The ILO at Work: Results 2014-2015

Standards for fairness: The ILO’s rights-based approach

International labour standards provide a framework for regulating all aspects of the world of work, including the rights of domestic workers, seafarers and indigenous and tribal peoples, and support efforts to fight child labour and forced labour.


The ILO has one of the most thorough supervisory systems of standards, which keeps track of the implementation of ratified Conventions and brings good practices and violations to the attention of all Member States.

The ILO takes a sustainable, rights-based approach to economic and social development, based on international labour standards, to address the root causes of decent work deficits. This makes the ILO ideally positioned to empower women and men, to formulate policies aimed at increasing productivity and facilitating access to jobs, and to promote human rights and eliminate human rights abuses in many fields such as child labour, forced labour and domestic work.

The ratification of 39 different international labour standards by 59 Member States during 2014-15 bears witness to the continued relevance and usefulness of ILO instruments and the principles that they embody.

The World Day for Social Justice highlights our obligation to support the creation of the one thing that people all over the world requested in recent UN surveys. The people asked for decent jobs in the first place. One of the Sustainable Development Goals deals with the promotion of sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all. For the implementation of this goal, Member States suggest, inter alia, a call for immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour."

Ambassador Harald Braun of Germany at the ILO event “Human Exploitation- Ending Human Trafficking and Forced Labor”, 19 February 2015
Two new instruments were adopted in 2014–15. The Protocol to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (2014), updates and reinforces global action to end forced labour, including trafficking in persons and slavery-like practices, and positions the ILO as a key player in the global effort to eliminate all modern forms of slavery – of which there are 21 million victims worldwide. The Protocol will enter into force later in 2016.

The Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy Recommendation, 2015 (No. 204) is the first ever international labour standard aimed specifically at tackling the informal economy. More than half of the world’s workforce is in the informal economy – often not voluntarily – and face the lack of rights at work, with few decent job opportunities, inadequate social protection and lack of social dialogue.