Mr. Rene Sieron, Head of the Asia-wide Programmes and Thematic Budget Lines, European Commision Participants, Colleagues and Friends from the European Commission, ILO Turin Centre and the ILO Ladies and Gentlemen…. Good Morning

Mabuhay !

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you all to the ILO and in this Training on Gender Mainstreaming in European Commission Development Co-operation, on behalf of the ILO Sub-regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. We also extend our welcome to the European Commission and this first-time collaboration with ILO SRO Manila.

Decent Work is the heart of social progress and the primary aim of the ILO today. This means promoting opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. Guided by the ILO Declaration of the Principles and Rights at Work all member countries of the ILO share a commitment to this by virtue of their membership. This therefore, sets the floor below which no worker should fall.

ILO promotes Decent work through its work on standards and the fundamental principles and rights at work; employment, social protection and social dialogue.

People world-wide are faced with deficits, gaps and exclusions in the form of unemployment, poor quality and unproductive jobs, gender inequality, unsafe work and insecure incomes, rights which are denied-----and ILO programmes aim to find solutions to these concerns.

A key element of the ILO decent work agenda is gender equality which enables us to move toward social and institutional change to bring about equity and growth. ILO has always been strong in gender since it addresses gender concerns throughout each of its policies and programmes and which includes gender-specific analysis and interventions which may target only women, only men or the two together.

In the Philippines, government, employers and workers----who are ILO’s tripartite constituents---- have identified challenges and deficits for realizing Decent Work. The Decent Work National Plan of Action, launched two years has been designed to support our constituents’ initiatives to address the deficits and pursued national efforts on poverty reduction and the promotion of full productive employment as contained in the Philippine Medium Term National Dev’t Plan or MTPDP. Gender concerns have been addressed fully in the plan.

Of course, importance is placed by the ILO in working with the principal actors of the multilateral system and the global economy to put into action decent work. Partnerships have been promoted at national level, within the UN family and with donors, to implement progammes, build institutions and measure progress.

The collaboration with the European Commission (EC) and the ILO clearly demonstrates complementation between the two agencies in working on a range of gender mainstreaming activities in development cooperation. This workshop is one evidence and I am sure, there have been such programmes conducted world-wide.

As participants, I hope you’ll be able to maximize your learnings in this workshop. It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to meet you all and especially to work with the European Commission. I hope we could have such continuing cooperation in the future.

I wish you all a fruitful and productive workshop and to our friends from the EC and ILO outside of the Philippines, may you all have a pleasant stay in the Philippines.

Thank you!