One out of every 10 people in the world—or some 650 million people worldwide—has a disability. Approximately 470 million are of working age. While many are successfully employed and fully integrated into society, as a group, persons with disabilities often face disproportionate poverty and unemployment.
Decent work is the ILO's primary goal for everyone, including persons with disabilities. The ILO has worked for over 50 years to promote skills development and employment opportunities for people with disabilities based on the principles of equal opportunity, equal treatment, mainstreaming into vocational rehabilitation and employment services programmes and community involvement. The principle of non-discrimination is increasingly emphasized as disability issues have come to be seen as human rights issues. The ILO works to achieve this goal through promoting labour standards, advocacy, knowledge-building on the training and employment of people with disabilities and technical cooperation services and partnerships, both within the ILO and externally. A strategy of including consideration of persons with disabilities in the training and employment promotion policies and programmes of the ILO and of constituents is currently being developed.
