POWERPOINT PRESENTATION OF THE
DIRECTOR-GENERAL'S REPORT
BY MR. IAN CHAMBERS
DIRECTOR OF THE ILO EAST ASIA MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM
AND BANGKOK AREA OFFICE

This is the thirteenth in a series of regional meetings and conferences which the ILO has convened for Asia and the Pacific. It is, however, the first to meet since the adoption of the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up, the first since the adoption of the Decent Work Agenda and the first to convene since, under new direction, the Office has undertaken a radical shift in its structure in the context of strategic budgeting and planning. The structure of the discussions at the present meeting is also rather different than before. The purpose of my presentation to you today is to respond to the request made by Asian constituents to help establish a clearer and common focus which, on the basis of the Director-General's report, should lead to conclusions which will guide the Office in its future programming in both the Asian and Pacific Region and that of the Arab States of West Asia.

The twelfth regional meeting took place in the jaws of what has been called the "Asian economic meltdown". While still suffering the longer term effects of that calamity, the region is once again confronted with new and severe economic challenges which are already giving rise to more social displacement, personal and family tragedy and political upheaval.

The clear and undeniable lesson of the 1997 crisis and the current recession is that our region, like all others, has no immunity against the vicissitudes of the global economy. The same fundamental laws of economics apply here as in Europe, Africa and the Americas. The structural weaknesses, both economic and social, highlighted by the 1997 crisis, have been addressed, at least partially, by some of the countries in the region and it is a reasonable expectation to predict that these countries will be able to survive the present downturn more successfully than those who have undertaken little or no corrective action. Furthermore, we now dispose of more - and more sophisticated - tools to put in place preventive measures to attenuate at least the harsher effects of eventual recession.

Since the last Asian meeting, the ILO has engaged in a profound rethinking and recasting of its role, mandate and approach. The result has been the definition of the Decent Work Agenda, as articulated most recently in the Report of the Director-General to the 89th Session of the International Labour Conference, entitled Reducing the Decent Work Deficit: A Global Challenge. The report presented to you for the present meeting, called Decent Work in Asia, seeks to reflect and adapt the global Decent Work Agenda to the circumstances and realities of this vast region stretching from Syria to Suva. If this Thirteenth Asian Regional Meeting is to have useful effects and impact, it must produce clear commitments to action. As the Director-General says in his report to the ILC, "we must stand firm by the commitments made two years ago as we launched the Decent Work Agenda". The underlying objective of the Report which the Director-General has submitted for your consideration, Decent Work in Asia, is to arrive by the end of the meeting at a set of commitments to action, both on the part of constituents and on the part of the Office against which we can measure our progress and plan our resource allocations as we move towards the Fourteenth Asian Regional Meeting. Concretely, this requires the definition of national priorities and programmes within the Decent Work Agenda, which constituents from this and all of the other regions have resoundingly endorsed in the International Labour Conference and the Governing Body.

In the general discussion, delegates may wish to relate their comments to the broad issue of defining priorities for action to address decent work deficits in the countries of the region. It will be recalled that in his report to the 89th session of the International Labour Conference, the Director-General defined four basic applications of the decent work concept:

"Firstly, it is a goal. It reflects in clear language a universal aspiration of people everywhere. It connects with their hopes to obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. It is both a personal goal for individuals and a development goal for countries.

"Secondly, it provides a policy framework. The four strategic objectives combine the ILO's historic mandate in the field of rights at work, social dialogue and social protection, with a growth and development agenda built around employment and enterprise. The fact that they are integrated into a single agenda offers a framework for policy-making which holds out prospects of a coherent approach to shared goals. This approach also provides the basis for a longer-term joint commitment of the ILO's tripartite constituents. permitting them to reach accommodation on immediate issues that could, if taken in isolation, divide them.

"Thirdly, it is a method of organizing programmes and activities. Building the ILO's programme around the four strategic objectives of the Decent Work Agenda has permitted the Office to establish targets and performance indicators which, for the first time, enable it to measure progress and to be accountable to its constituents.

"Fourthly, it is a platform for external dialogue and partnership. Precisely because it is a far-reaching and integrated agenda, which is readily understood, it provides a policy platform for external dialogue and partnership with other organizations of the multilateral system and civil society. It is an instrument for engaging the world beyond the ILO's walls."

In the presentation of the substantive chapters of the Report which follows, I shall group the points in the order in which they will be discussed according to your agenda, rather than the sequence in which they appear in the Report itself.

With respect to Chapter 1 of the report, Standards and fundamental principles and rights at work in Asia and the Pacific, the starting point is appropriately the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up, adopted since the last Asian Regional Meeting. Membership of the International Labour Organization involves acceptance of the rights and principles defined in this instrument. It may be considered appropriate to examine what must be done in the region to support member States' commitment to these rights and principles.

The report points out that the Office must give particular priority to ensuring that full effect is given to the Declaration. It would be most helpful if delegates could indicate what assistance and support is needed in their countries in order to comply with their obligations under the Declaration and the core conventions in the areas of

Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining;

Elimination offorced and compulsory labour;

Eradication of child labour, especially in its worstforms; and

Elimination of discrimination in employment.

Such assistance might take the form of helping to promote public awareness of the fundamental character of these rights, supporting improvements in basic labour legislation and the administration of justice, engaging in dialogue with legislators, other Government ministries and departments and various sectors of society or any other manner delegates consider appropriate. In this connection, delegates may also wish to comment on the impact of the IPEC programme in their countries.

While attributing particular importance to the fundamental conventions, many non-core instruments are of great significance also An indication from delegates of intentions to ratify other conventions and of any assistance they may require from the Office in this regard will help greatly in planning resource allocation.

