRM TWG in March 2020; and, to guarantee the impact of that work, reiterated its call to the Organization and its tripartite constituents to take appropriate measures to follow up on all its previous recommendations;

(c) having reviewed, against the common principles guiding the strengthening of the supervisory system, the report on progress in implementing the ten proposals of the workplan, welcomed the progress achieved so far and requested the Office to continue the implementation of the workplan which should be updated according to its guidance;

(d) approving the approach taken and the timelines proposed, requested the Office to ensure that action was taken with respect to producing the guide on established practices across the supervisory system, the operation of the article 24 procedure, the streamlining of reporting, information sharing with other organizations, the formulation of clear recommendations of the supervisory bodies, pursuing systematized follow-up at the national level and consideration of the potential of article 19, paragraphs 5(e) and 6(d);

(e) with respect to the proposal for a regular conversation between the supervisory bodies, invited the Chairperson of the Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA) to present its annual report to the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS) as from 2019;

(f) with respect to the proposal for codification of the article 26 procedure, recalled the decision to consider the steps to be taken after the guide to the supervisory system was available to constituents, and requested the Office to provide it with further information in that regard in March 2020;

(g) with respect to the proposal to consider further steps to ensure legal certainty, decided to hold informal consultations in January 2020 and, to facilitate that tripartite exchange of views, requested the Office to prepare a paper on the elements and conditions for the operation of an independent body under article 37(2) and of any other consensus-based options, as well as the article 37(1) procedure;

(h) with respect to the proposal for review by the supervisory bodies of their working methods, invited the CAS, the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) and the CFA to continue their regular consideration of their working methods.

(GB.335/INS/5, paragraph 84, as amended by the Governing Body)