President of Costa Rica H.E. Oscar Arias addresses International Labour Conference

"Decent work lies at the heart of peace"

 

Thursday 8 June 2006 (ILO/06/31)

GENEVA (ILO News) - "Decent work lies at the heart of peace", H.E. Oscar Arias, President of the Republic of Costa Rica, told delegates to the annual Conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO) today. The President called for concrete measures to ensure a fairer globalization and an initiative to reduce spending in the arms race.

"There exists a fundamental link between decent work and peace, between work and the defense of human dignity. The right to work is a fundamental right, and without respect for fundamental rights, peace can be no more than a dream", the President told the Conference.

"It is no coincidence that some of the gravest threats to peace and democracy today originate in countries with high unemployment and underemployment", he said.

President Arias and the ILO both received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 and in 1969 respectively.

"As Nobel Laureates, we both know that decent work lies at the heart of peace" the President said at the 95th session of the International Labour Conference which runs from 31 May to 16 June here.

"People do not want hand-outs, they want opportunities to work", ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in his introductory remarks welcoming the Costa Rican President to what he called the "international house of dialogue on action in the world of work".

"We are trying to make decent work a global objective and a national reality", Mr. Somavia added.

According to President Arias, "the ILO and Costa Rica share a common creed". He also declared that "we will make ethical progress when we put decent employment and the defense of human dignity at the centre of our public policies".

The President recalled that the ILO had pushed for "the recognition of the centrality of decent work in economic and social policy" and had taken up "the challenge to act accordingly".

He also called for effective and concrete strategies at the national and the international level to make the creation of decent jobs a reality, and referred to the need to invest in education and foster free trade between nations.

"Nothing prevents the creation of decent jobs like indecent education", he said. "The educational catastrophe of today is the economic catastrophe of tomorrow".

The President acknowledged that upgrading systems of education requires the allocation of additional resources, but above all the political will to do so. He said that it was "shameful" that poor nations buy more and more arms and strengthen their armies to supposedly protect the population.

"Latin America has begun a new arms race, regardless of the fact that the region has never been more democratic and that in the last century it has rarely seen military conflicts between nations", he said, calling this development "an alarming sign of blindness towards history".

The President proposed to delegates to give life "to the Costa Rica Consensus" through which mechanisms are initiated to forgive debt and give international financial support to developing nations that invest more and more in education, health and housing, and less and less in soldiers and weapons, saying "It is time that the international financial community reward not only those whose spending is orderly, as it has done till now, but also those whose spending is ethical".

With respect to free trade he said that if we find an orderly transition, "it will lead to the creation of more and better jobs for our citizens". Globalization presents countries with a dilemma, he said, "if they are not capable to export more and more goods and services, they will end up exporting more and more people".

According to the President, trade agreements should respect labour rights. He cited the free trade agreement between the United States, Central America and the Dominican Republic as an example for countries that "promised through this agreement to respect a number of ILO labour standards".

He also called for more coherence in the attitude of industrialized countries. "If they proclaim free markets then they should be effectively free", he said.

"One day before the labours of the players in the World Cup commence, I leave you with one final message: it is time to think of each other - of every worker, trade union, business and government on the planet - as playing on the same team", he said on his way to the first match which involves Costa Rica on Friday.

"If we all play as a team - and I hope Costa Rica will tomorrow - we will rack up goal after goal against the adversaries of unemployment, poverty, injustice and war," he said.

 

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