Chapter 4 of the report, Social dialogue: participation and cooperation for decent work, will, as the President has just mentioned, be discussed at the same time as Chapter 1. Social dialogue can only constitute a useful and meaningful mechanism for consensual and democratic national development if it evolves in a context of full respect for the fundamental rights and principles at work just mentioned. It will only have legitimacy - and therefore sustainability - if the participants in the dialogue are truly autonomous, representative and able to formulate and express their positions freely and without fear of reprisal. This requires, on the part of Governments in particular, a political commitment to freedom of association, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly but also a willingness to share information and involve the social partners in decision making so that social dialogue interactions have a transparent and substantive basis. The Office can assist the tripartite constituents in the development of social dialogue and to strengthen their capacity to forge new partnerships.

With regard to national commitments and assistance required from the Office, delegates may wish to consider in particular the following points:

• Respect for freedom of association, independence of employers' and workers' organizations and the right to collective bargaining;
   

• Measures to improve flexibility and responsiveness of social dialogue to constantly changing environments;
   

• Development of tripartite training programmes to improve social dialogue skills;
   

• Development of appropriate mechanisms for social dialogue at the regional and subregional levels in relation to emerging trading blocs at these levels.

Employment and Social Protection

At the World Summit for Social Development in 1995, virtually all of the countries of the Asia and Pacific region subscribed to the Copenhagen Declaration, thus committing themselves to give priority to the creation and maintenance of jobs for their citizens. Experience has shown that progress towards this goal can only be achieved if there are both adequate macroeconomic policies and targeted programmes for those most vulnerable to unemployment. In this regard, macroeconomic policies can be characterized as "adequate" if they incorporate employment as an important objective, at least equal in weight and priority to the achievement of financial and fiscal targets. Targeted programmes are necessary to avoid the well-documented phenomena of jobless growth and deepening poverty in certain sectors of society in spite of improved macroeconomic performance.

Experience demonstrates that creating and maintaining jobs are intimately bound up with facilitating the establishment and growth of enterprises both large and small. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises have shown capacity to absorb significant numbers of job-seekers, especially in the labour-intensive service sector. It is nevertheless important to track not only the number of jobs generated but also the number of jobs lost as enterprises shrink and fail, often as a result of unfavourable policy environments or for the want of necessary services and support. Social protection is probably the clearest and most concrete factor differentiating decent work from employment/jobs/livelihoods in general. Unless the employment targets mentioned above correspond to jobs which are safe and which include provision against the contingencies which prevent people from taking up employment (e.g., disability, maternity, illness, old age) they do not fall within the definition of decent work. Asia is the region which has the greatest number of "working poor" and it is therefore particularly appropriate, indeed crucial, to develop innovative mixes of employment and social security policies which can help to bridge the awful gap between underproductive, unsafe, precarious and desperate survival strategies and decent work. The economic fluctuations to which, as mentioned above, the region is highly prone, make it particularly important to establish, wherever feasible, unemployment insurance schemes since these constitute an effective means of softening the social severity of cyclical economic downturns.

With respect to national commitments and the definition of assistance required from the Office, it is suggested that delegates may wish to devote particular attention to the following points:

• The inclusion and promotion of employment issues in macroeconomic and development plans;
   

• The establishment of policies and support services which favour enterprise development and expansion both for larger and smaller businesses;
   

• The creation of employment opportunities for young people;
   

• Improving the quality of employment in the informal sector through enhanced productivity, higher income, improved conditions of safety and health and social protection;
   

• Bridging the "digital divide" across groups, sectors and regions;
   

• Redesigning structures for the delivery of training so that the latter is both more attuned to employment opportunities and makes the most efficient use of the funding available;
   

• Managing migration flows and improving migration policies to protect basic rights of migrant workers and derive maximal economic benefit from labour mobility;
   

• Extending social security coverage to the greatest number of citizens possible while attending to the need that such programmes be financially sustainable and transparently and efficiently administered;
   

• Implementing, wherever possible, appropriate unemployment insurance programmes to attenuate the social effects of cyclical economic downturns;
   

• Reducing substantially the appalling number of work accidents taking place in the region every year.

The final chapter of the report seeks to summarize the particular priorities and concerns of ILO constituents by subregion and to give a brief evaluation of which approaches and strategies have worked and which have not. There is, of course, an extensive list of ILO activities set out in the Annex to the Director-General's report to the present Regional Meeting. But this list does not provide any indication of how successful, sustainable and relevant the various activities have been. Important efforts have been made over the last four years to improve the quality and extend the quantity of evaluative exercises in terms of appropriateness, effectiveness and sustainability and we shall hear more about this tomorrow afternoon. Delegates may wish to consider the following points:

• Do the ILO programme in the country and the procedures for defining it integrate all of the elements of the Decent Work Agenda in a balanced fashion in terms of national priorities.
   

• Do the definition and implementation of the national decent work agenda involve all of the national, regional and international actors necessary to achieve and integrated and coherent policy?
   

• Is adequate information Provided to national constituents on present and future ILO activities in the country? If not, what might be done to overcome this information gap?
   

• Have mechanisms and procedures been put in place at the national level to measure the impact of ILO activities and the follow-up to them?

I very much hope that this quick overview of the Director-General's Report to the present meeting has been helpful. The most positive and productive outcome of this meeting will be a set of clear guidelines and instructions as to what you - who are the ILO in Asia, the Arab States and the Pacific - expect to achieve through the implementation of the decent work agenda over the next four years and what you need from the Office to reach your decent work goals.

Updated by CHW. Approved by RD. Last update: 10 September 2001.