VATICAN CITY (ILO News) –Speaking in the Vatican on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Director-General of the International Labour Office (ILO) Juan Somavia today called on leaders of the G20 "to address the social implications of the financial crisis."
"Here today, as a response to the crisis, I encourage the appropriate bodies of governments to urgently agree on a major policy coherence initiative bringing together the international organizations dealing with finance, trade, development, and labour issues to jointly reinforce policies and programmes for job creation, social protection, targeted safety nets, and other relevant issues," Mr. Somavia said.
Warning that "social tensions are brewing and they will expand," he said, "People are asking: Why do billions suddenly appear to save the financial economy and so little has been available to confront the problems of poverty, unemployment, lack of access to basic social protection? What has happened to a minimum sense of social justice? Of basic fairness in the rules of the game?"
"Do we have the policy instruments and the institutions for a global response to a global crisis?" he said. "We have a multilateral system that is underperforming. It is not delivering the type of policy coherence we need today. There is a profound need in different institutions for a new form of global governance that moves from an international community of governments which has created parallel centres of decision-making and sometimes contradictory decisions -- to a global community of multiple actors including, but going beyond governments."
Looking at the links between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the social doctrine of the church, and the ILO constitution, M. Somavia observed that "they are all, at heart, about how to transform values into policies, and policies into action, so that we can organize societies in a way that respects the dignity of people."
Mr. Somavia also said that the ILO had distilled "the hopes and aspirations of the human person for a meaningful life into the concept of Decent Work," adding, that the "Decent Work message has connected with politics and people and is now a global goal backed by political statements in all regions of the world and by the whole of the United Nations system."
"The time has come to again raise our voices, to speak the truth to problems we are facing. The worst would be not to dare to defend our values," he said. "And let us empower leaders and build institutions that trust in people to invent their future and truly be 'artisans of their destiny'."