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National Representative Organizations of the private sector such as Chambers of Commerce and Industry and Employers’ Organizations are facing many challenges in today’s increasingly crowded, globalized economy. Across all regions, the labour market is changing, along with traditional partners and old certainties.
All across the world people are in search of jobs. Jobs so they can raise their families and send their children to school. Jobs that provide access to social protection for them and their families. And, jobs in which they are respected, can organize and have a voice. What they want is decent work.
Since its founding in 1919, the ILO has been committed to promoting the rights of all women and men at work and achieving equality between them. The ILO vision of gender equality – which coincides with the organization’s four strategic goals – recognizes this goal not only as a basic human right, but intrinsic to the global aim of Decent Work for All Women and Men.
Nearly half a million people are living with HIV in the Middle East and North Africa, and their numbers are growing. While other parts of the world have made strides in containing the spread of the HIV/AIDS, the MENA region today has one of the fastest growing HIV rates in the world.
As early as 1919, the ILO’s founders decided to create a system of international labour standards (ILS) because the global economy needed clear rules in order to ensure that economic progress would go hand in hand with social justice, prosperity and peace for all.
Inadequate education and skills development keep economies trapped in a vicious circle of low education, low productivity and poverty. Indeed, skills development is central to improving productivity. In turn, productivity is an important source of improved living standards and growth.
Only 20 per cent of the world’s population has adequate social security coverage and more than half lack any coverage at all. The ILO actively promotes policies and provides assistance to countries to help extend adequate levels of social protection to all members of society.
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