Thank you. It's good to be back here in the UN headquarters among so many, many friends. It feels like being home again.
I applaud all of you who have helped to craft the documents and this visionary agenda for the Millennium Forum.
Congratulations for the ideas you have put on the table, the interactive methods, the timing well before the Assembly and the new process you have set in motion. Many of you know how much I have advocated for an integrated global civil society movement. Now is the time to take that fundamental next step.
I want to thank you, to acknowledge and highlight the extraordinary contributions of different civil society organizations to the UN global conferences of the 1990s. I saw it, I was there, I can testify to the way all of you shaped and enriched the final products. Thank you for that.
This decade will need the same energy, the same commitment - and probably much more. Success breeds responsibility. And many new tasks lie ahead of you. We now have to deal with the fact that the benefits of globalization are not reaching enough people. That in absolute terms poverty and inequality have grown. We have to do so in the framework of open societies - which permits us to be here and voice our opinions - and open economies, which are more efficient than closed economies provided that they deliver the goods for working people.
The UN conferences of the 1990s were a constructive response by the world community to the downside of globalization. Yet the powers that be seem to need crisis and tension to react. We needed the Asian crisis to think about new financial architecture, the African situation to finally understand that debt cancellation was indispensable, and Seattle to wake up to the growing feelings of malaise worldwide.
Globalization is moving so fast. It is not remote and abstract. It is having an impact on people's daily life - from our food to our news - as well as the work we find and do. The Internet, the information and communication revolution are profoundly changing the way people find jobs, schools and even mates. They transform the way we shop and do business. They open new avenues for education and health care.
They are changing people's perspectives and empowering them to challenge traditional ways of doing things. Civil society itself is using these new tools for better advocacy.
This is not just an industrialized-country phenomenon. The largest Internet grocery service is not in the US or another OECD country but in Brazil!
While people are in short supply in Silicon Valley, they are abundant in the developing world. India has the largest pool of PhDs and a booming software industry.
Of course, digital divides abound. We know this side of the equation far too well. Over three billion people subsist on less than two dollars a day. With rare exceptions, they are not participating in this revolution, nor have they benefited from these dramatic changes.
Clearly, the global economy is not producing enough jobs in good conditions for all that need them. While there are tight labour markets in some countries, we have, in fact, a surplus labour market worldwide.
Work is a core issue in the global economy. With globalization, work is changing. The kinds of work, the way we work and the place we work. But not the need for work.
At least one billion human beings are unemployed or under-employed. The biggest danger ahead is the growing chasm between the knowledge economy and the informal economy. Both are growing at exponential rates with few bridges between them. We can begin to see the shape of a new global apartheid, based on your options for work, for sustainable livelihoods. Matching demand with supply of labour in today's rapidly globalizing economy will be one of the most sensitive and political issues in this decade.
What do we do? Where do we begin? I am convinced that if we are to build a better world there has to be a sea change in the attitudes of those of us responsible for public and private policy at all levels.
We need to approach policy and new architecture issues with a more caring eye, less technocratic, more sensitive to the way people see their problems - to look at issues from the point of view of ordinary men, women and children and to understand how our decisions will affect their lives.
We know enough about market fundamentals - it's time to pay attention to the fundamentals in people's lives. We have to understand that an unemployed person is also a very unhappy family. We cannot neatly separate questions of family values from social justice issues. They are deeply intertwined.
Growing numbers of people across the world are feeling a heightened sense of insecurity and anxiety. People don't trust enough - not their leaders or their institutions. Many people simply don't have enough - not enough freedom or enough to eat nor means and opportunity to remedy their situation. And far too many people from every country seriously fear that we live in a global casino in which the life of their families depends on where the chips fall.
In a knowledge economy, talent and know-how are the new wealth. Our task is to unleash that talent and create the conditions for creativity and innovation. Conditions that promote individual and private entrepreneurship. Conditions that foster self-employment and small enterprise. Conditions that give real meaning to the words opportunity and choice.
We need to take the necessary actions to ensure that the race to the bottom becomes an upward spiral for all.
We must acknowledge the hidden work of women. Historically, unpaid and underpaid female labour has subsidized the economy in disproportionate ways. I call it the "taken for granted" economy.
We must start by building a social floor - by constructing a consensus on a common set of basic standards that we all acknowledge have universal value in our different societies. Values that can permit developing countries to fully exercise their right to development and working families to fully participate in the wealth they have helped to create.
To do so, we need a holistic approach. We have reached the limits of sectoral solutions to integrated problems. But we don't yet grasp the full design, texture and colour of the integrated solutions.
But we do know that one-size-fits-all solutions do not work. We do know that we need a social floor for the global economy.
It's been just over one year since I have been in my new role as Director-General of the ILO. As our contribution to discovering integrated solutions, governments, workers and employers in our tripartite structure have reorganized the ILO around a singular vision: decent work. Decent work is productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. Conditions in harmony with the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Rights and Principles.
