CEB Toolkit for Mainstreaming Employment and Decent Work

“We strongly support fair globalization and resolve to make the goals of full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people, a central objective of our relevant national and international policies as well as our national development strategies, including poverty reduction strategies, as part of our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.” World Summit Outcome Document, 2005, paragraph 47

This commitment made at the 2005 World Summit of the United Nations General Assembly was reaffirmed in July 2006 at the high-level segment of the substantive session of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on the theme of “Creating an environment at the national and international levels conducive to generating full and productive employment and decent work for all, and its impact on sustainable development”.

An ECOSOC Ministerial Declaration recognized the Decent Work Agenda as an important instrument for achieving the objective of full and productive employment and decent work for all and resolved to make that objective central to their national and international policies and national development strategies, as part of their efforts to achieve the internationally agreed development goals. They consequently requested the entire multilateral system, including the funds, programmes and agencies of the United Nations system, and invited the international financial institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO), to support efforts to mainstream the goals of full and productive employment and decent work for all in their policies, programmes and activities.

In order to assist the member agencies in this endeavour, the High Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) of the United Nations System Chief Executive Board (CEB) asked the ILO to take the lead in developing a Toolkit for Mainstreaming Employment and Decent Work. The ILO, under the guidance of the HLCP and in collaboration with interested agencies and consultation with all CEB member agencies, drafted and revised the Toolkit. The CEB adopted the Toolkit in April 2007. It expressed appreciation for the inclusive approach taken in developing the Toolkit and considered that the methodology “could usefully be replicated in other areas, as an integral part of the effort to advance policy coherence within the system and to find practical ways for the system’s support to countries to derive concrete benefit from such enhanced coherence”.

Further endorsement of the Toolkit came in July 2007 when ECOSOC examined the operational implications of its Ministerial Declaration of 2006 and emphasized that the goals of full and productive employment and decent work for all “require a multidimensional focus that incorporates governments, the private sector, civil society organizations, representatives of employers and workers, international organizations and, in particular, the agencies of the United Nations system and the international financial institutions”. The ECOSOC Resolution calls on all relevant agencies of the UN “to collaborate in using, adapting and evaluating the application of the Toolkit” [... ] “to develop, with the assistance of the ILO, mechanisms to share their pertinent expertise on the employment and decent work agenda and to assess the impact of relevant policies and programmes on employment and decent work for all, with special attention to women and youth” and “promote, in close cooperation with the ILO a greater awareness and understanding of, with a view to better implementing the decent work agenda, including its four objectives”. It also calls on each agency to formulate and implement its own action plan and to establish by the end of 2009 a system-wide action plan for the period 2010-2015 to promote employment and decent work.

In February 2008, the United Nations Commission for Social Development also adopted a Resolution on promoting full employment and decent work for all that reaffirmed that “there is an urgent need to create an environment at the national and international levels that is conducive to the attainment of full and productive employment and decent work for all as a foundation for sustainable development and that an environment that supports investment, growth and entrepreneurship is essentiall to the creation of new job opportunities, and also reaffirms that opportunities for men and women to obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity are essential to ensuring the eradication of hunger and poverty, the improvement of economic and social well-being for all, the achievement of sustained economic growth and sustainable development of all nations and a fully inclusive and equitable globalization”.

That full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people, is the most effective route out of poverty has been confirmed with the adoption of a new target (1.B) under Millennium Development Goal 1, which is to halve the proportion of people living on less than US$1 a day by 2015. There are four indicators for this new target:

1. 1. Employment-to-population ratios
2. 2. Proportion of own-account (self-employed) and contributing family workers in total employment (vulnerable employment)
3. 3. Proportion of employed people living below US$1 per day (working poor)
4. 4. Growth rate of GDP per person employed (labour productivity).

The indicators are meant to be disaggregated by sex and urban/rural areas.

The Toolkit has four main components:

1. 1. A checklist of questions that serve as a ‘lens’ to assess how policies, programmes and activities impact on employment and decent work
2. 2. A knowledge sharing platform (http://cebtoolkit.ilo.org) to share expertise and tools on employment and decent work
3. 3. Capacity development and advocacy to better understand and implement the Decent Work Agenda
4. 4. Country level application to mainstream employment and decent work in national development frameworks.