- International Labour Conventions have the legal status of international treaties. The
Constitution governs conditions for their drawing up and adoption by a two-thirds majority
of Conference delegates. Once adopted, a Convention must be submitted to the
competent authorities of each member State for ratification or other appropriate action.
At the request of the Governing Body, member States must report on the state of their
law and practice within the area covered by a Convention, whether it has been ratified or
not. The ratification of a Convention involves a commitment by the member State to
render its provisions effective within its national legal system, and to provide information
to relevant ILO supervisory mechanisms for this purpose.
- Please note that the ILO's Governing Body has decided to shelve a number of Conventions, which no longer correspond to current needs, and which have become outmoded or obsolete. Shelved Conventions are included in the search forms, with the Convention number in brackets.
- Ratification of shelved Conventions is no longer encouraged and there will, in principle, be no further reference to these Conventions in Office documents, studies and research papers. Shelving also means that detailed reports on the application of these Conventions are no longer requested. However, it leaves intact the right to invoke provisions relating to representations and complaints under Articles 24 and 26 of the Constitution. It also allows employers' and workers' organizations to continue to make comments in accordance with the regular supervisory procedures, and the Committee of Experts to review these comments and to request, if appropriate, detailed reports under Article 22 of the Constitution. Finally, shelving has no impact on the status of these Conventions in the legal systems of the member States that have ratified them.
How to use:
- Each document indicates the Conference session and date of adoption, the date of entry
into force, the Convention number and its subject classification(s). Each Convention
consists of a Preamble, a text consisting of a certain number of articles, the final
provisions relating to that Convention and annexes, where applicable.
- In cases where the Conference has adopted a PROTOCOL to an existing
Convention (eg: Conventions Nos. 81, 89, 110, 147 and 155), which must be ratified separately, the
protocol may be searched and displayed as a separate document; in the Conventions
pop-up list it will occur as, for example, P89 immediately after C89.
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