The 2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization endorsed the Decent Work Agenda and recommended "the establishment of appropriate indicators or statistics, if necessary with the assistance of the ILO, to monitor and evaluate the progress made". A Tripartite Meeting of Experts on measuring the dimensions of decent work took place in Geneva in September 2008 and proposed a framework for the measurement of Decent Work in its four strategic objectives, including a number of Decent Work Indicators.” Shortly thereafter the Governing Body endorsed the preparation of Decent Work Country Profiles for a limited number of pilot countries, including low-, middle- and high- income countries.

The ILO’s programme to measure and monitor progress on decent work was supported by ILO resources and an ILO/EC technical cooperation project "Monitoring and Assessing Progress on Decent Work (MAP). In late 2013 the Multilateral Cooperation Department commissioned a stock-taking exercise to assess the programme and extract lessons learned. It was carried out concurrently with the final evaluation of the ILO/EC MAP Project and covered countries that were not included in that project’s evaluation (Azerbaijan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Senegal and South Africa).

The executive summary of the stock-taking report is available in French and Spanish.