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Promoting
decent work for persons with
disabilities
Statement by Ana-Teresa Romero, Acting
Director, ILO Liaison Office with the
United Nations
Friday 6 February 2004
On behalf of
the ILO, I welcome this opportunity to
talk about our work with respect to
persons with disabilities. An estimated
386 million of the world's population of
working age have some form of disability.
Although they have the potential to make
valuable contributions in the workforce,
many persons with disabilities who are
willing and able to work are unemployed.
In order to overcome the limitations that
they face, it is important that States
ensure reasonable accommodation to
eliminate all forms of discrimination, so
that equality of opportunity can be
enjoyed in practice. Special positive
measures aimed at providing effective
equality of opportunity and treatment for
persons with disabilities should not be
regarded as discriminatory for other
persons.
For decades,
the ILO has focused on the situation of
persons with disabilities, especially with
regard to the workplace. As early as 1955
the ILO adopted the
Recommendation
on Vocational Rehabilitation for Disabled
Persons (No.99). That was the first
international instrument dealing
specifically with persons with
disabilities. ILO
Vocational
Rehabilitation and Employment (Disabled
Persons) Convention, 1983
(No. 159) , ratified by 75
countries to date, and its related
Recommendation
No. 168, were adopted in 1983. These
three instruments comprise the
international labour standards on this
subject.
[
ILO
Recommendations are regarded as
non-binding instruments.
Link]
These
instruments promote the principles of
equal opportunity, equal treatment,
non-discrimination and mainstreaming.
There is an
ILO Disability Programme to help give
effect to these principles. Its aims are
to promote decent work for women and men
with disabilities by facilitating the
means to overcome obstacles that prevent
their full participation in the labour
market. Activities under the programme are
designed to:
-
improve
knowledge about disability-related
issues through action- and
policy-oriented research, publications
and information dissemination;
-
provide
advice and support through technical
cooperation;
-
strengthen
advocacy.
Several
technical cooperation projects have been
or continue to be implemented by the ILO
in Africa, the Arab States and the
Asia-Pacific region. They focus on
strategies to promote training, employment
and income-generating opportunities for
people with disabilities. Since 2001 the
ILO, in partnership with two NGOs
representing persons with disabilities,
has been implementing a project in
Ethiopia to develop entrepreneurship among
women. To date some 462 women, including
women with disabilities, mothers of
children with disabilities and wives of
war veterans with disabilities, have
benefited from training provided under the
project. A similar project has now been
set up in the Baltic States. In the
occupied territories, the Shaikh Khalifa
Vocational Rehabilitation Centre has been
established. The ILO is also contributing
to the Community-Based Rehabilitation
(CBR) approach to providing support for
persons with disabilities, by promoting
strategies and programmes to train persons
with disabilities for employment.
In 2001 an
ILO Code of Practice on Managing
Disability in the Workplace
[
French
,
Spanish
] was adopted to provide guidance to
employers in the public and private
sectors, as well as employers' and
workers' organizations. The Code deals
with the recruitment, promotion and
advancement of persons with disabilities;
retention of persons who acquire a
disability; and the return to work of
persons who have left employment due to
disability.
The ILO is
involved in the negotiations for an
international convention on the rights of
persons with disabilities. The aim of this
convention is to ensure the full,
effective and equal enjoyment by persons
with disabilities of all human rights and
fundamental freedoms. It should provide
for the right to decent, just and
favourable conditions of work, including
equal pay for work of equal value, safe
and healthy working conditions and the
right to organize. The ILO can play a role
in the implementation and monitoring of
those parts of the convention that are in
its area of competence.
The ILO hopes
that its work, as well as the work of the
United Nations, would allow persons with
disabilities to enjoy their human rights
on an equal basis. To that end, there is
still a need for greater advocacy and
awareness raising at the national and
international levels.
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