South-south cooperation
ILO and Brazil to promote decent work in cotton-producing countries in Africa and Latin America
The Deputy Director and Officer in Charge of the ILO Office in Brazil, Stanley Gacek, the Director of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), Ambassador Fernando José Marroni de Abreu, and the Executive President of IBA, Haroldo Rodrigues da Cunha, signed the document establishing the new project last Thursday, 30 April, in Brasília.
“South-South Cooperation is based on the concept of solidarity between Southern countries. This new agreement between the ILO and ABC, signed on the eve of the International Labour Day, paves the way for articulating several successful Brazilian experiences of eradication of child labour and forced labour, productive inclusion and promotion of youth employment in the cotton production sector”, said Gacek. According to him, the ILO considers this to be a pioneering initiative that will certainly have a great impact in the African and Latin American regions.
The project aims to contribute to the promotion of decent work in cotton-producing developing countries through the systematization, sharing and adaptation of Brazilian experiences in four countries: two in Latin America and two in Africa. The Brazilian government and the ILO will organize prospecting missions, execute and monitor South-South/trilateral technical cooperation activities, which will be implemented as defined in work plans formulated in partnership with the four countries that will be selected to benefit from the project.
Gacek also highlighted that this agreement is part of an important mobilization of Brazilian funds towards South-South Cooperation: “Despite addressing several issues within the context of the decent work agenda, this effort also represents a new contribution to the Regional Initiative for Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour”.
Launched during the III Global Conference on Child Labour held in Brasília in 2013, the Initiative aims to accelerate efforts against child labour in order to achieve the goal of total eradication in the region by 2020. A group of 25 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have already signed up for the Initiative, which has the ILO functioning as its technical secretariat.
The new project was signed following the publication by the ILO office in Brazil of a study that describes and analyses the experience of the Brazil-ILO Partnership Programme for the Promotion of South-South Cooperation since its inception in 2005, presenting its results as well as its current prospects.