Strategy
The ILO seeks strategic impact in crisis response. It aims to influence the programmes and policies of crisis actors so they mainstream decent work and related social concerns – so they put these goals at the centre of their activities.
Because ILO crisis response is based on a “Whole of ILO” mobilization, technical units and field offices around the world lend their expertise to crisis responses. This enables the organization to promote the issues at the core of its mandate. Decent work and socio-economic progress are always necessary after a crisis. By supporting livelihoods and reconciliation, these help achieve many goals for those affected.
Therefore, the ILO works to ensure that actors grasp the importance of decent work – including employment promotion, labour rights and standards, social protection, and social dialogue. It uses its interventions, partnerships, and tools to encourage actors to include ILO concerns in their programmes. In this way even a small number of direct interventions can accomplish big things for crisis-affected people.
The ILO crisis response programme takes a three-pronged approach. More details about each element are available in the “Areas of Work” section of this site.
- Country interventions Quick, practical technical cooperation activities allow the ILO to contribute concretely to immediate outputs for crisis-stricken people. They also demonstrate the effectiveness of the ILO’s technical approaches, and often include training that builds on ILO publications and first-hand experience in crises.
- Strategic partnerships The ILO crisis response programme forges partnerships with actors at all levels to increase awareness of the employment dimension of crises, and to ensure practitioners take this dimension into account. Partnerships include direct cooperation agreements for interventions, international frameworks, and joint programmes for study and analysis of relevant subjects.
- Capacity building Through its well-adapted, flexible knowledge and tools, and through targeted training events, the ILO builds the capacity of staff, tripartite constituents, agencies, donors, and other crisis practitioners. This improves their ability to promote decent work opportunities in crisis contexts.
Several specific elements fill in the ILO crisis response strategy:
- Adopting a broad “Whole of ILO” response with high-level management support.
- Mobilizing key donors in support of ILO crisis response efforts.
- Systematically involving the ILO’s social partners: government officials, workers’ organizations, and employers’ organizations.
- Decentralizing the ILO’s crisis response capacity by helping field offices, especially in high-risk areas, take the lead and enhance their responses.
- Integrating and ensuring coherence in responses through ILO/CRISIS, a headquarters-based coordinating unit.
- Adopting necessary financial and administrative procedures to respond quickly in an emergency, including a Rapid Action Trust Fund and “fast-track” operational procedures.
- Being selective in crisis involvement.
Overall, the crisis response programme seeks to make decent work a lever of crisis recovery and crisis-resistant development. The ILO has its niche in post-crisis rehabilitation, recovery, and reconstruction, but it also works to build and strengthen safety nets for vulnerable groups before a crisis strikes. Therefore, the programme is involved in all phases: prevention, relief, recovery, reconstruction, and long-term development. To ensure that practitioners fully grasp crises’ impact on employment, and the ability of decent work to help societies recover, the organization helps design recovery and reconstruction programmes. It also builds bridges between humanitarian relief and subsequent phases of response. And unlike other organizations, the programme uses the ILO’s tripartite structure and international labour standards to propose participatory solutions that build social cohesion and protect labour and human rights.
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Several core principles guide the ILO in crisis response and reconstruction:
- Speed – Mobilization and response operations must take place swiftly in order to benefit those affected by crises.
- Early presence in emergencies – Despite its niche in rehabilitation, recovery, and reconstruction, the ILO’s presence in crises’ immediate aftermaths is crucial. This helps ensure that the employment impact of crises is grasped and addressed from the beginning (i.e. in maximising the labour impact of relief services like camp building and food preparation), and that good jobs will be a priority in the reconstruction programmes that are formulated at that early stage.
- Flexibility – Activities must respond to the characteristics of each crisis and environment, and to the changes apt to occur, often abruptly, in crisis contexts.
- Integrated approach – Interventions must include all needed technical areas and actors. More information on these can be found on the “Technical Areas” page of this site. The ILO gathers inputs and expertise from its technical units and field offices as part of its “Whole of ILO” mobilization, giving it a broad impact in crisis contexts.
- ILO Decent Work principles – As the ILO Director-General, Juan Somavia, says, “The primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security, and human dignity.” This goal must guide the “Whole of ILO” response to crises. It enhances crisis victims’ capacity to be earn income and climb out of their predicament, while protecting their labour and human rights.
- Linking relief and development – Quick impact activities and rehabilitation/reconstruction work need a long-term, development perspective. In particular, crisis responses should promote durable positive changes, rather than re-establishing a former situation that may itself have caused or exacerbated the crisis.
- Special focus on gender issues – Crises affect men and women differently because of their different roles and responsibilities in societies. In particular, women face multiple disadvantages in crises (due to their greater poverty, secondary labour market status, lesser access to productive assets and information, over-representation in the informal economy, and extensive domestic responsibilities). But they also display resilience, resourcefulness and a capacity to step out of their socially-assigned roles if given a chance. This makes women engines of recovery if their skills and aspirations are honoured. ILO crisis interventions take into account these special circumstances and capabilities, helping women participate fully in the rebuilding of their communities. Please see the page on The Gender Dimension for more information.
- Tripartism – The ILO crisis programme takes full advantage of the organization’s tripartite structure. All three social partners – governments, employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations – are associated systematically in interventions. And these include, where necessary, capacity building for these partners and elements of social dialogue.
- Partnerships – Cooperation frameworks, either written agreements or less formal ones, are developed with key crisis-response actors within and outside the UN. ILO/CRISIS has also conducted joint efforts with private and academic institutions. Partnerships promote the incorporation of decent work concerns into other agencies’ approaches and programmes, and help place employment in crises on the international agenda. They also increase the impact and cost-effectiveness of the ILO’s crisis response efforts, promoting legitimacy, credibility and entry points for further ILO action. Please see the page on
Strategic Partnerships for more information.
- Local ownership – This ensures that interventions are appropriate and sustainable. ILO involves local and national actors from the beginning and throughout post-crisis phases.
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