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Francesca Ferrari
ILO Rome
An important international meeting is to be held in Rome on 14 and 15 May, when the Directors of the ILO Offices in Europe will convene in the Eternal City to discussing major labour issues. Mr. Cesare Damiano, the Italian Minister of Labour, is also expected to take the floor during the meeting, organized by the ILO Office in Rome, and to outline Italian policy regarding “flexicurity” in the European context.
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Mr. Giorgio Napolitano, President of the Italian Republic, at the ILO International Training Centre in Turin, 2006. © International Training Centre of the ILO.
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Like Geneva, Vienna and Paris, Rome is a European city that hosts United Nations agencies and programmes. Besides the headquarters of the three main United Nations agricultural and food organizations — the FAO, IFAD and the WFP — many other international agencies have regional or representation offices in Rome: the UNHCR, the OMS, the UNDP, the HRIC/UNDESA, UNICRI, UNESCO, UNOPS, the World Bank, the IOM and the ILO.
On several occasions, the ILO, through its Office in Rome, has joined with other United Nations agencies to promote and hold public events in Rome: United Nations Day; a recent conference on “More human rights, more security for all”; a conference on “Stop AIDS: keep the promise”, part of World Day against HIV/AIDS. On 12 June, United Nations agencies dealing with agriculture will join the ILO in Rome to celebrate the World Day against Child Labour, which focuses on agriculture this year.
According to research by the Study Centre for International Politics (CESPI), Rome has one of the highest number of international institutions in the world. It ranks with Brussels, Geneva, London and New York for its role in development cooperation, humanitarian aid and crisis response.
Hosting not less than 183 international governmental and non-governmental institutions and 26 inter-governmental organizations, Rome can only be compared with Geneva. At least 5,000 experts and international operators live in the city. Thousands of others are there for meetings and other short activities, among them ministers, international experts, volunteers, senior officers, heads of NGOs, diplomats and academics. Not to mention the staff of over 130 embassies to the Italian State or to the Holy See, the people working at the Vatican and the members of other religious institutions. Every day, Rome-based international agencies spend up to 10 million dollars on about 20,000 tons of international food aid.
To take advantage of this significant international presence, the Municipality of Rome invites United Nations agencies to take part in valuable initiatives, including the Italia-Africa 2005 campaign, which has since been emulated by several other European capitals.
Not only Rome but all of Italy is gaining relevance as a logistics base for United Nations-related activities. Brindisi (Apulia) is a centre for United Nations peacekeeping activities all over the world and also hosts the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD), an emergency hub for strategic supplies of relief goods and equipment managed by the WFP and ready for transport within 24-48 hours by air and sea. In Turin (Piedmont), the International Training Centre of the ILO has been a touchstone for human resources development for over 40 years. Turin also hosts UNICRI and the United Nations Staff College. The United Nations is represented in Trieste (Friuli-Venezia-Giulia) by two scientific institutions: the UNESCO-IAEA International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the UNIDO International Centre for Science and High Technology.
During a recent visit to the ILO International Training Centre in Turin, the President of Italy stated: “Italy is gaining more and more importance as a strategic base for United Nations activities,” warmly hoping that “the United Nations might further strengthen its presence in the country”.
The FAO and the ILO: long-lasting collaboration
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The FAO Headquarters in Rome. © FAO.
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The collaboration between the ILO and the FAO goes back to 1947, when both organizations signed an agreement, subsequently integrated with other documents, that laid the foundations of joint action on questions of common interest, including migration, land settlement, vocational training, cooperatives and rural activities.
In 2004, the two agencies signed a new memorandum of understanding, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which set new strategic objectives in order to cope better with challenges arising from globalization and the global agenda for development, in particular the Millennium Development Goals.
In a context of United Nations system reform, representatives of both agencies again met in Rome, in July 2006, to further strengthen their collaboration at global and local level, in line with the 2004 Memorandum. A compelling theme to emerge from the meeting was the need to give activities more visibility by publicizing examples of successful cooperation, such as: joint ILO-FAO recovery activities after the 2005 earthquake in the North Eastern region of Pakistan or the 2006 tsunami that hit Nias Island, Indonesia; and the joint report on the elimination of hazardous child labour in agriculture or the one on agricultural workers.
It is also important to strengthen collaboration on decent work issues. In developing countries, most of the workforce is to be found in agriculture. The FAO’s expertise and experience (both conceptual and functional) in that sector might therefore prove useful in promoting decent work there. The 2006 meeting pinpointed further areas of collaboration: rural employment, which will be under focus at the 2008 International Labour Conference; migration and its impact on rural development; and HIV/AIDS.
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