Feature articles

May 2006 

• Regional Meeting for the Americas 2-5 May: Youth employment in Latin America: Overcoming a lost decade
  03 May 2006 - In Latin America, 9.5 million young people out of 57 million aged 15-24 are unemployed. Victims of the "lost decade", they were born between 1980 and 1990 and represent 42 per cent of open unemployment in the region. ...
• Regional Meeting for the Americas 2-5 May: Extending social security in Latin America and the Caribbean
  03 May 2006 - The main problem with social security systems in Latin America and the Caribbean is their limited coverage in terms of the number of workers and family members protected, the range of risks covered and the quality of protection. In some countries, coverage has decreased even further over the past 15 years, according to the report prepared for the ILO Regional Meeting for the Americas. ...
• Regional Meeting for the Americas 2-5 May - Forced labour in Latin America: Fighting impunity
  02 May 2006 - In Latin America, 1.3 million people are victims of forced labour, representing more than 10 per cent of forced labourers worldwide. According to the report prepared for the ILO Regional Meeting for the Americas, despite this high number it is possible to drastically reduce forced labour over the next 10 years if there is a will to do so. ILO Online reports from Brazil.

April 2006 

• Chernobyl 20 years after: From disaster, breeding a new safety culture
  26 April 2006 - When the Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded on the night of 26 April 1986, workers bore the full brunt of the blast, many losing their health, homes, jobs and even their lives. ...
• Extending social protection to women in the informal economy
  21 April 2006 - More than half of the world's population has no social protection. Only one out of five enjoys adequate coverage. The ILO-STEP programme aims at fighting social exclusion and poverty and promoting social protection worldwide. ILO Online reports from the Philippines where STEP helps informal sector workers and their families which are generally excluded from the national social security system.
• "Maid in Lebanon": protecting the rights of migrant domestic workers
  13 April 2006 - Driven by extreme poverty in their home countries, thousands of female migrant workers go each year to the Arab States in order to earn enough money to support their families. What they find there is sometimes not what they expected. ...
• In the heart of the sierra: local talent at the service of the global economy
  07 April 2006 - In Peru, a group of female embroiderers has allied itself with the Converse shoe brand to put their ancestral knowledge at the service of a global company. It is a prime example of what the ILO considers the bright face of globalization: creating jobs locally that contribute to international commerce. ILO Online reports from the Ayacucho region in Peru.

March 2006 

• Questions for a global economy: protecting workers against factory fires
  30 March 2006 - Fires in the workplace are among the most feared industrial events, and have left their mark on history. From the 1911 factory fire in New York City that killed 146 textile workers, to more recent industrial accidents or incidents around the world that have left hundreds of dead and injured, such events often lead to the adoption of labour laws to protect factory workers. ...
• Offshoring and job losses:Is the rising international integration of products and services good for labour markets in the developed world?
  27 March 2006 - We live in a world where more and more products and services are composed of parts sourced from all over the globe. This could symbolize that labour markets all over the world profit from globalization. ...
• "Looking for greener pastures": Nurses and doctors on the move
  16 March 2006 - The global health care profession employs an estimated 100 million people, but is not attracting enough new recruits in both developed and developing countries alike. So fierce is the competition to secure scarce health care professionals, that private recruitment agencies stage promotional events and aggressive recruitment campaigns in supplying countries. ...