Mr. Shill Kwan Lee, ICA Regional Director,

Distinguished participants,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, on behalf of the ILO Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, I would like to welcome you all to Bangkok for this regional workshop jointly organized jointly by the ILO and the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA).

As you are very much aware, poverty continues to be the main obstacle to sustainable and equitable development worldwide. It is estimated that there are 1.2 billion people living in absolute poverty worldwide, supported by 500 million working poor who are unable to make ends meet to support their families. In Africa and Asia, in particular, poverty is eroding the achievements many countries have made over the last two to three decades.

In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed upon a set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that aimed to make substantial progress in solving the problems of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. Specifically, these goals include: to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015; achieve universal primary education; empower women and promote equality between women and men; reduce mortality for children under-5 by two thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters; reverse the spread of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria; ensure environmental sustainability; and create a global partnership for development with targets for aid, trade and debt relief, including the promotion of decent and productive employment for youth.

When the international committee considered how to pursue these goals at the country level, it was immediately obvious that a broad-based country-led process would be needed. Poverty Reduction Strategies were to be developed within each country to set out macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programmes to promote growth and reduce poverty, as well as devote external financing to these strategies. The process began in highly indebted countries as a means to ensure that debt relief would be invested in poverty reduction. PRSPs are supposed to be prepared by governments through a participatory process involving civil society and development partners, and should include trade unions, employers’ groups and the cooperative movement. They should be linked to other development planning tools, such as national development strategies and the UN Development Assistance Framework. And they are supposed to provide a road map towards country level achievement of the MDGs.

There are five core principles underlying the development and implementation of poverty reduction strategies. The strategies should be:

• country-driven — involving broad-based participation by civil society and the private sector in all operational steps; - from planning to monitoring implementation.
• results-oriented — focusing on outcomes that would benefit the poor;
• comprehensive in recognizing the many dimensions of poverty;
• partnership-based — involving coordinated efforts and commitment (bilateral, multilateral, and non-governmental); and finally
• based on a long-term perspective for poverty reduction.

Most low income countries are in the process of implementing a PRSP, over thirty countries have full PRSPs in place including Vietnam, Cambodia and Nepal.

PRSPs outline an impressive and ambitious agenda for poverty reduction, particularly when viewed against the severe capacity constraints facing most poor countries. To date, the record has been mixed and it is often noted that PRSPs do not always contain a detailed diagnosis of poverty, particularly its non income dimensions, and often fail to cover gender, decent work and equity issues. Generally, PRSPs need to give closer attention to the links between analysis and policy, to prioritizing public actions and to implementation issues, such as budgetary and institutional capacity.

The ILO has been actively supporting PRSP processes in a number of countries, including Viet Nam, Indonesia, and in particular Cambodia and Nepal which were identified as special focus countries for the ILO’s initial work on PRSPs. In all cases the ILO has had 3 objectives:

• First, to empower the social partners to influence the drafting and implementation of poverty reduction strategies through social dialogue
• Second, to incorporate employment and other aspects of decent work into PRSPs, and
• Third, to influence development organizations and governments to embrace the fundamental principles and rights at work, to support social protection and employment policies and to listen to the voices of the social partners when designing and implementing poverty reduction strategies.

The ILO’s actual experience of PRSPs has been varied. Generally, the ILO has sought to give more attention to equity in addition to growth in PRSPs, arguing that further emphasis is needed on the policy implications related to redistribution, through, for example, reform of land rights, development of a fair, efficient and effective fiscal policy, promotion of the core labour standards, focus on vulnerable segments of society, and so on. We argue that trade unions, employers’ organisations, labour ministries and representatives of civil society and the private sector, including cooperatives, need to be more systematically integrated into the participatory process underpinning the design and implementation of PRSPs. Without this, the participation and national ownership principles of the PRSP are seriously undermined. Finally, most PRSPs need to include a more thorough analysis of employment and other aspects of decent work. This should help everyone understand the explicit role for decent work, including the international labour standards and social protection, in poverty reduction strategies.

It is against this background that the ILO and the ICA have jointly organized this training workshop for government and cooperative movement representatives from 10 countries in Asia and the Pacific that have PRSPs. The objectives of this workshop are:

• First, to sensitize policy makers about the role of cooperatives in reducing poverty and promoting Decent Work.
• Second, to familiarize cooperative leaders with the design, implementation and monitoring of poverty reduction strategies, with particular emphasis on PRSPs;
• Third, to increase understanding of the concept of Decent Work, with particular reference to poverty reduction strategies; and
• Forth, to discuss with government and national cooperative movements ways to assist cooperatives participate in the formulation and implementation of poverty reduction strategies, and the possible roles and contributions of the ILO and the ICA in this process.

Allow me to give you a brief introduction to the concept of " Decent Work ".

The ILO is interested in more than just securing more work for more people, because work itself often does not alleviate poverty nor lead to a productive life. The challenge is to secure Decent Work: work that earns a liveable income with access to basic social protection, where human rights are respected, and where workers and employers have opportunity to participate in decision-making that affects their lives.

Decent Work is a broad concept, based on 4 mutually- dependent Strategies:

1. upholding the fundamental rights of workers at work, including a safe work environment;
2. ensuring an adequate, productive, meaningful livelihood for workers;
3. encouraging social dialogue within enterprises, and at the national level, between employers, workers and government; and
4. providing access to social protection, especially when livelihoods are threatened as a result of illness, injury, economic downturn, or changes in technology and trade flows.

Across these strategies, and within PRSPs, we must deepen efforts to understand the linkages between policy actions and pro-poor growth. Cooperatives can be key partners in these efforts.

At the national level, organized cooperative federations ought to contribute to the poverty reduction strategy process, and the strengthening of cooperative federations ought to be a part of the strategy. At the local level, cooperative forms of organization should be used more explicitly so that policy actions have greater chance of successfully reaching and benefiting the poor. Existing cooperatives should be strengthened or expanded to meet the needs of poor people: men, women and youth, who would like to participate through membership, and new cooperatives should be formed to meet the needs identified by the poor themselves. In this connection I would like to inform you that the recently adopted ILO Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives (Recommendation 193) has new elements aimed at strengthening the identity of cooperatives, and covering voluntarism, autonomy from external manipulation by public authorities, accountability to members, commercial viability, responsibilities that should be assumed by cooperatives, particularly in combating poverty.

In your effort to fulfil the objectives of the workshop, I hope that your presentations, discussions and exchange of experiences will help generate ideas and solutions to the following questions:

• what role should cooperatives play in alleviating poverty ?
• what potential do cooperatives have for joining the poverty reduction struggle, especially in the rural areas where the majority of cooperatives are based and operate ?, and
• what strengths and opportunities do cooperatives have to offer in the broad fight against poverty ?

It is also hoped that the workshop will bring forward recommendations for national action plans to be implemented by the national cooperative movements working in tandem with governments and other development partners.

Finally, I would like to inform you that the historical partnership between the ILO and the ICA in the field of poverty reduction through cooperative development will be further strengthened following a recent agreement by the two agencies. The ILO Director-General Juan Somavia attended the ICA General Assembly in September 2003 and invited the ICA to design, together with the ILO, a common cooperative agenda. The two agencies are now working on an MOU to that effect. It is hoped that the ILO and ICA will be able to design and implement joint technical cooperation programmes and projects to assist ILO member countries and cooperative movements in designing appropriate cooperative development policies and fighting against poverty.

Thank you for your participation, I wish you all the very best in your deliberations.