The latest report of the committee at the centre of the ILO's supervisory system has been published. It examines in detail the application by member States of the Conventions they have ratified, alongside important general issues relating to human rights, vocational rehabilitation, and the operation of the supervisory machinery.

The Committee of Experts marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the ILO's leading instrument on freedom of association. Convention No. 87 is one of the most widely ratified of ILO Conventions, and improvements in its application worldwide have increased considerably in the last ten years with the lifting of trade union monopolies imposed by law and the strengthening of democracy. But difficulties in certain specific sectors (e.g. the public service) and in particular areas such as the right to strike are still common; and economic globalisation has accentuated the need to reaffirm the universality of the freedom of association standards.

In its General Survey of the ILO's Convention and Recommendation on vocational rehabilitation and employment of people with disabilities, the Committee of Experts looks at national policies in an equal opportunities perspective. Equality represents a universal humanist principle which rejects the simple institutionalisation of persons with disabilities in favour of a system in which they can exercise their own income-generating activities: they may thus cease to be a mere charge on social protection funds and services and become instead real participants in the collective enterprise. Achieving this requires concerted action in association with disabled people's groups as well as employers' and workers', and a series of calculated affirmative measures. The General Survey shows examples of steps taken by ILO member States, including many which have not yet ratified this promotional Convention.