GENEVA (ILO News) – The International Labour Organization is to launch a book on the events, values and key ideas that have guided ILO action over the past nine decades and provide a roadmap for its future, as part of a series of events being held worldwide to mark the ILO 90th anniversary.
The book, entitled “The ILO and the Quest for Social Justice: 1919-2009”, will be launched at a press conference with its four authors on 27 April at 15:00 local time in Press Room No. 1 of the UN office here.
All four authors of the book, including three long-standing officials and an academic expert, will comment on the ILO's history during the press event.
The book is one of the first outcomes of the ILO’s “Century Project”, looking forward to its centenary in 2019. The ILO was founded in 1919 in the wake of the First World War, and is the oldest specialized agency in the U.N. system.
The book is a historical account of how the main principles guiding ILO action – social justice, dignity in work, freedom of association and expression, equality and the need to overcome poverty – have developed over the past 90 years as the world emerged from the ashes of the Great War and embarked upon a period of unparalleled change in the history of mankind.
The book – which is not an official history of the Organization but rather the view of its four authors: two economists, a lawyer and a historian – discusses how the essential political, social and economic developments of the last century have influenced the ILO’s priorities and the ILO has in turn influenced social change.