The long-term objective is to promote decent work in a sustainable environment. The immediate objective is to put in place a social floor for the global economy in ways that meet the concerns of developing countries and working families.
The decent work agenda is an attempt to move towards an integrated development strategy, which links rights at work and social protection with employment and enterprise creation in a framework of social dialogue.
Decent work is a universal aspiration of people everywhere, North and South. It is the simple way that most women and men express their needs. It is work that enables me to educate my children, to have a stable family life in health and security, to have my rights at work respected and to have a pension at the end of my working days.
Decent work is a concept expressed in very different cultures and levels of development among countries and communities. We all know what is decent in our own societies.
The goal of decent work is also a reaction to today's "take it or leave it" options. People have a right to ask a key question: what are my choices? If my choice is between accepting anything that is offered or starving, I usually accept the offer.
Yet it is evident that the essence of democracy and liberty - freedom of choice - does not exist for far too many people in today's global labour market. Workers do not have the same freedom of movement as capital. Unfortunately working hard does not guarantee a life free from poverty.
To make markets work for all and expand the opportunities for decent work, we face a major challenge: we must make job creation a global priority and ensure that work pays and is safe and meaningful.
Like the successful campaign to address the debt problem, I invite each of you, representing organizations from around the world, to see how you can mobilize to promote decent work for all. I invite you to become a major force to build a global coalition for decent work.
Our task begins with organizing. Getting together with like-minded people is a fundamental right and a key to collective bargaining, on everything from wages and working conditions to environmental quality and peace. We will be publishing a global report on the state of freedom of association this week and while there is notable progress in some places, there are still far too many people who cannot exercise this basic right.
Closely related, is how much space one has for partnerships. The key objective is to get together with all stakeholders, all partners, to find common ground at the community, national and international levels. Working with your trade union allies, you can be extremely useful partners in implementing core labour standards and monitoring progress. We have just begun the data collection for next year's report on forced labour.
Another element of the decent work strategy is making sure that girls and boys have the right to a childhood - with all that it means - and not exploited as soldiers, servants, slaves or sex workers.
Last June, the International Labour Conference unanimously approved a new Convention to eliminate the worst forms of child labour. To date, 15 countries have ratified it and several dozen are poised to ratify it in the next few months. Along with this ratification campaign, we are implementing projects in over 65 countries to remove children from work and into schools. We need your help to do more. Both to create awareness as well as the conditions for development so that children can be at school and parents at work. That is the ultimate solution.
Decent work not only has an age dimension. It also has a strong gender dimension. Let's face facts: labour market policies were based on old notions of traditional gender roles that have been challenged and reshaped over the last four decades. Today, we must champion gender equality as a matter of rights and social justice as well as efficiency and good business sense.
A fundamental part of this agenda is to ensure that women workers can also be mothers. We all know how essential it is for mothers to have adequate time to care for their own health and give birth to a healthy baby, to look after the new born and breast feed that child.
In the ILO Conference in June, we will be concluding a process of updating and revising the Maternity Convention>, begun in 1997. I know that some of you have legitimate concerns. I urge you to place them before your governments, worker and employer organizations.
Let me finish by stating my conviction that we need a global civil society movement embracing all actors for social change. All champions of change.
We need a global civil society movement that serves as our collective conscience, that promotes accountability and accepts accountability. A movement that is open, transparent, legitimate, autonomous and pluralistic.
The watchful role of so many independent eyes and ears has shown its worth time and time again across so many fields. Monitoring, reporting, critiquing, commenting, witnessing the truth and speaking from facts.
As Marge Piercy's wonderful poem reminds us, "Alone, you can fight, you can refuse, you can take what revenge you can but they roll over you. But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob... Three people are a delegation... A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall. A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; ten thousand, power and your own paper; a hundred thousand, your own media; ten million, your own country. It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more".
We are strong when we are united, when we are organized. It is a basic right. An enabling right to exercise other rights. Freedom of association is the building block of the labour movement and the most essential means of action available to people.
The world is a better place because of your dedication and commitment. Your hard work, your sleepless nights and fury at injustice; your compassion and hope.
When the arteries harden and structures ossify, acts of courage are indispensable.
We need your tenacity and diligent participation in the UN system - to make it better - and in the follow-up to all the UN conferences of the 1990s, including this year, Beijing and Copenhagen. I welcome those of you coming to Geneva at the end of June for the Social Summit review and assure you that the ILO's house is open and available to you (mi casa su casa).
Let us lead with our capacity to think with our hearts. Let us keep ordinary people's lives as our compass. Let us reject the old politics of division and forge a world civil society movement based on the values of inclusion and solidarity. And let us, together, build a global coalition for decent work and, each day, mean one more.